Football and gambling have long been closely related. The game generates more than £1.1 billion in betting revenue annually in the UK alone. This number reflects the fact that the matchday experience often includes placing a bet on the game.
Betting firms frequently sponsor teams in the English game, often featuring their advertisements across stadiums and on the front of team shirts. Nevertheless, this practice will soon end in the English Premier League. On April 13, 2023, the Premier League announced that its clubs had agreed to end front-of-shirt sponsorship by betting firms after the 2025/26 season.
Gambling Remains Top Sponsor Despite Ban on Shirt Deals
Despite this agreement, gambling sponsorship is currently prominent in English football. Fourteen gambling firms make up 15% of the total sponsorship figure. This figure means that gambling as an industry is the biggest sponsor of English football.
Premier League Leads the Way in Gambling Sponsorships
Most of this sponsorship is in the Premier League. Currently, 40% of teams are sponsored by betting companies. The agreement between Stake and Everton FC is a good example. The multi-year agreement between the well-known online sweepstakes casino operator and the Merseyside club, which commenced on July 1, 2022, is the most valuable front-of-shirt sponsorship deal that Everton has signed.
Stake is not the only betting company involved with Premier League sponsorship. Dafabet has a sponsorship deal with Bournemouth, Fun88 sponsors Newcastle United, and W88 sponsors Fulham.
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These sites may not be familiar to some UK football fans as they operate offshore. Many operate under the same company, TGP Europe, which is fully licensed to provide online casino content. The use of the same licence by several sites is known as a white-label agreement and is a common practice.
Sponsorship deals with European betting sites are worth around £60 million annually for the eight clubs involved. These deals involve front-of-shirt advertising, and the clubs will need to replace this revenue by the end of the 2025/26 season.
Interestingly, there is less front-of-shirt sponsorship in the English Football League (EFL). In the Championship, 21% of teams have sponsorship deals with betting companies. This figure is reduced dramatically in League One, where only one team has a sponsorship deal with a gambling-related brand.
When the ban on front-of-shirt sponsorship in the Premier League comes into force, gambling brands may look to strike deals with EFL teams. If this happens, fans of EFL teams will see more gambling advertising.
Beyond Shirts: Continued Presence of Betting Partnerships in Stadiums
It’s important to realise that Premier League teams also have betting partners, which includes the big six teams: Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, and Tottenham Hotspur. These partnerships mean that betting advertising will still appear in stadiums and on shirt sleeves after the ban on front-of-shirt advertising begins. So, the relationship between betting and football in England will not end anytime soon.
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