FOOTBALL loves to display its philanthropic side, portraying itself as a caring society that is aligned to causes, campaigns and public opinion. However, it also has a penchant for taking cash from companies, industries and individuals who make their money from activities that may be considered to be anti-social or in some way exploiting people. It depends on how you view some aspects of consumer behaviour or the damage done by excessive habits. Gambling, for example, can be addictive and can lead to misery if it gets out of hands. Some might argue that nobody forces anyone to gamble and that is true, but it is often seen as the answer to problems when the risks involved can often simply make matters worse. Left to their own devices, many people cannot be trusted to swerve clear of danger.
Football has a huge captive audience for gambling companies to feed off. Sport and betting go hand in hand, but let’s be clear, if gambling always benefitted the punter, it would not have been invented. The wealth of many organisations from the sector proves that there’s plenty of money to be made by the bookmaker and the casino owner. Football clubs don’t seem to wrestle with their conscience about teaming-up with companies from the industry.
Just over half of the current Premier League have shirt sponsors that are either betting firms, casino owners or linked to some form of gambling. There are also a few with shirt sleeve sponsors of the same nature. Add to that those that have links with crypto currency, a largely unregulated form of investment and it is clear that football will jump on any passing bandwagon if it is profitable to do so. Fine, you might argue, but when there is so much visible virtue signalling, do clubs not realise that links with the wrong sponsors can be a little hypocritical? At the start of 2026-27 season, Premier clubs will no longer have betting firms on the front of their shirts. Will this result in a gradual decline in the sector’s interest in top level football in England? Doubtful, because there will surely be other ways they can operate. But the clubs will need to improve their online behaviour to avoid financial penalties. Apparently, half of them have used advertisements on webpages aimed at youngsters.
The Premier League has been more active than most European leagues in forming relationships with “partners”, largely because of the revenues. This has become more prevalent since the financial crisis of 2008 – 2009 when some sources of income were compromised. However, even betting is not immune to global downturns and some clubs, inevitably felt the backlash of an economy in crisis. Generally, though, gambling is quite resilient because it offers “hope” of “striking it rich”.
Although advertisements appear across the football landscape in Britain, there is obviously less interest in the lower divisions and the Championship. But drop into non-league and there is the Pitching In leagues, Southern, Northern Premier and Isthmian. On the face of it, there is no obvious connection between Pitching In and gambling, but scratch the surface and it is, apparently, a corporate social responsibility arm of Entain (formerly GVC Holdings), an international sports betting and gambling company. Entain owns bwin, Coral, Ladbrokes, PartyPoker and Sporting Bet and generated £ 4.77 billion in revenues in 2023.
Portuguese football has a taste for money from the sector – Sporting and Porto both have sponsorship from Betano, while Solverde, who operate casinos and online gambling, have their name on four top flight club shirts. Brazil’s appetite is even stronger, 16 of the 20 Série A clubs are linked to companies like Superbet, Novibet, Betfair and Stake. Gambling shirt sponsors in Germany, France, Italy and Spain are not as common, in the Bundesliga, only VFB Stuttgart (Winamax) have one on their shirt.
It is easy to see why football is attracted to gambling and vice-versa. The betting and gaming sector in the UK generated revenues of £ 15 billion in 2023. There is nothing illegal about having a bet and nobody forces anyone to have a wager or two. It is discretionary expenditure, but it can be addictive and can ruin lives. Around 20% of problem gamblers end up filing for bankruptcy, that’s a big percentage.
If football wants to benefit from sponsorship from these companies, it is entirely the choice of clubs and individuals. There is nothing dramatically wrong about that, but then they should think twice about the way they portray themselves in the view of the public. On top of that, football should concern itself with things like concentration risk. It does not pay to be over-reliant on one sponsor or a singular industry for financial support.
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