Many aspects come in unison to show how sponsorship of gambling is worth millions in terms of commercial value.
Sponsorship in football is an important business at every level of the sport. We are very happy to support the community through our local team Altrincham FC, which stands alongside several other wonderful local businesses.
Various types of companies sponsor teams at the highest levels of the game, yet none, it would seem, are more influential than betting companies. Betting deals with football create a lot of controversies, yet the question still remains-how much influence does betting have over a particular football match?
Football is without a doubt the sport that receives the highest volume of betting activities, with more than £1.1 billion generated annually. Football gambling has been embroiled in controversies in recent times that are questioning the nature of the relationship between sponsorship and gambling.
Various methods of gambling are marketed to football viewership. Among the most prominent of these strategies are those of front-of-shirt sponsorship and stadium sponsorship.
Front-of-shirt sponsorship
What kind of businesses sponsor football teams in England?
• 15% of football sponsors are gambling businesses in the Premier League and the EFL
On the front of shirts, eight organizations sponsor most often in financial services.
The companies sponsoring the football teams span a wide array of fields that include automotive, utilities, and food and drink. However, the most prominent category of sponsorship in all four leagues is gambling. There are a total of 14 gambling companies representing 15% of English football sponsorships.
Of course, gambling is not inherently dangerous, and therefore there is no need for a blanket ban on betting activity. However, recent studies have revealed that those watching football are swarmed with betting messages, with many ads on social media appearing indistinguishable from organic content.
Also, it is true that this coexistence can be healthy, but there are indeed restrictions to the advertising of a few products, such as alcohol and cigarettes. The Premier League agreed to eliminate betting companies as shirt sponsors from 2026, but what will these companies leave behind until then?
Which league has the most gambling sponsors?
Most of the gambling sponsors are concentrated in the Premier League, where eight companies sponsor the kits of the teams.
• Our study identified 25 unique industries sponsoring shirts across all four English leagues
The Premier League has had the most betting sponsors, although it has sought to replace them all by 2026. 40% of teams occupy sponsors of betting companies, and the next most common sector is financial services.
The Financial Times estimates that the sponsorship deal of the eight Premier League clubs sponsored by a betting firm generates around £60 million annual revenue, which should be replaced by the clubs by kick-off of the 2026/27 season.
It is not easy to assess whether gambling sponsors can influence viewer behaviour, but the fact that so many companies put so much money into sponsoring the teams means they expect to get that money back.
Betting companies have far less presence on the front of shirts within the EFL. In the Championship, 21% of teams have a betting sponsor whereas only 1 out of 24 teams in League One has a betting sponsor.
But the Premier League's voluntary ban has not been required by any other leagues. Is this to suggest that betting companies are targeting lower-league teams?
How much viewership have the teams with gambling sponsors had in the past year?
• The front-of-shirt sponsorship will expose 7.5 million viewers to gambling ads throughout the duration of the 2023/24 season.
Betway possesses the most extensive commercial reach, having sponsored West Ham at £63.8m for this 2023/24 season.
Every Aston Villa, Sunderland, and Everton are expected to add more than £30M of value to the sponsors.
The team that gets the most views is West Ham, with an average of 62,466 home fans. This translates into a near to 1.2 million organic season viewership for the betting sponsor across their home games.
Mr Gamble's research, which found that the average UK gambler spends £70 every week, coupled with an additional research by Beating Betting that 76.8% of football fans were gamblers, allowed us to estimate the advertising value of front-of-shirt sponsorship.
According to these figures, sponsorship can even be worth over £435 million per season in gambling spending potential for brick-and-mortar advertising alone.
Viewing estimates consider only the actual attendance at matches and do not factor in the impact of watching from home. All season long, viewer figures for streaming and television may be recorded and difficult to pin down, but without doubt, they add millions to the advertising value for those who sponsor shirts front.
How does the UK differ from other countries?
The company Winamax is sponsoring two foreign teams; Le Havre in France and VfB Stuttgart in Germany.
slightly more than a third of the betting sponsors in the EFL have their headquarters in the UK.
Betting is not a major presence on the shirts of teams in those other leagues, unlike the UK leagues.
Only the German Bundesliga and the French Ligue 1 feature betting companies as shirt sponsors – Winamax sponsors Le Havre in France and VfB Stuttgart in Germany, while Partouche sponsors Montpellier in France. The Bundesliga accounts for only 5.6% of gambling sponsorship in teams, whereas Ligue 1 has 10.5% of teams represented by gambling.
What’s next for English football?
University of Bristol experts believe that television viewers of football face overwhelming and inescapable betting imagery while watching the game.
Some study counted 2.3% of the population as problem gamblers, but these cause as much as half the revenue flow of the industry. The excess cost of compensating all gambling addicts is, according to government estimates, between £1.05 and £1.77 billion.
As the remaining betting shirts are ordered to go over the next few years by the Premier League clubs, gambling messages are still rife throughout the game. It does not prohibit sleeved sponsors, pitch sponsors, or team partnerships. The English Football League will also be subtly sponsored by SkyBet; this means that with betting shirt sponsors not present, gambling messages will change little.
Further, concerning are the unregulated gambling ads on social media. They closely camouflaged, if not entirely indistinguishable, as organic content. These kinds of adverts are possibly more likely to influence consumer behavior and pose a higher threat to younger audiences.
Nonetheless, any measures which distance the picture of "overwhelming" from football are welcome and may eventually promote some modification of football fans' gambling habits.
Those looking to take advantage of the betting offers can find lucrative bookmaker welcome offers with attractive bonuses for new customers.
