Abstract
Gambling sponsorships are common in international soccer due to the substantial funds they provide to clubs. For example, in the 2022/23 English Premier League season, eight clubs collectively received an estimated £60 million from gambling shirt-front sponsorships. 1 While the Premier League plans to ban gambling shirt-front sponsorships by 2026, this will not include shirt sleeves or pitch-side hoardings, which are the most frequently seen forms of in-game marketing. 2 In contrast, Italy and Spain have fully banned gambling sponsorships and in-game marketing due to public health concerns. 3 Relatedly, much less attention has been paid to the emergence of sponsorships associated with cryptocurrency or financial trading. These are both gambling-like products, 4 which are engaged in disproportionately by those experiencing gambling-related harm, 5 and which also use soccer to market themselves. 2
Researchers have suggested that these products might look to fill the gap in high-level sports left by gambling sponsorship bans, 6 and so have highlighted the need to monitor their use of sponsorship agreements with high-level soccer teams. We therefore provide an overview of gambling and gambling-like sponsorship of soccer teams within high-level leagues across England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Argentina. Overall, our findings indicate that gambling sponsorship remains prominent, but has reduced in comparison to previous seasons across most countries. However, we have observed betting ”partnerships” which circumvent gambling sponsorship prohibitions in Italy. In relation to cryptocurrency and financial trading companies, there are limited numbers of active sponsorships outside of the UK, but ”partnerships” between teams and these companies have become prevalent.
Soccer leagues were chosen in the current review based on their popularity and viewership. Data were collected from the social media accounts and official websites of teams between July and September 2023. This timeframe was optimal as it coincided with the beginning of many 2023/24 soccer leagues. Data were collected by Jamie Torrance and Conor Heath, who regularly discussed findings until 100% agreement was met.
ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE
During the 2023/24 English Premier League Season, 18 teams were partnered with gambling companies. Among these teams, seven had a shirt-front gambling sponsor, one had a gambling and cryptocurrency shirt-front sponsor (the crypto casino Stake, which allows gamblers to deposit funds via cryptocurrencies), 7 and three had a shirt-sleeve gambling sponsor. Ten teams were partnered with companies associated with cryptocurrency or financial trading. Aston Villa had the trading platform Trade Nation as a shirt sleeve sponsor, and Manchester United had a cryptocurrency-related shirt-sleeve sponsor (OKX). Wolverhampton Wanderers had a shirt-front sponsor associated with cryptocurrency payments (Astropay). Sheffield Untied and Luton Town 8 were the only teams not associated with gambling or gambling-like sponsorship in any way. See Table 1 for more details.
English Premier League Sponsorships for the 2023/24 Season
ENGLISH FOOTBALL LEAGUE (SKY BET) CHAMPIONSHIP
The English Football League Championship has been sponsored by a gambling company (Sky Bet) since 2013 and is therefore commonly referred to as the Sky Bet Championship. Five teams were partnered with companies who solely offer services relating to cryptocurrency or financial trading. Eight teams were partnered with gambling companies, three were partnered with a company offering both gambling and financial trading (Spreadex), and one team was partnered with a crypto casino (Sportbet.io). Partnerships with Spreadex and Sportsbet.io also extended into shirt-front sponsorship for Sunderland and Southampton respectively. Three other teams had shirt-front sponsorship from companies associated with gambling only, e.g., Unibet or Bet365. See Table 2 for more details.
English Football League (Skey Bet) Championship Sponsorships for the 2023/24 Season
FRENCH LIGUE 1
Among the 18 teams in Ligue 1, two had shirt-front sponsorship arrangements with gambling companies. Specifically, Le Havre was sponsored by Winamax, a European sports betting and poker operator, and Montpellier were sponsored by Partouche, a French casino operator. No other teams were associated with sponsorship associated with gambling, cryptocurrency, or financial trading. Ligue 1 was previously sponsored by the French online gambling operator Betclic until the end of the 2022/23 season. See Table 3 for more details.
French Ligue 1 Sponsorships for the 2023/24 Season
GERMAN BUNDESLIGA
One out of the 18 teams within the German Bundesliga 2023/24 season had a gambling sponsor, Stuttgart who had a shirt-front sponsorship agreement with Winamax. Borussia Mönchengladbach had a shirt-front sponsorship from flatex who offers financial and cryptocurrency trading. Additionally, Bayer Leverkusen had sleeve sponsorship from the financial trading platform Tribe who is not currently associated with services relating to cryptocurrency. See Table 4 for more details.
German Bundesliga Sponsorships for the 2023/24 Season
SPANISH LA LIGA
Within La Liga, no teams were associated with gambling sponsorship due to the regulatory ban on such arrangements. Athletic Bilbao was the only team sponsored by a company associated with cryptocurrency, B2BinPAY an online cryptocurrency exchange and payment platform. No teams were sponsored by financial trading companies. However, Atletico de Madrid had shirt-front sponsorship from the financial trading platform Plus500 between 2015 and 2022. See Table 5 for more details.
Spanish La Liga Sponsorships for the 2023/24 Season
ITALIAN SERIE A
In Italy's Serie A, two teams were sponsored by cryptocurrency-related companies: AC Milan had shirt-front sponsorship by BitMex and Lazio had sleeve sponsorship by Binance. Lazio also had shirt-front sponsorship from Betitaly.pay, a sister company of the online gambling operator Betitaly. Specifically, Betitaly.pay is a platform that offers mobile phone top-ups and sporting rights. Sponsorship by this sister company circumvents gambling sponsorship restrictions in Italy, despite the logos for Betitaly and Betitaly.pay being almost identical. Similarly, 17 out of 20 teams had partnerships with cryptocurrency, financial trading, or gambling-related sister companies. See Table 6 for more details.
Italian Serie A Sponsorships for the 2023/24 Season
LIGA PORTUGAL (BETCLIC)
Liga Portugal is sponsored by the online gambling company Betclic. Of the 18 qualifying teams, 15 were sponsored by a gambling company. Specifically, 13 teams had shirt-front sponsorship from companies such as the Portuguese sports betting platform Placard.pt and casino operator Solverde. Two teams, Arouca and Benfica, had gambling shirt-sleeve sponsorship from the online gambling companies Bwin and Betano respectively. FC Porto was the only team associated with cryptocurrency, with shirt-sleeve sponsorship from the online cryptocurrency exchange Binance. No teams within Liga Portugal were sponsored by financial trading companies. See Table 7 for more details.
Liga Portugal Sponsorships for the 2023/24 Season
ARGENTINE PRIMERA DIVISIÓN
Within the Argentine Primera División, six teams had shirt-front sponsorship from gambling companies. Two teams, Huracán and Tigre, were sponsored by cryptocurrency platforms, Decrypto and Bitso respectively. No teams were sponsored by financial trading companies. See Table 8 for more details.
Argentine Primera División for the 2023/24 Season
CONCLUSION
It appears that there have been overall reductions in gambling sponsorship arrangements within UK and many European soccer leagues compared to previous years. This decline is perhaps due to an increase in European soccer fans becoming more critical towards clubs that are actively sponsored by gambling companies. 9 Furthermore, Italy and Spain have prohibited gambling sponsorship in sports which offers a clear explanation for these countries' reductions. However, we observed the practice of “betting partnerships” in the Italian league Serie A, which bypass sponsorship prohibition through establishing sister companies, often with domain names unrelated to gambling, such as LeoVegas.news or Bwin.tv. This practice is demonstrative of the gambling industry's ability to circumvent regulations in order to continue soccer-related marketing activities.
Gambling sponsorship was prevalent in Liga Portugal, with over 80% of teams being associated with at least one gambling company, as Portugal has seen a rapid increase in both gambling participation and gambling market revenue recently. 10 A similar trend is observable in Argentina where the number of gambling sponsorship arrangements has increased over the previous decade due to an expanding gambling market. 11 Despite the prospective ban on front-of-shirt sponsorship, however, the English Premier League remains as the most gambling-associated league with 90% of its qualifying teams either sponsored or partnered with a gambling company during the 2023/24 season.
Many of the gambling companies who sponsor teams addressed within this review have faced fines and sanctions related to consumer rights, social responsibility, and anti-money laundering failings. For instance, Betway incurred a fine of £11.6 million in 2023 for failing to conduct source of funds checks on £5.8 million deposited by players, suspected to be derived from criminal activities. 12 In 2022, Sportsbet.io received a £3.7 million fine for violating spam laws by sending more than 150,000 promotional texts and emails to customers who had previously unsubscribed from such communications. 13 Furthermore, in 2022, the French gambling regulator, l'Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), ordered the gambling operator Winamax to withdraw a marketing campaign due to its perceived social irresponsibility and violation of advertising regulations. 14
These data also indicate that sponsorship arrangements associated with cryptocurrency and financial trading are most prominent within the English Premier League. There are limited numbers of these arrangements in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Argentinian leagues. However, their prevalence could potentially rise if there is a further decline in gambling sponsorships, 6 as can be seen in the Italian Serie A. Future research is needed to continue monitoring soccer sponsorship arrangements alongside the use of other methodologies to investigate their behavioral impacts.