With just under a year remaining until the Premier League’s gambling sponsorship ban comes into effect, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and company have once again turned to a mysterious gambling operator — this time in the form of W88 — but who exactly are they and why are they controversial?
Gone are the days when football clubs entered into deals with shady local businesspeople who were looking to make a quick buck while simultaneously seeking to legitimise their dodgy dealings, whilst doubling as a friendly community organisation supporting their own.
The car dealerships and the soon-to-be bankrupt airlines have been superseded by a bigger, more insidious breed — a murky underworld of front-of-shirt sponsorship where bogus crypto pyramid schemes, unregulated offshore gambling companies and state-owned sportswashing enterprises run amok.
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Hiding loosely in plain sight, these companies pay lucrative sums of money to have their logos emblazoned across the shirts of some of the biggest clubs in the most-watched leagues in world football.
Is this a rod modern football has created for its own back? Has this insatiable greed single-handedly manufactured a Shellian-like beast, where the beautiful game bows to moral ambiguity and gobbles financial rewards up like an obedient little child?
In recent years, the deals struck by clubs have been subject to increasing scrutiny from the public and government. Damning investigative reports have frequently demonstrated that all it takes is an untrimmed fingernail to scratch the surface in order to expose an often unscrupulous reality.
Following the announcement that Sunderland had signed a ‘record breaking’ deal with Asian gambling company W88, which will see the Philippines-based entity become the club’s new shirt sponsor and principal partner for the 2025/2026 season, questions have been raised over the legitimacy of the company, as well as the potential facilitation of unregulated activity and the club’s role in ensuring responsible gambling.
#SAFC #W88
We are pleased to announce W88 as our Principal and Front-of-Shirt Partner for the 2025-26 season.
— Sunderland AFC (@SunderlandAFC) June 27, 2025
W88 are by no means a new name thrust into the Premier League spotlight, having sponsored Aston Villa, Wolves, Fulham, Leicester City, Crystal Palace, and Burnley in recent years.
It’s no coincidence that the gambling operator seems to target newly-promoted sides, with four of the six aforementioned clubs tapped up by W88 immediately after promotion-winning campaigns, with Aston Villa and Fulham also reportedly striking ‘record-breaking’ deals.
This hardly comes as a surprise when betting brands are forced to pay a premium that’s some 20-40% above the going rate. Despite establishing a commercial identity in the UK over five years ago, W88 still doesn’t have a trading presence in the UK betting market, which is, at the very least, questionable.
W88’s dealings in the UK market are indirect and seemingly very opaque, with the company relying on ‘white-label agreements’ with two companies: Midnight Gaming Limited and MNG Management Limited.
Both firms are registered at the same London and Manchester addresses and the same director, Hilliard Alan Ehrlich (also known as Hilly Ehrlich) — who also serves as W88’s Business Development Manager and according to an interview — has a particular distaste for ‘red tape and bureaucracy’.
A white-label agreement as defined by the UK Gambling Commission allows a service provider to use another company’s brand and run a betting website on their behalf.
In this arrangement, Midnight Gaming Limited operates the W88 and BR88 brands in the UK, providing betting services to British customers under its own gambling licenses. This means that while customers interact with the W88 or BR88 brands, the actual UK-licensed operator is Midnight Gaming Limited.
Interesting. Is this the same Midnight Gaming Limited that surrendered its gambling license in 2024? In that case, there’s a very real possibility it could now be operating illegally.
Some sources point to Marquee Holdings Limited, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands and appears in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database as being inextricably linked with Midnight Gaming.
Marquee Holdings was incorporated through Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the ‘Panama Papers’ scandal, which exposed how offshore structures can be used to hide ownership and avoid taxes.
As it remains unclear whether Marquee Holdings and Midnight Gaming Limited are the same entity or merely closely linked, this ongoing saga enveloped in mystery continues.
However, it does highlight the lack of transparency, multiplex company structures and vague financial arrangements behind both offshore gambling brands and other such front-of-shirt sponsorships — an issue that leaves both clubs and supporters in moral limbo.
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Recent investigative work by our counterparts at Play the Game further underscores the systemic failures of Britain’s white label gambling industry, highlighting how the system enables certain brands to operate with minimal oversight and continue controversial sponsorships in both Premier League and EFL football.
It reveals that the British Gambling Commission issues ‘white label’ licences to hundreds of operators, many of which are either commercially inconspicuous or virtually untraceable, and then largely abdicates responsibility for their activities, claiming that it’s up to the primary licensees to oversee their white label partners.
This regulatory vacuum allows brands like W88 to sponsor top English clubs, even after their UK licensing arrangements have lapsed, as seen with Burnley continuing to wear the W88 logo after Midnight Gaming gave up its licence.
Following the demise of TGP Europe (the white label operator behind several Asian-facing sponsors), which exited the British market after a Gambling Commission probe found appreciable regulatory breaches, the magnifying glass has well and truly been brandished.
The regulatory body had cited failures in anti-money laundering checks and insufficient due diligence on business partners, and therefore cited concerns about criminal activity and gambling-related harm as reasons for its decision.
Last year, the Premier League wrote to several clubs warning them that they “May be liable to prosecution if they promote unlicensed gambling businesses that transact with consumers in Great Britain”, and although W88 doesn’t directly ‘transact with consumers’ in the country, the exact status of the sponsor’s legitimacy is cause for some concern.
Ultimately, the convoluted nature of such enterprises doesn’t breed confidence among supporters and we’re still none the wiser regarding W88, their eligibility to sponsor the football club, the status of their gambling license, and the true source of their funding and ownership.
This also doesn’t factor in the ethical implications of such a deal, with Sunderland City Council voicing its concern over gambling-related harm within the region back in January.
This has left us with a conflict of interest, with the club potentially compromising its moral integrity in favour of history-making financial security and investment.
Of course, this isn’t just a Sunderland-specific problem, but one that the entire footballing sphere has to contend with, contributing to a wider conversation around football finances, the sport’s deeply entrenched relationship with gambling, and the (rightly or wrongly) virtuous responsibility it has bestowed upon it.