The first weekend of the Premier League season was also the beginning of an end. A new campaign that kicked off with Liverpool’s 4-2 win against Bournemouth on Friday will be the last to see gambling sponsors on the front of playing shirts, closing the book on over two decades of financial support.
More than half of the Premier League’s 20 clubs have a gambling firm as their primary sponsor and they soon must look elsewhere for solutions to a commercial shortfall that collectively runs to £100million ($135m).
There will still be the chance to display betting firms on the sleeves of kits, advertising boards and on training wear, but it is forecast that the value of some sponsorship deals could be halved in the next 12 months.
Eleven clubs — Aston Villa, Everton, West Ham United, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Nottingham Forest, Fulham, Crystal Palace, Brentford, Bournemouth, Burnley and Sunderland — are all having one last dance with a betting platform this season.
It has typically become the most lucrative option for those clubs outside of the ‘Big Six’ and, as such, difficult to turn down. Fulham, who were the first Premier League club to be sponsored by a bookmaker when partnering with Betfair in 2002, and Villa have teamed up with a total of seven different gambling companies. West Ham United, meanwhile, have been partnered with online bookmakers since 2015.
Pre-packaged deals have become commonplace for newly promoted clubs. Sunderland signed a deal with W88 in the weeks that followed promotion through the Championship play-offs, a company that had previously sponsored Villa, Wolves, Fulham, Leicester, Crystal Palace and Burnley.
Sleeve sponsorship deals, retaining a presence during matches, will still be permitted, as will partnerships to adorn training kit. A sleeve sponsor for a mid-table Premier League club has a value of between £1m and £2m, but as it proved with front-of-shirt partnerships, interest from betting companies is expected to drive that figure up significantly.
Relegation back to the Championship would allow any club to retain a partnership with a betting firm, as the EFL (sponsored itself by Sky Bet) continues to allow front-of-shirt arrangements, but it is the Premier League and its international exposure that has generated interest from the gambling industry.
Aston Villa, whose struggles to comply with financial fair play rules have been well-documented, will be another ambitious club with a front-of-shirt sponsor to find ahead of next season. Their two-year deal with Betano, thought to be worth £14m per season, will be difficult to replicate next season. The same extends to Everton’s partnership with Stake, one that was championed as a club-record deal when struck in 2022.
Where football finds its next big commercial partnerships is unclear. There is no common theme among the eight clubs with a non-gambling sponsor, aside from the finance industry, which backs Liverpool, Tottenham and Brighton & Hove Albion, and airlines, backers of Manchester City and Arsenal.
The branding of betting firms will remain evident in the Premier League next season, with inventories still stretching to advertising boards, interview backdrops and the sleeves of kits. It will still be big business.
I devoted a chapter of my book _Political Football_ about football’s relationship with gambling and it was certainly something I was uneasy about, although I don’t want to stop people having a bet. The risk of greater regulation and taxation is an expansion of the black market.