🎰 The Premier League has a £75m Gambling Issue

The Premier League has a gambling issue. And they’re being very hypocritical about it.

Next season 9 of the 20 clubs will have a gambling company as their main front of shirt sponsor:

• Arsenal:

• Aston Villa: Betano 🎰

• Bournemouth: Dafabet 🎰

• Brentford: HollywoodBets 🎰

• Brighton and Hove Albion:

• Burnley: W88 🎰

• Chelsea:

• Crystal Palace: Net88 🎰

• Everton: Stake.com 🎰

• Fulham: SBOTOP 🎰

• Ipswich:

• Leicester:

• Liverpool:

• Manchester City:

• Manchester United:

• Newcastle United:

• Nottingham Forest: Kaiyun Sports 🎰

• Southampton

• Tottenham Hotspur:

• West Ham United: Betway 🎰

• Wolverhampton Wanderers: Debet 🎰

In the last month Crystal Palace and Wolves have just announced very lucrative new deals with very suspicious gambling companies.

The value of the new deals have not been revealed but both teams have said they are “record” sponsorship deals for their respective clubs.

• Crystal Palace: Net88 (replaces the £6.5m/yr deal held by Cinch

• Wolverhampton Wanderers: Debet (replaces the £5.9m/yr deal held by Astropay)

So why is this bad?

Well, there are four issues:

1. The Moral Issue: Gambling culture in the UK is rife. There are 1.3m people diagnosed with gambling problems and football is a leading contributor to this growing societal problem

2. The Financial Issue: Gambling companies are too lucrative to PL clubs to remove them completely

3. The Ethical Issue: Can you allow such a gambling culture then take such stances on players gambling? (Toney, Paqueta, Tonali)

It’s a sticky one for all involved.

Premier League clubs made a move and voted to ban front-of-shirt sponsors from the 2026/2027 season.

However, sleeve sponsors are absolutely fine and billboards around the pitches are also absolutely fine.

It’s a bit like cigarettes being obscured from vision at points-of-sale in supermarkets but still very much being there for consumers. The government will never remove cigarettes from society despite them being so harmful to humans.

There is also a nuanced issue as well:

4. The Nuanced Issue: Gambling companies are pivotal to mid-table clubs

If you look at the list above, none of the 9 clubs highlighted in yellow are in the “Top 6”. The big Premier League clubs have little problem getting big sponsorship cheques from major global companies.

However, the rung below are heavily reliant.

Simply put, gambling companies make so much money from football fans that they are willing to pay over market value for sponsorships to Premier League clubs.

In March, Aston Villa signed a new deal with Betano for £20m/year. This deal DOUBLED their previous sponsorship arrangement with BK8.

As mentioned above, Wolves and Crystal Palace secured record sponsorships from gambling companies to make the most of the final two years where this is possible.

If Premier League clubs banned gambling companies altogether then mid-table clubs are walking away from circa.£75m per year in commercial revenue across the league. No-one is going to agree to that.

Especially as they need every tool they can get to bridge the gap to the Top 6.

So what gives?

What does the Premier League do?

So far, we sit and wait.

What will be interesting to me, will be what type of commercial deals these clubs fetch in two years time when the gambling ban comes into effect.

My guess is that they will be lower in value than they are today!

Last week I showed you guys a great video from Maxi Hughes showing how much he made from winning the IBO Lightweight Championship Belt in 2021.

This week I show you how much he TOOK HOME from those winnings:

Fascinating insight.

Will do a piece on this soon.

See you next week.