The world of popular media and/or sports has never lacked for moral panics. In fact, it’s a cyclical element of what it means to be part of the discourse, especially when finances and politics start taking centre-stage. Such is the life of whatever is interesting at any given moment.
If you add controversy as the main motivator behind these red flags and alarm signals, you find football. The beautiful game, the sport of gents, and so on. Whatever platitudes and reminders of purity you’d like to add to it, this phenomenon will never be free of questions about its integrity.
One of these high-level issues that has reached a level of notoriety in the world of this sport has to be gambling. As its footprint continued to widen, its money has starkly influenced all kinds of bottom lines and subsequent dealings until the faucet stopped running.
In this article, we will provide a proper summary of, perhaps, the most visible side of this entire whirlwind: the front-of-shirt sponsorships from betting companies and their brands in the Premier League.
We will address how it entrenched itself into the facet of football’s biggest domestic competition, how regulations shaped its demise, and why clubs have ended up in a pinch because of these changes.
Why sports betting has gained leverage to fork out big money
The key part that any damning discussion about online gambling stands to forget is that it’s a consumer business. No bettors means that there is no circulating cash, let alone revenue, profit, and reinvestment of these figures for the proverbial and actual growth.
For this point to stick, it’s only right that we refer to figures sourced from none other than the Gambling Commission itself. It’s the most authoritative and definitive way of centralising information about the British gambling scene.
The UKGC, in its effort to provide transparency in both its methodology and assessment of the market that it governs, has consistently shared data from various methodologies. Let’s look at these angles:
- The September 2025-January 2036 Gambling Survey for Great Britain report tells us that 8% of the population has bet on sports. That’s an average that accounts for both sexes, as 13% of male respondents have disclosed having wagered in such a way.
- As for the money involved, the latest financial probe (UKGC’s 2025 market statistical set) shows that the gross gambling yield for remote betting was around £2.451 billion, with an additional £2.443 billion from the non-remote sector.
This tells us much of what we needed to know: that there’s a huge demand, and a lot of money that goes into this activity. The offering, especially across products, includes promoting gaming services via UK casino promo codes in addition to the sports betting side, which has created varied segments of opportunity.
Given the circulation of cash that happens in the UK alone, we can only imagine how these cross-market, multi-jurisdictional operators could invest the cash into the English football scene. As the numbers will suggest, these dealings were beyond lucrative.
Who partnered with what? Main sponsorship deals
For this entire storyline to work, we ought to look at what the effort was like. Namely, we should investigate each deal between gambling companies and the teams that, at those times, were playing Premier League football.
Please note that this list is quite interesting because it’s not just a collection of British operators, but rather one that includes a diverse list of casinos and sportsbooks serving different markets. Let’s see.
- Everton broke the barrier, if you will, when it inked a deal with SportPesa, a Kenyan betting company. The contract, purported to be for 5 years and netting the Toffees almost £10 million per year, was quite groundbreaking, but ended early after a reassessment was made in 2020. The next step was the partnership with Stake, starting in 2022/23, which ran until the total ban of gambling sponsorships, but also Stake’s retracted license following an unrelated scandal.
- West Ham’s start was with Betway, which it began in 2019, keeping up with the operator until the 2024/25 season. From the figures that we have at hand, this deal was also for around £10 million yearly. The Hammers of East London entered a deal with the Irish bookie BoyleSports in 2025/26, the last year of gambling eligibility as a sponsor. This was a 1-year deal whose end coincided with West Ham’s relegation.
- Newcastle’s situation changed quite dramatically once the Saudi PIF acquired the Goerdies. The club had a deal with Fun88, an Asian-facing betting company, which lasted from summer 2020 to 2023, when a PIF-owned events company replaced the gambling sponsorship.
- Aston Villa initially entered this ‘arena’ with BK8, another operator mainly serving the Asian market, starting in 2023/24. This was a short-lived relationship, lasting only one season and yielding a £8 million payout. Betano, a Greek betting platform with a strong footprint in Europe, came with a 2-year, £20 million contract that convinced the Birmingham side to switch.
- Fulham went with W88, another of these extracomunitary betting platforms, starting in 2023, but ultimately wenti wth SBOTOP after just one year.
- Brentford linked up with Hollywoodbets starting in the 2021/22 season, which was also the side’s season of ascension in the Premier League. With a reported £6 million per year deal, the gambling firm was a steadfast partner until the outlawing of its ability to provide sponsorships.
- Bournemouth has a deal in place with Dafabet beginning with the 2023/24 season, but decided to enter a more lucrative partnership with BJ88 in the following season.
- Nottingham Forest’s sponsorship was worth around £7 million per year with Kaiyun Sports.
- Crystal Palace went with Net88, albeit the data is much slimmer than other clubs as far as figures go.
- Wolverhampton, another club that dropped into the Championship following the 2025/26 season, had a deal with Debet, a brand under the TGP Europe licence, which was specifically targeted by the Gambling Commission as a potential cause of liability.
The quid ruled the land (until it didn’t)
Readers need to know that there were two lines to the ‘defence’ against the rising popularity of gambling sponsorships in England’s topmost football competition (with all due respect to the FA Cup).
One was a pledge of sorts, while the other was a shutdown that will go into effect in earnest starting in 2026. Here are the two main steps that ended the supremacy of these gambling platforms.
- The first was to withdraw from partnerships with UK-facing brands, as announced by the Premier League’s press release on withdrawing from gambling sponsorships. It was the first part of an effort to curb the proliferation of influence, but, most importantly, exposure.
- In a Guardian article on the gambling partnership ban, it became even clearer that this current model is increasingly phased out. This has been particularly important for the UKGC since the remaining front-of-shirt sponsors were all unlicensed operators in the British gambling scene. This was the conclusion following the Gambling Commission’s warning of several Premier League clubs due to their association with such platforms.
Scrambling for answers in the post-gambling era
Most of the clubs that were in this mix mostly found new life, even if the direct figures aren’t as high or as easy to negotiate as those from the betting sphere.
For example, Fulham and Everton both struck pretty good deals with CMC Markets, a firm specialised in financial services, with the Toffees’ partnership yielding a contract worth around £30 million, as reported in late May 2026.
Other high-profile cases are Brentford, with its April 2026 sponsorship case with the job search platform Indeed, but also Bournemouth’s one with Vitality, which is already holding the naming rights for the Cherries’ stadium. Crystal Palace went with Temporal, an AI-driven tech platform.
Not all the teams have reached the point of finalising such agreements, although there are rumours. Aston Villa has been linked with automaker Audi, but also with companies like Coca-Cola or Xapo Bank. The bigger the club, the likelier it is to find new life.
Closing thoughts
If we are to believe the quoted sums from these post-gambling dealings, we can see that the fair market isn’t always the best option for these clubs. We say so because we see an increasing number of sponsorship contracts way below the £10 million yearly mark.
However, since the authorities in charge of the gambling industry and the public health sector consider such exposure as a potential hazard, the directionality is quite clear. If you’re also engaging with any type of betting, we strongly support doing so responsibly!
