There are few certainties in a football game: a ball, twenty-two players, a referee, and an endless supply of betting and gambling sponsors. An investigation by Investigate Europe and other partners reveals the significant influence of the betting industry over the “beautiful game”.
An analysis in a cross-border collaboration, including Amphora Media, has uncovered how the majority of Europe’s leading football teams & leagues, including Malta’s, now partner with betting & gambling companies.
Reporters’ data analysis revealed that two-thirds of teams (296 of 442) in the 31 premier competitions across the EU and the UK signed at least one betting partner for the 2024/25 season. One in three has a front-of-shirt sponsor. In addition, almost half of all leagues rely on a gambling or lottery title sponsor.
This includes Malta, with reporters uncovering how close to a tenth of Malta’s top-flight teams have a gambling sponsor. Amphora Media has also previously reported how Vbet, the partner of the Malta Premier League and Malta National Team, has been implicated in an alleged illegal betting network.
The investigation also found that 105 companies – operating 140 brands – have deals with football clubs, and many are based in Malta. Football sponsors include industry heavyweights Kindred, Kaizen and Entain, and well-known brands such as Unibet, Betano, Betway and Bwin. Others are offshore operators in Curaçao and Isle of Man, or across Asia.
However, the investigation reveals that a number of teams are able to circumvent betting advertising restrictions with ‘gateway’ sponsors – and campaigners say agreements risk pushing more vulnerable individuals into addiction. Clubs have found ways to skirt restrictions by using brands’ entertainment of charitable logos on their kits.
From the Premier League to Serie A and La Liga: Betting sponsors are impossible to miss
In Italy, the 2018 “Dignity Decree” prohibited any form of direct or indirect advertising related to gambling. Still, advertising on shirts continued this season, driven by Inter (Betsson.sport), Parma (AdmiralBet.news) and Lecce (BetItalyPay).
At least two clubs, including AC Milan, have struck deals with companies which lack domestic licences but still target local audiences. In July 2024, the club struck a deal with Boomerang Bet despite the brand operating without a license, a legal requirement for the Italian betting market, reporters found. Neither responded to requests for comment.
Italy’s sports minister acknowledged in March 2023 that the ban was being bypassed. In response to a parliamentary inquiry, Andrea Abodi said it was “hypocritical to ban the right to bet” while still allowing “parallel communication by the same sites, which simply promote a web address that inevitably leads to gambling.”
The global appeal of the British Premier League has made its clubs prime targets. Eleven teams have a gambling logo on their 2024/25 shirts, the highest proportion among Europe’s top five leagues, including the Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1 and Serie A. With a voluntary ban on front-of-shirt sponsors coming from the 2026/27 season, clubs must diversify. Some logos are moving to shorts, sleeves, and training kits.
Betting brands spent around $135 million on shirt deals in the English top flight this season, according to Global Data. Among them are several opaque Asia-facing operators, the latest in a string of little-known betting sponsors. They are attractive options for smaller teams, offering up to £10 million a year, and clubs are desperate to maximise revenues, says Kieran Maguire, football finance expert and lecturer at the University of Liverpool.
“I don’t think there’s any desire by clubs to do due diligence, provided they get paid. And they’re prepared to not look too closely because they’re under pressure,” Maguire said. “You’ve got the owner screaming at the chief executive who’s screaming at the commercial director: ‘Get the best deal that you can. We’re losing money’. And all the clubs are losing money.”
‘Betting companies exploited my passion for football’: The real impact betting sponsors can have on addiction
“Betting companies exploited my passion for football to hook me in and completely change my life,” Thomas Melchior, a former German bank employee who started gambling after watching a betting advertisement during a Champions League match, told our partners, Investigate Europe.
After 13 years of betting, Melchior had accumulated €800,000 of debt and in 2019 was sentenced to prison after being found guilty of various fraud and other offences, which he said were a means to sustain his gambling addiction.
At first, when he was winning, his account was flagged for potential gambling addiction, and his betting limits were restricted. But when he started losing five-figure sums every month, no one banned him. Instead, he was assigned a personal VIP consultant and received monthly rewards.
“I ‘won’ a trip to London for the Premier League match between Chelsea and Liverpool, complete with flights and VIP tickets. It was a ‘prize’ for my customer loyalty. Or rather, for my gambling addiction, for which I was regularly rewarded,” said Melchior, who was released from prison in 2022 and has since supported Unsere Kurve, a German fan group working to end gambling advertising in football.
According to The Big Step campaign, which also aims to end gambling advertising and sponsorships in football, marketing through football works to normalise betting and “keep the conveyor belt of customers going”.
It is estimated that around a fifth of the UK population is directly or indirectly harmed by gambling, but the main lobby group for the UK betting industry claims that there is no evidence supporting a link between sports advertising and problem gambling.
Charles Livingstone, a member of the World Health Organisation’s Expert Group on Gambling and Gambling Disorder, says research clearly shows that the more exposure you have to gambling ads, the more likely you are to gamble.
Leave a Reply