A groundbreaking agreement under which Premier League clubs have banned match-day front-of-shirt sponsorship deals with gambling companies from the summer of 2026 has provoked mixed reactions.
The announcement that English football’s top flight has become the first UK professional sports league to voluntarily agree to restrict betting sponsorships received a cautious welcome from the founder of the The Big Step, a campaign dedicated to ending the longstanding relationship between football and betting. James Grimes believes the clubs’ voluntary acceptance that things need to change represents an imperfect but important watershed.
“Although this outcome isn’t perfect, it’s a huge step,” said Grimes. “It’s a significant acceptance of the harm caused by gambling sponsorship. No gambling ads are seen more than those on Premier League shirts, worn by billions around the world. “
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The Premier League said its clubs had agreed to the measure voluntarily, but what can be viewed as an uneasy compromise dictates that it will still be possible to promote gambling brands on shirt sleeves and pitchside advertising hoardings.
“Just moving logos to a different part of the kit while allowing pitchside advertising to continue is totally incoherent,” said Grimes. “The government and the sport itself now need to wake up to the reality that gambling ads are unhealthy, unpopular and will be kicked out of football. Delaying that moment is risking the health and lives of another generation of young fans.”
Eight of the 20 Premier League clubs – Bournemouth, Brentford, Everton, Fulham, Leeds, Newcastle, Southampton and West Ham – have betting companies as front-of-shirt sponsors. The collective value of those contracts is about £60m a year. Aston Villa and Wolves wear betting-related sleeve adverts.
Tony Bloom, the Brighton owner, has made a fortune from sports betting but endorsed the ban. “I don’t think having gambling sponsorship on shirts is good,” he said. “But I understand the gambling companies pay best so it’s a difficult decision for clubs to turn them down.”
Whereas Saudi Arabian-owned Newcastle, third in the table, are confident about replacing their soon-to-expire £6.5m-a-year shirt deal with Fun88 with a much more lucrative alternative, clubs outside the top six will almost certainly experience drops in income. Everton, who are in danger of relegation, could struggle to replicate the £10m a year they command from the online casino Stake.com.
In January Aston Villa’s fan consultation group discussed the issue with the club’s chief executive, Christian Purslow, and were told the “commercial reality” for mid- and lower-table teams was that gambling companies invariably provided double the money offered by other sponsors.
The less wealthy English Football League is backed by Sky Bet. Rick Parry, the EFL’s chairman, said last year that betting sponsorships were worth up to £40m a year to clubs. The EFL lacks the gargantuan international television deals enjoyed by the Premier League and argues that sum is imperative to its survival.
Such claims have come under sometimes uncomfortable scrutiny during an examination of the often symbiotic commercial relationship between football and the betting industry, conducted during a wider government review of the 2005 Gambling Act.
Iain Duncan-Smith, the former Conservative Party leader and a key member of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm is among those lobbying for tighter regulation. “At the moment we’re probably the country with the most liberal gambling laws in the world,” he said.
Consultations between the Premier League, its clubs and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport are ongoing and it is understood that football’s powerbrokers were advised that Thursday’s pre-emptive announcement represented the best way of avoiding the imposition of legislation.
The Premier League says it is also working with other sports on the development of a code intended to promote “responsible” gambling sponsorship but Grimes would prefer a more formal regulatory process. “Without government action on all forms of gambling ads in football, at every level, online casinos will exploit any voluntary measures and continue marketing their products through our national sport,” he said.
Until summer 2026 there is nothing to preclude clubs agreeing short-term contracts with betting companies but the three-year “transitional period” was agreed to avoid potential law suits for breach of contract.
The Betting and Gambling Council, which represents the industry, said the “overwhelming” majority of the 22.5m people in the UK who bet each month do so “safely and responsibly”. It added that, at 0.3% of the UK’s adult population, the “rate of problem gambling remains low by international standards”.
Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, said: “The vast majority of adults gamble safely,” she said. “But we have to recognise footballers are role models with enormous influence on young people.”
