When Championship club Derby County signed Wayne Rooney, record goalscorer for England and Manchester United, this month, pundits asked whether the transfer was to strengthen the team or improve its financial position off the pitch.
Derby, which plays in English football’s second tier, announced that Rooney would wear the number 32 shirt when he joined the team in January, while also revealing a “record-breaking [shirt] sponsorship deal” with 32Red, a Gibraltar-based online bookmaker.
The apparent connection between shirt number and sponsor drew widespread condemnation from UK newspapers, politicians and church groups. They say the deal is only the latest example of bookmakers and clubs pushing their commercial relationship too far, without regard to how children and addicts are bombarded with messages that encourage betting during matches.
GVC Holdings, one of the world’s largest online gambling groups and owner of bookmaker Ladbrokes Coral, has called for a ban on betting groups sponsoring football clubs. “There has been far too much perimeter adverts, TV adverts, bookmakers splashed across football jerseys,” said Kenny Alexander, chief executive.
Such restrictions would match new laws in Italy, home of another of Europe’s biggest leagues, that came into full force this year. Meanwhile, in May, German regulators warned the country’s football association over its sponsorship deal with GVC’s Bwin brand, arguing such partnerships could breach a ban on advertising online casino and slot games.
Similar rules in the UK would threaten the relationship between betting and English football. The sport has been associated with gambling for decades, such as through “pools” markets where fans bet small stakes on the outcome of matches, and the two industries have enjoyed strong revenue growth in recent years partly because of their close financial ties.
Interviews with more than a dozen senior betting and football industry executives, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said a fierce debate was taking place on how best to head off a larger regulatory backlash and show gambling groups and clubs were responding to public concern about their close financial ties.
Mr Alexander called 32Red’s deal with Derby County “ridiculous, at a time when the industry is being attacked [and] we are trying to get the industry off the front pages”.
Though Derby’s owner Mel Morris said the Rooney transfer provided “commercial opportunities that are significant and widespread”, the club said it would not provide further detail on “commercially sensitive business operations”.
Football shirts are attractive billboards, allowing gambling companies to reach hundreds of millions of fans around the world.
According to Global Betting and Gaming Consultants, in the UK alone, gross gambling yield — the sum of bets placed minus winnings — from football rose from £908.5m in the year to April 2016, to £1.4bn in the same period last year.
Sponsorship of English teams also helps to target fans in Asia, where Premier League football shirts pushes company logos to fans without falling foul of local laws, such as in China where online gambling is banned, or Australia, where there is a ban on betting groups advertising on television during sports matches.
Half of the 20 teams in the English Premier League and two-thirds of the 24 clubs in the Championship have gambling company logos on their shirts.
The sponsors are diverse. Everton and Hull City’s main sponsor is Kenya-based SportPesa, the Chinese characters of Malta-registered Asian betting brand LoveBet adorns the shirts of Burnley, while Filipino group Dafabet features on Norwich City shirts.
These 26 teams made £225.2m in commercial revenues in 2018, representing 11 per cent of the clubs’ total revenues, according to an analysis of their financial records. Shirt sponsorships are typically the largest individual commercial deal available to most clubs. this differs
However, none of the so-called big six clubs — Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Liverpool — have a gambling group as shirt sponsor, though Spurs has done previously. These clubs, among the 10 richest clubs in the world, can command lucrative commercial tie-ups with global brands willing to pay big to reach an enormous international fan base. Manchester United’s main shirt sponsor, Chevrolet, pays $80m year to appear on its shirts.
Instead, it is smaller clubs, which do not command such large support but still regularly appear on television screens in the UK and worldwide, targeted by gambling sponsors with smaller marketing budgets. For Championship clubs with gambling shirt sponsors, commercial income accounts for about 14 per cent of revenues.
Executives at these teams say privately that although shirt deals are typically worth less than £10m, even obscure betting groups offer far more than better known companies in other sectors.
“Commercial agreements between leagues, clubs and betting companies make a significant contribution to the ongoing financial sustainability of professional football at all levels,” said the English Football League, the body that runs professional divisions below the Premier League. “The EFL strongly believes that there has to be an approach whereby football can work with gambling companies in a sensible and socially responsible way.”
Nigel Adams, the UK’s sport minister, has warned clubs to abide by the “spirit of the rules”on accepting betting sponsorships. But there are no formal rules restricting gambling companies from endorsing clubs, while football’s governing bodies have also been caught between commercial imperatives and moral concerns.
In 2017, the Football Association pulled out of a sponsorship deal with Ladbrokes Coral worth £4m a year. This followed criticism from the player Joey Barton, who was banned by the FA for 18 months for placing bets on matches. Mr Barton said it was hypocritical for the body to impose such a ban while having commercial partnerships with gambling companies.
The English Football League has a sponsorship contract with online bookmaker SkyBet worth up to £4m a year, but said it also used the deal to promote responsible gambling messages on shirtsleeves and works with clubs to limit harm to vulnerable fans.
The opposition Labour Party has called for an outright ban on gambling firms sponsoring football clubs. “These companies are making fans feel they don’t have a stake in the game unless they have a bet,” said Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader.
Anti-gambling activists have also been buoyed by their success in forcing the UK government to drastically cut the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals, high speed slot machines in betting shops — a move strongly resisted by high street bookmakers. According to analysts at Barclays, Ladbrokes Coral, William Hill and Paddy Power Betfair, will suffer a combined £785m loss in annual revenues thanks to the new FOBT regulations, which came into effect in April.
Shaken by this regulatory defeat, gambling executives held discussions on how to get ahead of further curbs and show their companies are responding to public concern.
At the start of this month, GVC, William Hill, Flutter, SkyBet and Bet365 began a voluntary “whistle-to-whistle” ban on advertising between the start and finish of sports fixtures, among other measures to protect punters.
Peter Jackson, chief executive of Flutter, said that the collaboration was “unprecedented”. According to one executive at a UK gambling company, the aim was to avoid “counterproductive” regulation.
But betting groups want publicity that helps them stand out.
Championship side Huddersfield Town last month unveiled a shirt dominated by a large sash bearing the logo of Paddy Power, the Irish betting brand owned by London-listed Flutter.
The FTSE 100 company later revealed the kit was an elaborate marketing stunt, with Paddy Power declaring it would instead pay for Huddersfield and three other English clubs to keep their shirts free of any branding whatsoever this season.
“While the hoax part of the campaign initially divided opinion, the subsequent reveal has prompted support from many fans and started a public debate about shirt sponsorship in football more broadly,” said Flutter.
This month, the FA charged the Yorkshire-based club with misconduct saying the club had broken rules about the size of corporate logos on shirts. A hearing on the matter is due to be held. Callum Limb, a Huddersfield spokesman, said “it doesn’t seem right to be talking about something that is currently under FA investigation”.
Industry watchdog the Gambling Commission also this month launched an investigation into Russian betting firm 1xBet, and the company’s UK website was taken down. It followed allegations revealed in a Sunday Times investigation that the group had promoted a “pornhub casino”, which uses topless croupiers, and had advertised on illegal websites.
In response, 1xBet told the newspaper it would investigate immediately if any third-party networks or partners were found to advertise its brand on banned sites or sites that break the law.
Neil Banbury, general manager at 32Red, which sparked controversy with its deal with Derby, defends the tie-ups between clubs and betting groups, however.
“Gambling companies and the wider industry has an important role to play in tackling problem gambling,” he said. “To remove the industry from the public’s eye would be irresponsible.”