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Maybe there's a very good reason the world is shaped like a football. The most popular sport in the world is soon to finally kick off for its 2025-26 season as we are only days away from the start of the Premier League. Suddenly everyone's minds are again spinning around, football and the football universe draws us in like a force stronger than gravity. However, this won't be just another season as it will be the last time betting brands can be displayed on the front of league teams shirts. With Premier League teams having agreed to a ban on front of shared sponsorships from the gambling industry, there's a new challenge for companies to promote their business and for teams to maintain their revenue. This new scenario sure creates a lot of questions. Will gaming companies find a way to still promote themselves through football? Will more countries adopt these types of regulations? Is the earth actually round like a football? Will Arsenal ever win the Premier League again? Welcome to iGaming Daily. where today we will try to answer some of these questions, probably not all of them. I'm your host, Fernando Nott, media manager for SBC. And I'm joined by iGaming expert journalist, Lee. Christian, how are you today? Yeah, good, you. Fantastic intro as well. So I'm happy to be here today. And also happy to join us is Kieran O'Connor, I'm sure, business journalist for payment expert at Insight of Sport. Kieran, how are you? I'm doing fantastic. And to answer one of your questions in the intro, though, Fern. I don't think Arsenal will ever win the Premier League again. Okay. You can, of course, this is a message to our listeners. If you're an Arsenal fan and want to insult us and hate on us, make sure you do it by interacting to this podcast in any platform you are hearing it, whether it's YouTube or Spotify, share it and say, hey, these guys are idiots. yeah, feel free, but you have to interact with the podcast to hate on us first. So, Before we move on to the question that is most important, what will happen with Premier League sponsorships and what the business model will be from now on with this self-imposed ban, let's thank Optimobe, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market and sponsor of iGaming Daily. So, speaking of sponsors, it has been a while since this self-restriction by the teams was announced. Kieran? Why don't you remind our listeners what this whole thing is all about and what are the details? Yes, you are right. It's been quite a while now. There's obviously been a lot of discourse. know myself and Christian have been and yourself been covering a lot of it on our our respective sites. So it actually originates back from 2023 when the ban was announced. Premier League clubs, which is obviously the English top flight league, collectively voted to ban front of shirt gambling sponsorships. And that ban will take place at the end of the season coming up So the end of the 2025-26 season So teams have one year left on these sort of contracts If they want to get them through the door I'm sure we'll be speaking about that later on As you mentioned in the intro it specifically targets front of shirt sponsorship advertisements So that means that other sponsorship areas are still available, that sleeves training kits, you can put it on the side of a bulls if you want to, you can do everything like that just not front of the shirts and this move, let's try and cast my mind back all the way to 23, I believe that this move was largely preemptive, there was a lot of discussions and lot of pressure on the government to move forward and enact stricter legislation on sporting clubs and their relationships with the betting community. So the Premier League sort of took it into their own hands before the government may have enacted even strict regulations and said, look, because we're the good guys, we will volunteer to ban front of shirt sponsorships. And that sort of kept the pressure off them for a while. of course, Christian, you recently actually wrote an op-ed about what this means for the betting and football relationship going forward. What do you think about the restriction? Like what's going to happen? Yeah, it's definitely an interesting one. think it will have some impact on visibility given the fact that the front of the shirt is the most prominent place for a sponsor to be. However, I think in a way all it sort of does is just shift gambling sponsorship elsewhere. As I read my piece, Legion United, they announced that Parry Match will be their shirts sponsor. And I just think this is a sign of how gambling sponsorships will change in football now because gambling is so entrenched in football at this point that even if I do bring, even when they do bring this front of the shirt sponsorship ban in place. Gamblin brands will just find another way to be involved through deals such as sleeves sponsorships or training kit sponsorships. And even when you look at the training kit sponsorships, they could even be more valuable than from the shirt given now how much social media content that teams put out through the week when players are training, when they do the press conferences, pregame, things like that. So it's just a case of, I believe that Gamblin sponsorship will stay within football. And they'll simply move to different parts of a team's kit or a team's sort of match week. And it'll just stay just as valuable for, for the brands and football. actually use a very interesting term for what's coming for betting sponsorships, which is arms race, which I think is very clever. Uh, because while of course, sleeve deals are going to be like the top spot probably for football going forward or for betting brands actually, uh, since they can't put themselves in front of the shirts. So while they will be fighting for that spot, the front of shirt space is losing a major bidder in football. Do you think this will have a negative impact for clubs' economies? I think that, no, because I think that especially the Premier League, it's such a big business that there'll be plenty of other sectors that are willing to fork out the money to get their brand on the front of Premier League shirts or get their brand associated with Premier League clubs. Ciaran, might as speak to about this more than me, but you look at things like the fintech sector and especially crypto, their sectors that have a lot of money involved and will be willing, I believe, to sort of forge new relationships with football and take the space that's been vacated by gambling companies. Yeah, I mean, first of all, on the surface, it's quite easy to see this front of shirt ban and say, Premier League clubs are going to lose out on a key sponsorship and investment agreements. I mean, my whole life, you can think of certain kits and you think about the Front of Shirt sponsor and it's usually a betting brand and that's been the case, well, up until this ban. But the reason for clubs going towards these betting sponsorships is usually because the betting brands often pay an increase over the club's fair market value. So there was a great article on SBC News written by Jake Pollard. who sort of research from the industry magazine called The Sponsor and they picked out two deals. said that the Aston Villa's recent sponsorship deal with Batano represented a 13.6 million increase over the club's fair market value while Nottingham Forest's 14 million agreement with Caioin Sports is more than double the club's fair market value for that deal. So these betting sponsorships often pay more. So you could then think, well, if they're exiting the market, who else is going to come in and pay that? I know we're going to speak a bit more about the wider industry but in the Netherlands a similar thing has happened where they've sort of put a far-reaching ban on clubs advertising anything to do with the betting industry and it was estimated that these clubs would lose around 70 million euros so they're obviously going to feel the impact but I feel like with football they'll always adapt like in other industries as you mentioned Christian there's other industries and sectors that will see this ban as an opportunity. Will they pay the same amount of money that these betting brands have traditionally paid? I'm not sure but with the viewership numbers still going up for the likes of the Premier League there's no reason why football clubs can't quickly find a substitute or as we noted before they could just swap the front of shirt for over deals like the sleeves or the shorts or training kits. So they can make that money back in other places. Yeah, I'm sure there will be plenty of interest in betting, in betting, sorry, in sponsoring the football teams in the Premier League. mean, I'm based in Argentina, I'm Argentinian. We have a strong league here and I grew up watching the Premier League either way. So it's a very popular league and there's also other countries weaker leagues that actually people tend to be fans of European teams and the Premier League is of course a major target for or a watching point for these people so I'm sure there's going to be plenty of interest for brands to be still sponsored in front of the shirt in English teams or in Premier League teams but also There have been some warnings ahead of this season by the gambling commission about the sponsorship deals with several unlicensed companies to some of the teams in the Premier League. Have any of them actually taken any action about it? Yeah, so just to give the listeners a bit of context, earlier this year, TGP Europe, which sort of licenses overseas operators through a white label, they ceased operations, which sort of then affected a bunch of operators who have sponsorship deals with Premier League clubs so you had the like Newcastle United's deal with sports bet IO affected Fulham's with SBO top affected and Leicester obviously not in the Premier League anymore but their deal with BC game was affected at the time and there's another two or three also affected the thing is with the Premier League and the regulations around it they're quite funny but when we're reporting on this it sounds quite bad so a club is being sponsored by an overseas betting operator which no longer has a license to operate in the UK meaning that the domestic fans aren't allowed to access that website or place bets with them. However, there's not really much that the regulators can do in terms of action. The only thing that they require clubs to do is to make sure that the domestic fans, as I just mentioned, aren't able to access. the betting operators websites usually through geo blocks and they have to make sure as well that they can't access it quite simply just through a simple VPN service. So to answer your question for there's not really been much impact on the clubs who have been caught up in this sort of terrible scenario of advertising these Asian usually Asian casino facing brands which aren't even available in the UK. Yeah, I reckon they have a objective with their sponsorships in the UK. But and this, of course, opens a much larger discussion about responsible gambling, about player protection and all that. But it's a wider discussion and we won't be covering that today because we have to do a very quick ad break right now. So Arsenal fans can go find us on TikTok and insult us there. Remember, it's iGaming Daily Podcast. on TikTok you should find us and leave your comments there. So we'll do a very quick ad break and we'll be right back. And we are back with more iGaming Daily to discuss betting sponsorships on football, primarily because of the self-imposed Premier League ban. But we have, of course, been discussing sponsorships in the UK. But I think we should be taking a look to the rest of Europe now. What's the general situation across the region? Yeah, so think elsewhere in Europe, gambling sponsorship is a huge part of football. Some data I was reading from the Guardian is that two thirds of teams across 31 top divisions have at least one sponsorship deal with a betting firm in some way. So this shows that money from the gambling industry is sort of intrinsically linked and is financing large sections of European football. 14 of 31 leagues also have title sponsors that are better related from the data that the Guardian was analysing previously as well. So this shows that European football in a way can't really afford, a lot of leagues in Europe can't really afford to go down the same route as the UK because they are, the whole league has been financed in a way by betting sponsorships. it's certainly an interesting time. we have had countries like Italy and Spain enforcing bans on betting sponsorships. course, Spain kind of like going back and forth with that, but Italy actually enforcing it, even though betting brands have found their way to go around. this ban, but these both these bands came from the government, whereas the Premier League was a self-imposed ban by the teams. Which model do you reckon will be more likely to be adopted by other countries? think it will be a mix to be honest, because I think if you look at the wider European gambling market, a lot of them maturing and becoming stricter in terms of regulations in place. And part of that is looking at advertising regulation. So I think it may well be a case of. football and governing bodies and football in leagues. So having sort of direct conversations with the government and with regulators within these countries about what they can do regarding advertising. So I believe it will be a mix of both in terms of if the league is more proactive or if it's a government led decision. In the meantime, have Bet365 signing a three year deal with the UEFA Champions League and Betano sponsored the Euro 2024. So there's still for sure appetite for... for betting sponsorships in football. Yeah, there's definitely appetite for these sort of deals. mean, they're good for both sides when done right. You've got the betting brand putting their branding and advertising in front of a lot of potential consumers. And for football clubs and leagues, they're getting usually a lot of investment, which they then can spend on improving the game, even at the grassroots level. There's also initiatives that these partnerships usually bring. helping charities and stuff like that. mean, turn away from football for a second. If you look at darts, you might be able to comment on this more. Christian, I think it was Paddy Power did raise about a million pounds for prostate cancer. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So these deals aren't all bad and they're not the villains of the story all the time. But one question I sort of have for you, and Christian maybe is you have these deals at the European and international level with betting brands now. Does it sort of make these other leagues like you spoke about Spain and Italy and the Premier League, these bands lack teeth? Because what's the point of having a band on the domestic league and then when international competitions where everyone's watching it together, you have the betting sponsorships. Yeah, it's certainly a good point because imagine if a team lifts, say like the Bet365 Champions League trophy, but they're not allowed to have a betting sponsor. It sort of does call them into question. I think it's interesting as well in Italy. we've mentioned about that there is a ban in place as part of the online gaming shake up in the country. There is talks that the sponsorship ban from sports betting companies may be repealed. So as a lot of countries go one way, looks like Italy may actually be going in the opposite direction, which is an interesting development to keep an eye on. absolutely. And I think that it definitely lacks teeth, the ban in these countries with big teams competing at the larger stage like the UEFA Champions League because you have teams with betting sponsorship coming over to your country and play week in and week out. So it definitely creates an issue for regulators that are trying to keep the betting brands off screen and all of a sudden you have other teams, bigger teams competing in the Champions League coming to your country and play. But that's an issue that's probably across several sports like Formula One you had the stake team that had to change to Keek because they had like issues with countries with this type of regulations or even countries with larger issues with betting. So the betting companies are not at that stage I think, but still they are facing probably a good scenario going forward because of this. struggles that regulators have to enforce this type of ban. speaking of struggles, I'm going to move away from Europe a little bit and talk about what's going on in Latin America where this betting sponsorship discussion is also a very much important topic in the general public's agenda, not only in my country of Argentina, but also in Chile, also in Brazil, because most teams are having deals or are signing deals rather than with with any company. So the general public is looking at this and saying, hey, what's going on with this? This segment is growing. Will this be an issue? And I think the the industry needs to step up in these countries that are still developing, developing their own industry and educate the people and saying, hey, ok look these are the brands that are allowed to operate in your country, in your market and this is how you should be playing you should not be playing more than you can play etc etc and still they haven't reached out to the authorities as much as I think they should have because you have Chile pushing an all out ban even though that was like delayed in the Senate because of the presidential election and then you have Brazil which has just enforced their regulatory framework this year they also are pushing for advertising restrictions even though those are delayed as well in Congress so I think the industry needs to do some work from within not only to analyze how to they want to promote themselves within these markets and every market in the world actually but also to get in touch with regulators, with the lawmakers and letting them know, hey, this is what we bring to the table and this is how we should be doing things. So it's not a very aggressive marketing strategy, but at the same time, you don't cut not only the possibility for regulated betting brands to be out there. So because unregulated betting brands will still promote themselves without any prerogative. And also you'll be cutting the funds that come into football which in South America are very important because of course we are very much behind Europe or the US or other markets that have more money and are more competitive. So the betting money is of of a lot of help for these countries. moving now away from football, do you think there are going to be any other self-imposed bands like the Premier League or any type of measures like this in other sports or is this too specific? I think it's too specific. think a lot of other sports can't really afford to shun money from the betting industry like football can just due to the size of the markets in football. If anything, I think the other sport could maybe see this as an opportunity to get more money from gambling sponsorships as these gambling companies still have the same market in spend. They still have less avenues to spend it now. So it could be a trickle down effect where other sports receive more money in terms of sponsorships because there's that money that needs to be spent by the gambling companies. And back to UK football, where do we put attention in terms of sponsorships ahead of this season? What do you think will happen with the teams that have been in sponsors on the front of their shirts? What do you think the companies will do? Yeah. So in terms of UK football and especially well, In terms of the Premier League, we're seeing a lot of teams still, they're still dedicated to these partnerships with gambling companies. I mean, if you look at West Ham, for instance, they had a deal with Betway that ended and now they've replaced that now with Bowles Sports as a front of shirt sponsor. So they're not looking to move away just yet. A lot of these deals obviously end at the end of this season when the restrictions will come in place ready for next season. But I think we'll see them move to the shorts and sleeves. And I think some clubs will get quite creative in where they place these sponsorships. Yeah, I think so. I also think that it will allow clubs to put more value on these sleeve sponsorships and training kit sponsorships. Like before this game's place, I don't ever really remember. I can't think of any like sleeve sponsorships, maybe visit Rwanda and Arsenal just because it's been debated quite a lot. it's not something that I've really thought about. But now because of this issue with removing the front of shirt sponsorships, it becomes a much more valuable location, the sleeve or on the training kit. So if anything, it's a commercial opportunity for football clubs to up the cost of getting a brand on the sleeve or on the training kit or as part of the match day somewhere. There's certainly a lot to consider ahead of this 2025-26 season. But for now, that's all from us here at iGamingDaily. Thank you very much, Kieran. Thank you very much, Christian. and thank you very much Annie Mcdonald for producing this episode to all listeners out there make sure you subscribe to all svc media newsletters so you can keep up to date with all this information and also follow iGamingDaily on all related platforms and of course we are on TikTok you can watch some snippets on TikTok, iGamingDaily podcast you should find us there and of course we'll see you in the next one goodbye