An Analysis of Financial Fair Play in Football: Does Gambling Sponsorship Help?

With the growing influence of sponsorships between gambling operators and football teams it is fair to say that the sports industry has widely benefited from lucrative deals with online casinos, forcing other potential sponsors to raise their bets as well. At the same time there has been growing criticism about sports teams turning their attention to the gambling industry which is why different countries in Europe are about to ban it. In this article we’ll come up with an analysis of the impact of gambling sponsorships in football.
Sports betting and football comes with both opportunities and risks. Via deals with football teams, gambling operators have increasingly entered the mass market with an international target audience that loves to watch the game, wear the shirts of their favorite team, and are ready to place bets on their club. Football teams from especially England and Spain enjoy an international following which means that putting a company logo or slogan on a jersey will boost company’s brand awareness within a rather short period of time. Online casinos have been able to market their gambling products via social media, sponsored content and exclusive promos such as a no-deposit bonus, tempting football fans to make a bet.
The benefits for the sports team are very convincing as well as it’s all about more and more money. Professional sports teams deal with daily pressure to get the most out of their players, ticket sales, youth system, marketing deals, and whatever performance metric they work with. In order to meet their goals they depend on financial support which will help all of the above if managed well by a club president or board of directors. Thanks to globalization, online casino sites invest huge amounts of resources in sports deals with the club’s ideally distributing this income across the entire business as we’re talking about full companies. As a result of more and more football associations allowing sponsor deals with casino sites in recent years, revenue for sports teams has rapidly increased.
Out of the $500 million we referred to in the introduction of this article, English football made the most significant profit of $143.8 million. This is also the best followed league in the world, with a TV audience from all continents. The Spanish league, with clubs as FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, earned more than $70 million from betting deals in the same season, with the German Bundesliga following in third place. In the next few years there will be a major shift in this top 3 as the UK is about to drop out.
Despite the millions of dollars that sports oriented sponsorships represent in the United Kingdom, the government has moved ahead and launched an update of the Gambling Act 2005 in 2019 to reconsider the future of gambling sponsorship and marketing in football. The UK government, alongside the Premier League clubs part of the Football Association (FA), confirmed they had reached an agreement to remove betting sponsorships, effective from the 2026-27 season. This means that the name and slogan of a gambling operator cannot be shown anymore on the front of the shirt. In The Netherlands a full ban on partnerships by football teams is in the making as well, coming into effect in July 2025. Dutch football teams won’t be able to engage into any form of gambling deals.
In the countries above, football teams are now forced to move their sponsorship and marketing campaigns to other sectors as governments have imposed bans on these types of deals as an attempt to lower the exposure of specially vulnerable groups to gambling products. After all, betting is still a worrying concern for some people. It is thus worth remembering that gambling and betting come with different risks which is why governments have moved towards a partial or full ban on these types of sponsor deals. With sponsorships becoming more and more normal in recent years, there is an overall fear of the perception that gambling is normal which is conveyed through sponsorships.
Some would relate the gambling activities offered by the sponsors of their favorite sports teams as safe and normal activity, closely related to watching sports games. Some fans may link casino operators or bookmakers to successful players or ex-players and consider these brand ambassadors as an example to follow. It is therefore crucial not to forget the importance of ‘Responsible Play’ and adhere to its principles at all times. In the end, the most important part of supporting a sports team is to enjoy the game.
Despite closer attention to the risk of gambling and stricter rules imposed by government backed gambling operator sponsorships, operators are still expected to become even more dominant in the market, despite bans in countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Online casinos and bookmakers will simply move their deals to other countries and set up partnerships there. These might have less impact than with Premier League clubs, but they will still represent millions of dollars and a fully grown industry.