After the decision of Premier League clubs to halt gambling shirt-sponsorships, The Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) has confirmed that ‘individual sponsorships will remain a matter for each club’.
According to BBC Scotland, shirt sponsorships from the gambling space remains a significant source for many of the clubs in the league.
The league said: “For many SPFL clubs, sponsorship from gambling companies is a significant source of income which helps to support their business models and enables investment in many of the important community activities which clubs undertake.”
The conclusion of the ban would have alerted the likes of Celtic, which currently has Dafabet on the front of its shirts, Rangers, which has two gambling shirt partners – Kindred Group’s 32Red and Unibet brands – and Dundee United with QuinnCasino.
Nonetheless, former Scottish First Minister Henry McLeish said that he was ‘disappointed’ at the SPFL’s response.
“What I’ve suggested is we have a phased programme to say look, let’s look for good sponsors, let’s look for sponsors that relate to what we’re trying to do in football,” he said on Good Morning Scotland.next year, or the year after, but let’s have a phased programme to look at the implications of alcohol and gambling.
“We dealt with tobacco, now we’ve got to deal with alcohol, now we’ve got to deal with gambling.”
The move will have a key impact on the Premier League, with eight current clubs – Brentford, Bournemouth, Everton, Fulham, Leeds United, Newcastle United, Southampton and West Ham – displaying a gambling company on their shirts.
To support those aforementioned clubs transition into the new ruling, the Premier League has allowed them until the start of the 2025/26 season to find a new front-of-shirt sponsor.
