High risk sponsorship reap high rewards for Premier League clubs according to a recent report, though partnerships with one industry in particular is facing more and more scrutiny.
Sponsorship has become as central to the modern game of football as yellow cards and the off-side rule. These commercial activities are vital to club revenue, which in turn is vital to on-pitch performance – top rated players don’t pay for themselves after all.
Deals often fall under scrutiny, however, largely due to the activities of commercial partners. In a recent report, Insight X has taken an in-depth look at partnerships based on risk categories and interestingly, gambling deals are not as ranked highly as others.
This may come as a surprise to some, given the extensive conversations around gambling harm and player protection seen in betting industry circles. English football’s relationship with gambling has come under fire from certain campaign groups in recent years also.
However, the Insight report does consider some factors which are not applicable to betting firms. For example, Arsenal’s sponsorship with the Emirates airline was highlighted due to the latter’s employment practices and its association with the UAE government, largely due to the state’s often-criticised human rights record.
Similarly, Manchester City – owned by the City Football Group, which is majority owned by UAE Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Abu Dhabi United Group – was also highlighted for similar reasons.
Like Arsenal, the club is partnered with an airline, Etihad Airways, one of the two sovereign airlines of the UAE, alongside Emirates. The stadiums of both teams are also named after the club’s respective airline partners.
Unlike some major airlines and other such companies, betting firms for the most part are not state-owned, with some exceptions in countries in the Nordics or in France. In the UK, betting is a huge private sector and a highly competitive one at that.
This competitiveness means sponsorship in professional sports, particularly the UK’s most popular sport of football, is valued real estate. This real estate does not always receive a warm reception from fans, however.
Take Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace, for example. Both companies have partnered with Kaiyun Sports, an Asian sports betting company, with Forest maintaining a front-of-shirt sponsorship deal with the firm. Palace has recently embarked on a separate front-of-shirt sponsorship deal with Net88.
Last week, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), the country’s betting regulator, advised Forest and Palace to avoid partnering with Kaiyun Sports due to the firm’s licensing in the UK via a white label agreement with Isle of Man-based TGP Europe, which is set to expire. .
This is just the latest development in a long-running trend of English football clubs partnering with international, mostly Asia-focused, sportsbooks which are unfamiliar to UK customers.
Despite Emirates’ and Etihad’s association with the UAE state, and the state’s murky human rights record, the brands are much more familiar to UK customers. Many British consumers will likely have flown with these airlines for international holidays and business trips.
In comparison, Kaiyun Sports, Net88, and DE.BET – the latter recently partnered with Wolverhampton Wanderers – are not familiar to English sports fans. This likely impacts the perception of these brands and partnerships in the eyes of said fans.
In contrast, Insight X’s report found that Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool’s ‘high-risk’ partnerships with Emirates, Etihad and Standard Chartered, respectively, received ‘largely positive’ fan engagement feedback, due to the team’s long-term relationships with these companies.
The visibility of betting deals will soon be reduced in England’s top-flight, with Premier League clubs set to adopt a voluntary ban on front-of-shirt betting deals at the start of the 2026/27 season.
Clubs are seeking to get in on the revenue opportunities of these deals whilst they last. The significance of Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) has further exacerbated this, as clubs need to ensure as wide a breadth of revenue streams as possible.
Discontented fans only have two years to wait until these deals are relegated to shirt sleeves and perimeter advertising, but social media backlash seen to some partnerships suggests that the debate will not let up any time soon, despite English football adopting its latest code of conduct on how these partnerships should be conducted.
