Ipswich Town Chairman Mark Ashton has stated that the Premier League club will not consider a front-of-shirt gambling sponsorship once its current deal with Ed Sheeran runs out at the end of the season.
Sheeran’s ‘Tour’ sponsorship has featured on the front of Ipswich kits for the past several years as the club climbed from League One to the Premier League, but the deal runs out this season and the club will look to another sponsorship partner.
However, with the increasing backlash regarding betting and gambling sponsorships in football, Ashton stated that Ipswich will not pursue a sponsorship with a company from the gambling industry as it is “not the direction of travel we want to go” in.
He said: “One of the things you won’t see on our shirt is a gaming sponsor. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, but for us, it’s not the direction of travel we want to go. It’s not something that Ed would want to see.”
The sponsorship deal with Sheeran came after Ipswich had a betting sponsorship in place from 2018 to 2020 with Magical Vegas as its front-of-shirt sponsor. During the time of the deal, it received backlash from the supporter’s club.
Chairman of the Ipswich Town Supporter’s Club, Steve Doe, commented on the Magical Vegas deal at the time in 2018, stating that he was “not comfortable” with the deal but came to the conclusion that its “the reality of the world”.
Similar fan backlash has been felt at clubs like Aston Villa, who’s supporters went against the club’s sponsorship agreement with online betting operator BK8 which only lasted one season before being dropped in favour of betting platform Betano.
The Aston Villa Supporter’s Trust before the BK8 deal was finalised asked the club to consider dropping the deal with the betting company, mainly due to the company being dropped by Norwich FC over its oversexualisation of its marketing of the East-Anglian club’s ad campaigns.
Much of this fan backlash against betting sponsorships led to Premier League clubs voluntarily agreeing on a ban on gambling front-of-shirt sponsorships that will take effect at the start of the 2026/27 season.
This means that even if Ipswich were to remain in the top-flight league this season, a betting sponsorship would only be able to run the course of one season before the ban comes into effect.
But Ashton cited Ipswich’s “community-first” nature of the club as a reason for not pursuing a sponsorship with a gambling company.
He stated: “We’re a community-based football club, and we will look for sponsors in a different type of direction.”
Also during his panel session at Leaders Week London event, Ashton hailed Sheeran’s role at the club from sponsorship to now minority owner after acquiring a 1.4% stake in the boyhood club he supports.
He said: “Ed’s just incredible. He gets involved in designing some of the kits, personalising some of them a bit.
“When we launch a kit and he is live on a stage in Vegas, we have a reach that even Man United and Chelsea would love to have, because he is a world superstar who cares about this football club.
“He sponsored the club when nobody else really wanted to, got us to the Premier League, came to the Premier League with us and said, ‘look, I’ll do a year in the Premier League with you, then I’m going to step off.”