A new report published by Play the Game is seeking to underline the extent of betting and crypto sponsorships across European football, further intensifying scrutiny surrounding both sector’s involvement in the sport.
Play the Game is an initiative run by the Danish Institute of Sports Studies focused on raising awareness of critical issues in sports and the report details the prevalence of betting and crypto partnerships across Europe’s top five-ranked football leagues during the 2024-25 season.
The English Premier League and Italian Serie A led the way, as all 20 teams in both leagues count at least one betting partner among their commercial partners.
Meanwhile, 78% of teams in the Bundesliga (Germany) and 72% of teams in Ligue 1 (France) have at least one betting partner.
La Liga records a rate of just 35%. However, this is impacted by tightening restrictions in Spain around gambling advertising.
Despite the intensified framework, the report notes that 15 out of the 20 current La Liga clubs have circumvented the ruling by partnering with Asian-facing operators based outside of Spain, as the ban does not extend beyond the country’s borders.
For example, Atletico Madrid has partnerships with ATY, Leyu and K8, but they are not listed on the club’s website.
Alongside betting sponsorships, the report also charts the rising popularity of football as a target for crypto companies. Across the aforementioned leagues, at least 50% of clubs have at least one crypto partner.
La Liga is the only league to record a 100% rate for such sponsorships, perhaps fuelled by the regulations surrounding gambling advertising.
Overall, across the nine leagues surveyed in the study – which also included top-flight leagues from Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria and India – 173 active gambling partnerships were identified and 172 similar deals with crypto assets entities.
There were also 72 commercial relationships with crypto betting companies.
A lucrative source of income
The gambling industry, and now to a certain extent the crypto industry, is seen as a lucrative source of income for football clubs, given the almost interconnected nature of football and betting.
Amid the current debate surrounding the introduction of the Football Governance Bill in England, Baroness Karen Brady, former Managing Director of Birmingham City and current Vice-Chair of West Ham, revealed that the typical difference between gambling and non-gambling shirt sponsorships is “around 40%”.
“For some Premier League clubs, this decision will mean a reduction of around 20% of their total commercial revenues,” she stated, referring to the Premier League’s blanket ban on gambling front-of-shirt sponsorships, set to come in from the start of the 2026-27 season.
A UEFA financial report from the 2023-24 season also revealed that top division clubs raked in record revenues of €26.8bn during the period – the greatest contributor to this figure was from sponsorship and commercial sources.
Within the top 20 leagues during the time of the report, betting and gambling companies were the most common main shirt sponsors.
Unlicensed operators
The Play the Game report also highlights the large number of partnerships that involve operators unlicensed in the countries where the partnered teams play.
As a result, it claims that some clubs attempt to conceal such deals from their fans.
For example, British visitors to the website of Chelsea FC will see no trace of its partnership with Kaiyun, an Asian gambling company unlicensed in the UK. However, the partnership is visible if the website is accessed from areas such as Vietnam and Hong Kong.
Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace were both previously warned by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) concerning their partnerships with Kaiyun Sports.
More recently, the status of numerous sponsorship deals between Premier League clubs and gambling operators has been thrown into question due to the sudden exit of TGP Europe from the UK following a UKGC investigation that revealed significant AML shortcomings.
Operators such as DEBET, SBOTOP, Sportsbetio.uk and bj88 all held white label agreements with TGP Europe, allowing them to sponsor various Premier League teams.
However, following TGP Europe’s exit, the UKGC sent a letter to AFC Bournemouth, Fulham FC, Newcastle United, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Burnley FC, warning them that relevant employees may be liable for prosecution and, if convicted, could face fines and/or imprisonment if they are found to be promoting unlicensed operators.
The clubs must now ensure that UK consumers cannot access the aforementioned sites.
The UKGC was also forced to remind Birmingham City that it must carry out “sufficient due diligence” after an iGaming Expert investigation revealed that its new Asian betting partner, God55, was misleading consumers by claiming it holds a Maltese Gaming Authority licence.
Despite such recent controversies, it is clear that gambling sponsorships remain a valuable source of income for clubs, even when regulation around the sector continues to tighten.
Now, in light of tightening regulations and the rising popularity of crypto, clubs up and down the football pyramid have a new financial avenue.
According to the report, the San-Francisco-based crypto exchange Kraken saw a 128% rise in revenue to $1.5bn in the same year it became the official crypto and Web3 partner of Atletico Madrid, RB Leipzig and Tottenham Hotspur.
Crypto firms also spent a record $170m on partnership deals for the 2024-25 Premier League season.
The report states that meshing of gambling and crypto is particularly concerning as transactions are “virtually untraceable”.
