English Soccer Still Inundated by Gambling Ads Despite Jersey Ban

Gambling companies love the English Premier League. 

There is no more effective platform for generating customers than advertising on the shirt of one of the 20 clubs in world soccer’s biggest league. But ahead of the current 2026–27 season, the teams bowed to political pressure from the U.K. government and banned gambling companies from the front of their jerseys. 

Major global companies including Bally’s and Betano were swapped out, replaced by tech, tourism, and financial services firms. Others, including Stake, were moved to shirt sleeves. However, the squishy terms of the ban mean there are still thousands of gambling messages for every live broadcast.

In a University of Bristol analysis of the opening weekend of the 2026–27 season, researchers found the ban on front-of-shirt sponsorship removed around 10% of the total messages—but around half of this reduction was offset by increases in shots of sleeves, training kits, and LED screens.

The Premier League’s voluntary ban has worked for all parties. The clubs have found a way to keep gambling sponsorship flowing in. The gambling firms have retained their access to their most effective advertising channel. The government has been able to show it has pushed a British institution into self-regulation. But for soccer fans, very little has changed.

“Lax” Regulation

When the Premier League launched in 1992, front-of-shirt sponsors included breweries, furniture companies, and a photocopier manufacturer. (The sums gambled on soccer in the U.K. barely rivaled those laid on horse and even greyhound racing.) But the rising popularity of the league, new government legislation, and the spread of mobile internet all worked to bring soccer and bookmakers together.

“Gambling companies require huge amounts of brand awareness,” says Sean Connell, editor of The Sponsor, an industry consultancy. “It’s one of the few sponsorship categories where there’s a pretty direct link between sponsoring a team and the number of new customers signing up for services.” He says there’s no better vehicle than a Premier League shirt to reach men, the consumers they covet.

The first gambling company to take the plunge was Betfair, which sponsored Fulham in 2002. 

As gambling companies began to compete more visibly for market share, Premier League shirts became an alternative vehicle to broadcast media—and within a decade, three-quarters of Premier League teams had a gambling logo on their shirts. A source close to several commercial deals told Front Office Sports gambling companies typically paid twice what other firms offered for a Premier League front-of-shirt deal.

Political backlash began to build. A 2020 report by a committee within the House of Lords (the upper house of Parliament) described regulation of the gambling industry as “lax,” and recommended a complete ban on all sport sponsorships by gambling companies.

The Premier League encouraged its clubs to act before the government forced them into it, while government ministers indicated any gambling reform would sidestep full-shirt sponsorships if the league opted to regulate itself. In 2023, the Premier League announced a voluntary ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsorships that would be phased in over three years.

The agreement was carefully constructed, as it allowed gambling firms to continue to sponsor the shirt sleeves, as well as the LED screens that run around the perimeter of pitches. Alan Alger of Super Group, which owns the Betway brand, tells FOS: “Being on the front of the shirt is prestigious. You get access to the players. But the LED is what matters most for the people that are watching the games around the world.”

A Scramble for New Deals

The Premier League’s three-year grace period expired at the start of the current season, which meant half its teams had to find new sponsors last summer. 

Bournemouth turned to its stadium sponsor, insurance firm Vitality, to broaden its agreement to include the front-of-shirt. Brentford negotiated with recruitment company Indeed to add the playing shirt to its training-kit deal. Others opted for new deals in tourism, tech, financial services, and AI.

Alger argues the timing of some of these agreements—like Nottingham Forest’s eleventh-hour deal with financial-services firm Marex, signed days before the season began—is indicative of the clubs struggling to find partnerships that meet their valuations. Sunderland and Chelsea opted for sponsor-free shirts, after they were unable to strike satisfactory agreements before the start of the season. (Chelsea has since made a deal with crypto firm Circle.)

However, Adam Lewis, senior analyst at media consultancy Ampere Analytics, believes Premier League clubs have succeeded in plugging the revenue hole. He estimates the eight clubs that had to find new front-of-shirt sponsors have seen the combined annual value of their deals rise from $89 million (£67 million) to $99 million (£75 million).

He adds teams across the league have been able to grow the combined value of their sleeve and training-kit sponsorships from $176 million (£133 million) a year to $206 million (£156 million), largely by moving their previous gambling agreements from the front of the shirt to these new locations. Lewis believes gambling companies now account for more than 50% of the total value of training-kit sponsorships.

Prediction-Market Test

In its statement announcing the front-of-shirt ban, the Premier League identified itself as “the first sports league in the U.K. to take such a measure voluntarily.” This is true. But it is also true that English soccer at all levels remains drenched in gambling sponsorship. 

Clubs in the three divisions below the Premier League are still free to strike commercial deals with gambling companies. The government weighed the evidence and decided the clubs were so reliant on gambling sponsorship and their finances were so perilous that banning it would risk multiple clubs collapsing.

Gambling sponsorship is also highly visible in other competitions played on English pitches. Aston Villa’s previous front-of-shirt sponsor, Betano, is a lead sponsor of two of UEFA’s club competitions, the Europa League and the Conference League. UEFA and Betano also recently announced the company will sponsor UEFA’s international tournament, the European Championships, which will be held in 2028 in the U.K. and Ireland.

The next frontier of the gambling-sponsorship question surrounds the massive, rising industry of prediction markets. Teams—and the Premier League—are not yet rushing in. At present, neither of the biggest prediction markets, Polymarket nor Kalshi, legally serves U.K. users. However, as the Premier League is now a global beast, it would be plausible for a prediction market to seek to sponsor an English team purely to advertise itself to overseas clients. 

But the terms under which these markets could become front-of-shirt sponsors have yet to be tested. 

For now, a club would need to demonstrate to the Premier League that prediction markets are not gambling services. The Premier League says it “can’t comment on whether entities operating in the prediction markets as a whole will, or will not be, captured by the Rule.” The U.K.’s Gambling Commission, the gambling industry regulator, said earlier this year that “if a prediction market operator was to launch here in Great Britain, we do not believe they would be able to classify themselves as non-gambling products.” 

The precedent in Europe does not fall in the favor of prediction markets. This summer, an Italian court struck down a $21 million (€19 million) front-of-shirt sponsorship deal between Polymarket and Serie A’s Lazio, after concluding that such firms were covered under a government ban on gambling sponsorship in sport. (Serie A has a multiyear partnership with Polymarket as its exclusive prediction-market partner.)

Serie A’s limitations are determined by national legislation. The Premier League succeeded in preempting the government, and it has escaped with lighter-touch regulation. The league just might perform a similarly dexterous move on prediction markets.