How Gambling Sponsors Took Over the Premier League
When the English Premier League kicks off for its 34th season this weekend, more than half of all clubs — 11 out of 20 — will have gambling company names emblazoned across players’ chests for the second year in a row. No other industry has been so ubiquitous since the league’s inception in 1992.
The Evolution of Premier League Front-of-Shirt Sponsors
Source: Bloomberg News review of matchday shirts, 1992-2025
Notes: Teams that played without sponsors are grouped in the Other category. In cases where home and away kits had different sponsors, home sponsor was used.
Deals with gambling brands have been lucrative for the league, but backlash has also mounted from groups that see the promotion of gambling as actively harmful to those battling addiction. With the specter of government regulation looming, the Premier League agreed to voluntarily ban gambling sponsors from the front of their shirts starting next year. But gambling advertising will still be permitted on sleeves, in-stadium digital screens, and most anywhere else on matchday.
Looking at the evolution of game-day shirts in the Premier League reveals other economic forces shaping the sport — and the global economy, too. Kit sponsors are, in many ways, a microcosm of a less local, more commercialized sporting world.
From Local Beer to Global Reach
Note: Years denote the start of the seasons in which a company was the front-of-shirt sponsor.
During the Premier League’s first decade — back in the 1990s when phones were just for talking and kits were loose enough to ripple in the wind — it was actively difficult, if not impossible, to watch the league from another continent. So kit sponsors mostly targeted the locals watching from the stands or those paying a pretty penny to tune in at home through BSkyB.
As a result, sponsors were also often delightfully local. Leicester City’s shirts carried the logo of Leicester-based Walkers crisps, West Ham was sponsored by the local Dagenham Motors, and Newcastle, appropriately enough, by Newcastle Brown Ale.
Even in the early Premier League days, most sponsors were foreign-based companies. But, they were still familiar brands in the UK, aiming to sell products domestically. Think Japanese electronics companies — Arsenal’s JVC and Sega sponsorships — and global food and drink brands — Liverpool’s Carlsberg and Fulham’s short-lived sponsorship by Pizza Hut.
By the mid-2000s, UK-based sponsorships hit a new low. In 2006, the league had just six shirt sponsors based in the country. As the leagues’ viewership itself became increasingly global, UK companies were replaced by a smattering of global brands. Emirates Airlines sponsored Chelsea, then Arsenal. Chang Beer from Thailand had a long-running deal with Everton. And, of course, gambling companies made their first appearances on Premier League shirts.
Gambling Eats Everything
By the mid 2000s, gambling was becoming more visible on shirts across the league. The industry’s growing influence is generally attributed to the UK’s 2005 Gambling Act, which permitted ads on TV and radio, spurring a broader onslaught of gambling-centric advertising.
A decade later, gambling brands were front and center on half of all clubs’ shirts.
While traditional consumer products have more ways to reach potential customers through avenues like online advertising that didn’t exist in the Premier League’s early days, “gambling firms are very dependent on football for profits,” said Christina Philippou, associate professor of Accounting and Sport Finance at the University of Portsmouth.
“They also have plenty of money,” she added.
Gambling firms featured as front-of-shirt sponsors today are often registered in East Asia or in gambling-friendly European jurisdictions like the Isle of Man or Gibraltar. Many have alphanumeric names like bj88, net88, 96.com and LaBa360, and aren’t well known outside of their sponsorship deals.
The shirts of four Premier League clubs — Fulham, Bournemouth, Burnley, and Wolverhampton Wanderers — are currently sponsored by a betting website licensed by TGP Europe, which exited the UK market after being fined by the country’s regulator. That means local supporters couldn’t patronize their club’s sponsor’s product even if they wanted to.
Tech Ruled the ’90s. Will It Return?
The only other industry that has come close to sponsoring as many top-flight kits as today’s gambling companies: Dotcom-era tech.
Between 1992 and 2000, 18 clubs were sponsored by 25 separate tech or tech-adjacent telecom firms. Some are still familiar household names, like Hewlett-Packard (Tottenham) and Brother (Manchester City). But about half are no longer in operation. Ironically, the most lasting legacies of companies like Tulip Computers (Crystal Palace) may well be via their logos emblazoned on classic football kits still in high demand by collectors and nostalgic fans.
Perhaps the kits bearing today’s gambling firms will one day be collectors items, too. But one thing is a safe bet, they will soon need to be replaced.
What will fill the void when they’re gone next year? Experts say it is too soon to tell because so many clubs are trying to get one last pay day rather than begin the transition. But some experts like Philippou suggest tech could make a comeback as crypto creeps in and AI companies seek to establish themselves globally.