Ban or no ban, clubs remain hooked on gambling money
Outlawing shirt-front betting is just a gesture – it is time to tax these companies using football to make huge profits
The Football Association’s gambling charges against Sandro Tonali are an embarrassment to the English game, that wants to show it is doing something about the pervasiveness of the betting industry but cannot stop taking its money.
The same was the case when Ivan Toney finally won his second England cap last week, and scored his first goal for his country, under the auspices of the same governing body that had banned him for eight months for breaking gambling regulations. Football knows its relationship with the online sports betting industry is problematic. The ban on betting and shirt-front gambling sponsorship in 2026 is a token gesture to signal disapproval, which will affect the least wealthy clubs the most.
Online betting companies, many aimed at overseas consumers of the Premier League, will continue to suffuse the game. The most sensible way for football to get value for its intellectual property would be legislation that establishes a levy for the game, like for horse racing. Some of that could be used to educate players and fans not to fall into the same black hole as Tonali.
The Premier League ban on shirt-front gambling advertising from the start of the 2026-27 season will change little. Clubs will still be permitted to sign betting partners. Millions of pounds will be spent on betting advertising on the perimeter LED boards and in the streets around stadiums.
What it will do is cut the revenue of the league’s smaller clubs, for whom the online betting and crypto deals are often the only ones on the table. The biggest clubs, capable of attracting software giants, financial services or Middle East airlines will be largely unaffected.
Football shirts will look better. The game will feel a line has been established. But it is simply a gesture. Betting marketing will still be everywhere. The access to their money, however, will be cut off for those whose commercial income is nowhere near the biggest clubs.
An online betting shirt-front deal for a team expected to finish in the bottom half of the Premier League can be worth anywhere between £4million and £10million annually. Fewer available shirt fronts, and a rush of companies trying to enter the market will drive a deal upwards. For the Premier League’s 20th club, promoted via the Championship play-offs, that can sometimes work in their favour, sometimes not.
In the summer of 2022, Nottingham Forest, promoted at Wembley on May 29, started the next season in the Premier League without a sponsor. At the start of their second top-flight season, like many in their position before, Forest signed with an online sports betting brand. Like others, they will have discovered that these companies are among the few capable of making quick decisions.
They can wrap up a shirt-front deal in a matter of weeks. Trying to land a big corporate entity such as Standard Chartered at Liverpool, or Chelsea’s erstwhile 3 Mobile can take more than 12 months of courtship and negotiations. There simply is not much time for the promoted clubs with a shirt front to sell, a relatively low profile, and pressure to add commercial revenue quickly.
Many of those gambling companies are aimed at the vast profits to be extracted from Chinese punters, in a country where gambling is officially illegal.
It is a long way from what feels like the innocent age of English football sponsorship: the 1980s. Japanese electronics companies, beer brands, car manufacturers, or just West Bromwich Albion’s anti-smoking campaign adorned the shirts. Even if, in 2026, those industries wish to fill the void left by online betting, it is likely that the deals struck would be nothing like what those clubs can earn in sports betting. In the meantime, the game holds its nose and follows the money.
Aston Villa have signed a two-year deal worth up to £20million annually with Greek online betting company Betano, which takes Villa up to the ban. That a club of Villa’s status is still in that market is indicative of how hard it can be to attract deals.
The sad case of Tonali and his gambling addiction is unlikely to be prevented just because players are no longer confronted by a shirt on their peg that bears the name of a gambling company. The game is already drowning in betting. Brighton and Brentford are owned by men who made their fortunes in the gambling industry. The same goes for the Coates family seeking in vain to return Stoke City to the Premier League.
Meanwhile, football likes to pretend it is making a stand. No gambling logos on children’s-size replica shirts. The FA has decided against a gambling partner. But these are isolated stances against an overwhelming trend.
A levy would allow clubs to extract a fair price from those betting companies that use football, and the global obsession with the game, to earn huge profits. Wringing one’s hands about betting brands on shirts, does little more than block the squeezed bottom half of the league from another revenue stream. Taxing the betting industry for using a sport it dominates already would be much more sensible – although all too late to save Tonali’s reputation.