The 2024-25 Premier League season is just eight days away, and the 20 teams in competition are gearing up for another gruesome nine months of football action.
Manchester City have established themselves as the dominant force in the English top-flight, but it’s not just Pep Guardiola’s side that has had the league on a chokehold in recent times as betting companies have been at the forefront of shirt sponsorship in the competition.
As much as the football itself is the eye-catcher in the Premier League, these teams must source revenues to run and keep their businesses afloat, and this usually comes through sponsorship and branding, which cut across endorsements and advertisements, as well as player transfers and ticket sales.
A visible connection can be drawn between betting and football, and over the years, the influence of these betting companies as sponsors has grown in the Premier League.
According to available data, only five teams had betting brands as their shirt sponsor ten years ago in the 2014-15 season. However, that number will more than double heading into the 2024-25 campaign as eleven teams will have a gambling brand inscribed on the front of their jerseys as sponsors, three more than the league had in the 2023-24 season, which raked in an estimated £60 million per annum.
For the upcoming season, Bournemouth, Aston Villa, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Everton, Fulham, Leicester, Nottingham Forest, Southampton, West Ham, and Wolverhampton Wanderers will all feature gambling brands on their shirts.
However, all of this will soon come to an end after the Premier League announced in April that clubs have agreed to “withdraw gambling sponsorship from the front of their matchday shirts” from the 2026/27 season.
Albeit this new decree, the teams are still permitted to partner with these betting companies as sleeve sponsors as well as on their training wears and in-stadium advertisements.
It is left to see the ripple effect this will have on teams in the Premier League, especially the ones without huge financial backing and means to generate huge revenue. Heading into the new season, the traditional top six clubs have no betting company as shirt sponsors, which shows that the middle- to lower-ranked teams need the revenue from these brands immensely.
Teams with betting sponsors on shirts for 2024-25 season:
- Aston Villa – Betano
- Bournemouth – bj88
- Brentford – Hollywood bets
- Crystal Palace – Net88
- Everton – Stake.com
- Fulham – Sbotop
- Leicester City – BC.Game
- Nottingham Forest – Kaiyun Sports
- Southampton -Rollbit
- West Ham – Betway
- Wolverhampton Wanderers -DeBet
