How Man Utd, Tottenham & more are exploiting a 'loophole' in the Premier League's new anti-gambling sponsor rules

The decision to remove gambling sponsors from the front of Premier League matchday shirts was actually made more than three years ago, when clubs came together and collectively agreed the move. However, while that was a watershed moment, it's worth noting that a massive 18 out of 20 clubs voted against a wholesale ban.

"Premier League clubs have today collectively agreed to withdraw gambling sponsorship from the front of clubs' matchday shirts, becoming the first sports league in the UK to take such a measure voluntarily in order to reduce gambling advertising," a league statement in April 2023 read.

"The announcement follows an extensive consultation involving the league, its clubs and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as part of the government's ongoing review of current gambling legislation. The Premier League is also working with other sports on the development of a new code for responsible gambling sponsorship."

The "collective agreement" only came into effect at the start of the 2026-27 season, to give clubs time to transition away from front-of-shirt betting sponsors. However, in the last two seasons, 11 out of 20 clubs in the Premier League still had gambling companies as their main sponsors, with research by GlobalData estimating the overall value of those deals to be a combined £104 million in 2024-25.

The withdrawal agreement comes 20 years after this type of sponsor boomed in the Premier League following the liberalised 2005 Gambling Act, which paved the way for betting companies to paste their logos on kits across the English football pyramid.

Tottenham were pioneers in that sense, signing a then-lucrative long-term deal with online casino Mansion in 2006. By that time, Middlesbrough were already sponsored by another online gambling company, 888, and many more clubs would follow suit.

From that point, the number of top-flight clubs with gambling companies as their main front-of-shirt sponsors would explode, reaching the point where the majority had them before the collective agreement came into force this season. At one stage, in 2019, 28 out of 44 Premier League and Championship clubs had betting brands emblazoned across their shirts.

However, the unofficial ban has proven to be something of a false dawn. Indeed, casual Premier League viewers would be forgiven for not having noticed that any measures had been taken to "reduce gambling advertising" in the division at all. Sure, the logos of betting companies and online casinos are no longer present on the front of shirts during games, but gambling advertising and messages remains ubiquitous, plastered over stadiums, pre-match tracksuits and training kits.

Fans in the ground and viewers at home are still bombarded by them on the advertising hoardings and big screens throughout, and across the players' chests until it's time for kick-off. Meanwhile, betting companies are still the most prominent sponsors of Premier League TV coverage on Sky Sports and TNT in the UK, while Sky Bet sponsors all three divisions of the Football League. Before the ban, researchers estimated that 3,500 gambling logos could appear during a single televised English top-flight match.

All of this gives a sense that the removal of gambling sponsors from matchday shirts is just a token gesture, with the financial benefits simply too good to completely relinquish. There is evidently much more to be done if the league is serious about tackling what they clearly understand to be a problem.

"The undeniable harm caused by gambling is why the Premier League was forced to act, but if clubs were then allowed to promote near-identical brands it would make a mockery of the whole exercise," Nick Harvey, from the Coalition to End Gambling Ads (CEGA), told The Mirror last year.

"With tens of thousands of ads still plastered across stadiums, shirt sleeves and the media, removing shirt-front logos is already just a gesture. The only real solution is for the government to step in and end all gambling advertising in football."

One apparent 'loophole' that has been exploited by some of the Premier League's biggest clubs this season is the fact that gambling companies are still permitted as sleeve sponsors, and on training kits and pre-match tops.

Earlier this summer, in the face of the ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsors on matchdays and despite raking in plenty through their plethora of other commercial agreements, Manchester United flexed their might by agreeing a world-record, £20 million-per-year ($27m) training kit deal with online betting and casino brand Betway. The agreement is worth more than many other clubs' front-of-shirt sponsorship and is Betway's biggest investment of its kind to date across its sporting portfolio.

A club statement at the time read: "Through the new agreement, the Betway logo will feature on the training kits of Manchester United's men's and women's teams. The brand will also feature prominently on matchdays at Old Trafford and the Progress with Unity Stadium." Inevitably, there was no acknowledgement of the ban on matchday shirt sponsorship specifically aimed at reducing gambling sponsorship.

That followed Tottenham's agreement with betting company Betano, who feature on Spurs' training kit and pre-match wear this season. Meanwhile, Everton and Aston Villa moved gambling companies from the front of their shirts to the sleeve. They are two of six Premier League clubs with betting firms as sleeve sponsors this term.

We live in a world where pre-match content and training videos posted on a club's social channels are as keenly watched as the matches themselves, meaning people of all ages all over the world are still being exposed to gambling sponsors quite literally whenever they pick up their phones.

However, rather than try to close what seems to be a significant loophole, the authorities are now focusing their attentions on another issue with certain gambling sponsors in the Premier League.

This year, the DCMS has set out to crack down on unlicensed gambling sponsorship in the division and across wider sport in the UK. Sponsorship deals with these companies would become illegal next year under these government plans if they are approved following a recent eight-week consultation on the proposed ban.

According to The Guardian, as many as half of the sides in the English top-flight have deals with betting companies that are not licensed in the country, including Stake.com (Everton's sleeve sponsor), SBOTOP (Fulham's training kit sponsor) and 8XBet, and many of which are for the Asian market. A rise from six to 10 clubs over the summer is believed to be a result of the ban on matchday front-of-shirt sponsorship.

The DCMS wants to introduce new legislation because the unregulated market - which earned close to £380m from UK users in the first half of 2025 - doesn't offer the same protections as regulated betting firms, including vulnerability checks and spending limits, and it has been linked to gambling addiction, financial harm and gambling-related suicide. The Premier League is reportedly lobbying against the ban on the basis that the services offered are not technically available in the UK.

A DCMS spokesperson said: "We welcome the Premier League's move to voluntarily ban all gambling sponsorship from the front of shirts from this season. However, we are particularly concerned that unlicensed gambling operators can still sponsor some of our biggest football clubs in other ways, raising their profile and potentially drawing fans towards sites that don't meet our regulatory standards. That is why our focus is on banning unlicensed operators from sponsorship deals in British sport."

The Big Step campaign has been on the frontline of the battle to end gambling advertising and sponsorship in football for seven years. Led by people harmed by gambling themselves, it forms part of Gambling With Lives, a community of families bereaved by gambling-related suicide.

According to their research, there are 117 to 496 gambling-related suicides in England each year, and more than 10% of 18-24-year-olds who gamble in the UK suffer with 'problem gambling'. Close to 11% of the population are harmed by gambling directly or indirectly, and one in three current gamblers have been prompted into unplanned gambling by marketing.

Recovering gambling addict James Grimes, who is now director of national gambling harm prevention programme, Chapter One, began The Big Step campaign in June 2019, raising awareness by walking between the stadiums of clubs that had front-of-shirt gambling sponsors in memory of those who have died by gambling-related suicide.

James estimates that he lost £100,000 over the course of 12 years. He managed to stop gambling in 2018 after losing £2,000 on a fixed odds betting terminal on his lunch break.

"The relationship between gambling and football was absolutely my route in because that relationship went from being something that was largely hidden or contained within bookmakers to being something that was on the front of lots of football shirts around pretty much every pitch and advertised on TV adverts," he tells GOAL.

"So, you know, an age where you are influenceable, and I trusted the sport and the sport promoted me something that would later really, really negatively impact my life. I was three or four months into recovery from gambling addiction when I was really struggling to watch football because of the amount of gambling advertising. And I thought I wanted to do something about it, quite selfishly. So I had the idea of walking to clubs that had gambling sponsors on their shirts."

For his part, Grimes takes a dim view of the apparent 'loophole' that the likes of Manchester United and Spurs have seemingly exploited this season as they continue to profit from very visible betting sponsors across everything but their respective matchday shirts.

"It shows what, as a society, we're up against, which when it comes down to it, the gambling industry and the football industry will together find a way to maximise profit," he tells GOAL. "And that's not the right direction. It's so much better for the country and for football and for societies generally to have healthier, happier fans, people, communities, than try and promote something that we know causes harm to so many people.

"If anything, it's not come as any surprise that these loopholes have been found and exploited. I imagine more will follow. That's why it's really important that the government listens to people with lived experience, listens to fans and listens to the concerns from public health.

"It's not rocket science to work out what's happening here. That's more people experiencing gambling harm, especially young people. And the amount of advertising, sponsorship and promotion is driving that."

He continued: "Gambling harm changes the way that you behave, act, feel, think about yourself. And, you know, we live in a time where it's very difficult for young people growing up. They're either struggling to get a job, struggling to live away from their parents, or they're being encouraged to use things addictively, to do things that keep them on platforms for as long as possible, such as gambling, social media, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

"I think football has a responsibility to give young people a better life chance. And at least remove one of those things, which is when they go and watch a football match, or when they're checking their club on social media, they're not being encouraged to use online casinos."

The Premier League declined to comment on the apparent exploitation of this 'loophole' by certain clubs, but GOAL understands that there is a belief that the ban on front-of-shirt matchday sponsorship substantially reduces the visibility of gambling brands, and it forms part of a broader approach to ensure gambling sponsorship is delivered in a socially responsible way.

Of course, it's not just fans who have been affected by gambling addiction. In recent years there have been two significant cases involving Premier League players being banned for betting offences: former Brentford striker Ivan Toney and Tottenham's Sandro Tonali, then of Newcastle.

In 2023, the former was banned for eight months by the Football Association (FA) for a massive 232 betting breaches, while the latter was hit with a 10-month suspension by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) in October of the same year for offences during his time in his home country.

Toney's ban was reduced from 11 months after he was diagnosed with a gambling addiction, while Tonali has since admitted that he also developed a problem. The Italian midfielder told La Repubblica in 2025: "It became a habit when I was 17-18. The fact that it was online obscured me from everything, I closed myself in my shell.

"When a person finds themselves in a situation like that, it's difficult to ask them if they're sick. They'll always say no. Even if they feel that it's not the case. They can't think they have that problem, so they tend to hide it."

Ironically, Tonali now has to train in tracksuits that have Betano's logo splashed across them after Spurs struck an agreement with the gambling company in the summer - something The Big Step has pointed out on social media. "There aren't many workplaces where someone has to wear clothes advertising a product they had an addiction to," they tweeted.

Speaking to GOAL, Grimes said: "I think that sums up the contradiction of the situation, which is even the fact that clubs have players who have struggled with gambling addictions and yet are still forced to be billboards for the thing that destroyed their lives, sometimes destroyed their careers."

Given The Big Step has only been partially successful in its bid to end gambling advertising in football altogether, Grimes is conflicted about the agreement to withdraw betting sponsors from the front of matchday shirts from this season.

"We didn't quite get that [a wholesale ban]. We got this arrangement, which I have mixed feelings about still. I mean, if I compare to when we started The Big Step, there was 30 clubs compared to the point now where in the Premier League, obviously, it's zero. But clearly, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of gambling messages there [still] are across football. I think it feels like a small step and the big step still needs to happen."

Grimes believes the sport's decision-makers have made it clear that they put profit over the potential harm to fans, but he still takes a modicum of pride from The Big Step's achievements to date. "Football as a whole knows that gambling harm impacts people and knows that it impacts a lot of people and yet still, on the whole, prioritises profit over the public health of its fans and its community," he continued.

"I feel a little bit of pride about what we did because it was a real, lived-experience-led effort. And to get the Premier League to do anything, to get the football industry to do anything that reduces revenue, although it's questionable whether that's actually the case, yeah, it took a lot."