Money and football are more intertwined than ever, with the human rights records and business dealings of Premier League club owners coming under increased scrutiny.
But unless they’ve got an oligarch or state fund to pump money, it’s hard for clubs to keep up with the relentless rise of Premier League players’ wages and transfer fees.
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That money needs to come from somewhere, though, and broadcast revenue and ticket sales no longer cover the costs of players who, in the past, would have been more easily within reach.
The other big avenue for clubs to make money is through sponsorships. Aside from the familiar front-of-shirt sponsor, it is now commonplace for clubs to have dozens of sponsors in all sorts of categories — from tyres and antiperspirants to pillows and mattresses.
New names and companies from different sectors are popping up all over the place. Some are well-known brands and it’s obvious what they do and why they are there but others are more controversial or have very close connections to the club they sponsor.
And all but one of the Premier League’s clubs — we’ll get to that outlier — are dabbling in a new wave of sponsors linked to offshore gambling, cryptocurrency or forex (foreign exchange) trading.
When it comes to gambling, the net seems to be tightening around the sector, with an upcoming government review likely to ban gambling companies from appearing on the front of football shirts. There has also been strong criticism from fan groups over football’s continual reliance on gambling money.
Cryptocurrency sponsors are also facing a growing backlash from sceptical fans, with Liverpool recently feeling the heat over a lucrative NFT partnership.
Less is known about trading and foreign exchange apps, which are often so incomprehensible to ordinary fans that they do not get as much attention.
One senior figure at a Premier League team told The Athletic that clubs are “between a rock and a hard place” because these deals are perfectly legal in the UK and provided desperately-needed cash during the COVID-19 pandemic.
So if you’ve ever wondered what that company on the side of your club’s pitch is actually flogging, here’s your answer…
Offshore gambling
Gambling has long had deep ties to football but that has exploded since the rise of the internet. High-street names targeting British gamblers are one thing but “white label” websites are quite another.
Last year, The Athletic published a major investigation into how some Premier League shirt sponsors help to facilitate illegal gambling in China, where gambling is hugely popular but firms are strictly banned.
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To get around this, companies pop up in countries such as the Philippines, operating across borders to serve the Chinese market.
These firms cannot advertise to Chinese customers through conventional means, like on Chinese TV or in Chinese newspapers, so use English football instead, taking advantage of a loophole by which the company on the shirt runs a UK-facing website via an intermediary in places like the Isle of Man or Malta.
This is known as a “white label” company. It allows firms to gain legal access to the UK market but it means we have very little idea of who runs these companies, or who is financially benefiting from the Premier League advertising.
The Gambling Commission has admitted it is concerned some white-label websites may not have effective anti-money-laundering controls or carry out “sufficient due diligence” to ensure there are no “links to criminal activity”.
The absurdity of this situation was highlighted in July 2019 when Newcastle United played Wolverhampton Wanderers in a friendly in China but both teams ditched their usual shirt sponsors Fun88 and ManBetX for fear of breaking local laws. Both teams’ shirts still carry those sponsors. Fun88 also has a deal with Tottenham Hotspur and appears prominently on the billboards at their new stadium.
Another example of white-label gambling is Chelsea’s sponsor Leyu Sports, which has barely any digital presence aside from the billboards at Stamford Bridge. Southampton also had LD Sports on their shirts for one season under previous owner Gao Jisheng, which claimed to be a “sports marketing” company but was actually a gambling website that was unlicensed in the UK and that targeted the Chinese market. LD Sports was “not connected to Mr Gao or the ownership in any way”.
When Aston Villa launched their gambling sponsor, OB Sports, the club quoted somebody called Kai Webb, who is described as “President for the International Business of OB Sports”. Attempting to find out more about Webb’s career results in familiar frustration, and the club and company did not respond to questions about him.
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For a while, Liverpool were the only top-flight club without a gambling sponsor after the club’s deal with BetVictor ended, but this is no longer the case. The club has a deal with 188Bet, an Asia-facing gambling website that cannot be accessed in the UK. As such, little is known about the firm. The club’s website mentions 25 different sponsors but 188Bet is not one of them. The company is a “regional partner” of the club so does not appear on channels in the UK. This includes the billboards at Anfield.
One of the more obscure gambling sponsors in the league is HTHBet, which is the “official global betting partner” of Manchester United.
Click on the company’s homepage from the UK and you are directed to a holding site promising that “you can look forward to” an online sportsbook, casino and virtual gaming services. It is a white-label product, operated by a company called TGP Europe Limited in the Isle of Man, which is regulated by the Gambling Commission in the UK.
Cryptocurrency
Although gambling might be on its way out of the Premier League, there are new kids on the block ready to fill the gap. Over the past two years, most Premier League clubs have signed a deal of some kind with a cryptocurrency — digital, decentralised currency — company.
Premier League newbies Brentford are sponsored by Coinjar, an app to trade cryptocurrency, and in November, Southampton announced a “Crypto Fan Fund” that would donate two bitcoin, a form of cryptocurrency, “to deliver a series of fan-led initiatives across the 2021-22 season and beyond”.
Unfortunately, in the two months after this fund was announced in November, the value of those two bitcoin fell by half. It has recovered somewhat since then but is nowhere near its November peak, exposing the risks of cryptocurrency to ordinary fans. It has increased in value a lot over the past few years but the past year or two has been rockier, and investing in crypto carries the risk of big financial losses. The company Sportsbet.io has, however, underwritten the value of the fund so Southampton will not directly lose out.
One of the more bizarre sponsorships in world sport is Watford’s sleeve sponsor Dogecoin. Other cryptocurrencies claim to have genuine uses beyond financial speculation but Dogecoin does not. The cryptocurrency token, represented by a Shiba Inu dog, was created as a joke in 2013 to poke fun at other cryptocurrencies. Since Watford announced the deal last August, the value of dogecoin has fallen by more than half.
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The most prominent Premier League cryptocurrency sponsor is Socios, a “fan engagement” company that has sponsorship deals with six league clubs: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Everton, Leeds United and Manchester City.
Buying a Socios token gives the holder the right to vote on club matters, which are generally trivial things like what music players should walk out to or social media banners. There are also questions about how many fans buy Socios in an attempt to engage with their club and how many trade volatile virtual assets in an attempt to make money.
Socios insists that it exists for the benefit of fans rather than as a means of currency speculation. “These tokens are for fans,” a company spokesperson said.
In December, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned an advert by Arsenal for the club’s Socios tokens. The ASA deemed that the club “trivialised investment in cryptoassets and took advantage of consumers’ inexperience or credulity” in a promotion for Socios that featured three first-team players. Arsenal argued they “believed Socios was well known in the footballing community as a cryptocurrency platform… and viewers of the post would understand that Fan Tokens had to be bought with cryptocurrency”.
At Crystal Palace, the latest club to sign up, fans have held up a banner calling the company “parasites”.
We stand alongside @FYPFanzine & all supporters in opposing Socios involvement at our club
This attempt to exploit & profit from fans loyalty through an immoral pay-per-vote crypto scheme is rejected by the Palace support
We call on the club to terminate the partnership.#CPFC https://t.co/tp3DNZUTQa pic.twitter.com/PIPUSfPzhD
— Holmesdale Fanatics (@ultrascpfc) December 15, 2021
One of the more baffling deals in the Premier League is Manchester United’s agreement with Tezos, which describes itself as “one of the world’s most advanced and sustainable blockchains”. United agreed a £20 million per year deal with Tezos to sponsor their training kit in February.
A blockchain is a decentralised computer network, which underpins cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and ethereum. Tezos is an open-source project — meaning people can modify and share it because it is publicly accessible — which makes it very unusual as a sponsor.
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There are a lot of environmental concerns about blockchains, which require vast computing power to operate. Tezos, though, claims to be sustainable.
Another ethical issue surrounding blockchain technology is that it is closely associated with financial speculation. As well as being a blockchain, Tezos issues a cryptocurrency token that can be bought and sold on exchanges for financial gains or losses, potentially exposing fans to risk.
With little regulation in place, the cryptocurrency sector is expanding so rapidly that it is sometimes hard to establish what exactly particular companies do.
Earlier this season Norwich City — after cancelling a sponsorship deal with BK8 when the gambling company was found to have used highly sexualised images of women on social media — announced a deal with a firm called Scallop, a cryptocurrency app.
Forex and trading
One of the most high-profile new Premier League sponsors this season is FBS, which appears on the shirts of Leicester City as well as being an “official partner” of Barcelona. Leicester’s statement marking the club’s record deal describes the firm as an “international trading company”.
The FBS website shows that it facilitates trading in cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange, and contracts for difference (CFDs), carrying the legally-mandated disclaimer that “CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage”.
The word leverage is key and effectively means that customers can lose more money than they put in, unlike in conventional gambling or when buying stocks. Sales of CFDs to retail customers in the UK are tightly regulated, although FBS is based in Cyprus.
FBS is not the only company selling CFDs that has a prominent role in football. EToro has deals with Arsenal, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Leeds, Southampton and Newcastle, as well as many other European clubs.
The firm, based in Israel, offers trading on a huge range of financial assets including CFDs as well as foreign exchange trading. Many people may understand the term foreign exchange to mean changing their pounds into euros to take on holiday, but the reality is far more risky and complex, essentially betting on the movements of currency.
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It is unclear whether the market here is ordinary match-going football fans or those watching on television around the world.
West Ham’s shirt sleeves carry the logo of Scope Markets, another firm that offers complex, leveraged financial products that the Financial Conduct Authority warns may not be suitable for retail customers who may be exposed to big losses if they do not know what they are doing.
Burnley and Palace have deals with Astropay. Burnley described Astropay as “the global leader in online payment solutions” when announcing the logo would appear on their shirt sleeves earlier this season.
Analysis of social media posts about the firm, as well as customer reviews on the website TrustPilot, suggests the company’s product can be used to top up gambling apps. Astropay has been contacted by The Athletic for comment.
What next?
Only one Premier League club does not appear to have a sponsor that falls into any of the categories above: Brighton & Hove Albion.
It is understood that this has a counter-intuitive impact on sponsorship deals, the club steering clear of involvement in activities that could leave them open to criticism.
A notable caveat to this is that the club is owned by Tony Bloom. Bloom, just like Brentford owner Matthew Benham, made his fortune in sports betting, using sophisticated models to predict the outcome of sporting events and win bets in the big Asian markets.
Brighton are also sponsored by gambling company Betway, but this firm does have a significant UK presence, unlike the various gambling sponsors outlined above. The club also had a deal with eToro until recently.
There is no suggestion any of the companies outlined in this piece are acting illegally but the pressure is mounting from fans over these categories of sponsorship.
Football sponsorship can be an excellent thing, helping pay the stars who entertain us and reducing the money clubs need to squeeze directly from supporters.
But with the costs of running a top club constantly spiralling upwards, it will become increasingly hard to compete financially if they reject the controversial sponsorship deals their rivals embrace.
(Photos: Getty Images; graphic: Tom Slator)