The gambling industry remains the most active sponsor in the market, with 42 unique team deals across the top 10 European soccer leagues. This makes it almost twice as prominent in the market as the next most active, the industrial goods and services market, with 22 deals. The gambling industry’s deals equate to an estimated annual value of $128.32 million, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
GlobalData’s latest report, “Property Profile of Major European Soccer Front-of-Shirt Sponsors 2023-24”, highlights that gambling brand sponsors are present in each of the topflight leagues in England, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Scotland, and Belgium.
Jake Kemp, Sport Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The market remains very active despite looming bans in many of the big leagues in European soccer. The English Premier League announced such plans for the beginning of the 2026-27 season. Despite this, 40% of English topflight players wear gambling brand sponsors on their shirts, with Aston Villa, Burnley, and Fulham each announcing a new gambling brand partner deal ahead of this season, with the former of these agreeing terms up until 2026 (the start of the ban).
“It highlights the continued popularity of the sector despite its taboo and upcoming ban, as many of the smaller teams without the same global appeal look to fully exploit the greater sums of income offered for the rights by gambling brands.”
Across the 10 big European leagues looked at in the aforementioned GlobalData report, there has been a yearly increase of four new gambling-brand shirt sponsorship deals this season. This comes on the back of 12 new deals that have been announced across the continent in the past 12 months.
Kemp concludes: “Based on what has already been seen in the market, we can expect teams to continue to align and sell their rights to betting brands for as long as they possibly can. There does not seem to be a natural and obvious successor to the industry, with the rights likely to be split across multiple industries.
“The financial services and travel & tourism sectors are big investors in sports sponsorship and could be ideal replacements, but they would unlikely dominate the market in the same way that has been seen by betting brands. The market would have perhaps viewed the cryptocurrency sector as the big money replacement 18 months ago, but that bubble has already burst and clubs are much more aware of its unreliability.”
