Play the Game reveals the extent of football's reliance on betting and crypto sponsorships

There are times when it feels that club football only exists to promote gambling and crypto businesses. Spectators in the stands and TV viewers are bombarded non-stop with ads for a bewildering number of companies on the clothes of players and officials, perimeter boards, and television ads. 

Research by Play the Game has unearthed some striking figures which illustrate how gambling and crypto companies appear as sponsors everywhere in football, even where you can't or are not supposed to look.

The research has gathered data about partnerships between gambling and crypto businesses and clubs in nine top-tier football leagues: the European 'Big Five' (England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France) and one league each from four other continental confederations: India (Super League, AFC), Mexico (Liga MX, CONCACAF), Nigeria (Premier Football League, CAF), and Brazil (Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, CONMEBOL). 

The Oceanian Football Confederation (OCF) was left out, as professional football is far less developed in that region, where the overwhelming majority of top clubs are either amateur or semi-professional. 

Figure 1 offers a visualisation of the grip the gambling and crypto industries have on football in these nine leagues.

Figure 1: Share of football clubs with at least one betting, crypto, or crypto betting partner across football leagues

The borders between sports betting and crypto companies are blurred

Play the Game has previously covered the problematic nature of football's partnerships with illegal sports betting operators, but many of the same concerns are valid for crypto companies.

The border between both businesses is blurred, as some gambling brands double up as crypto exchanges. This is the case with the shirt sponsors of Premier League's Leicester City and Southampton in the 2024-25 season, respectively BC.GAME (who were declared bankrupt in Curaçao in November 2024 and subsequently closed their site in the United Kingdom) and Rollbit, which describes itself as a "crypto and NFT casino".

1XBet, banned or blacklisted in countries such as France, UK, Brazil, India and Romania, and the subject of a criminal complaint in Morocco, has launched a crypto-only gambling platform, 1XBit.

Moreover, illegal Asian-facing operators increasingly favour cryptocurrency as a means of payment, which makes transactions virtually untraceable and adds yet another layer of opacity to transactions. This adds to the concerns that those platforms are used for money laundering on a staggering scale: 142 billion USD per year, according to an estimate of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The poorer the league, the more it is exposed to betting

Figure 1 shows that all clubs in the English Premier League and Italian Serie A have betting companies as sponsors, and they are highly prevalent elsewhere, even in Nigeria, despite what the relatively modest numbers suggest.

Nigeria, with 236 million inhabitants, is the most populous country in Africa and is known to be a hotbed of footballing talent. It is also one of the continent's biggest betting markets. An estimated 60 million Nigerians bet on sports and spend an average of 3,000 naira each - just under 2 euros - per day, a figure that only takes licensed operators into account.

Yet, almost all this footballing talent is drained from the domestic game from a young age, leaving the country's top clubs to compete with second- or third-rate players. 

The 'Premier Football League' is broke. The gates are small, the TV coverage minimal and limited to Nigeria itself, which explains why eight of its top division clubs do not have a single sponsor between themselves.  

Out of the twelve who do have sponsors, five have shaken hands with sports betting companies, including illegal operators 1XBet, its sister brand 22bet and Stake, which was recently struck off in Britain.

It is a phenomenon seen everywhere: the poorer a league, the more exposed it is to betting and crypto advertising. It is the same in India, where banned gambling companies are now masquerading as news services to advertise their products. 

Play the Game findings in line with those of UEFA

In the nine leagues surveyed, Play the Game identified 173 active sports betting/online gambling partnerships and 172 deals with crypto assets entities. There were also 72 commercial relationships with crypto betting companies, i.e., sports betting operators that took bets in cryptocurrency and/or doubled up as crypto exchanges themselves.

These findings are in line with the figures quoted in UEFA’s latest benchmarking report, which found that “betting and gambling” was the number one sector in Europe in terms of shirt sponsorship, coming in first place in nine out of the 20 top European leagues.

Table 1: Main shirt sponsors in top 20 leagues

Source: UEFA: The European Club Finance and Investment Landscape, 2024

Table 2: Sponsor industries in the top 20 leagues 2024/25

Source: UEFA: The European Club Finance and Investment Landscape, 2024

Advertising a brand through football is very effective

Gambling and crypto companies target sports, particularly football, because it works. In fast-growing, fiercely competitive sectors, where new actors appear (and disappear) at a mind-spinning rate, brand recognition is paramount, and sport is the quickest and most effective route to promote it to the right demographic in the right territories.

Zondacrypto is a leading crypto exchange in Central and Eastern Europe. The company started in Poland, where they sponsor first division club Pogoń Szczecin, and wished to expand beyond their core market, with Italy as their favoured option.

In 2024, in the space of just a few months, multi-million partnership deals were signed with Serie A's Juventus, Parma, Atalanta and Bologna. The result? According to Zondacrypto's CEO Przemysław Kral "comparing the last half of the year with the second half of last year, we recorded a 10-fold increase in the number of customers from Italy". 

Similarly, San Francisco-based crypto exchange Kraken saw its revenue shoot up by a quite astonishing 128% in 2024 (to 1.5 billion US dollars) in the year when it became the "official crypto and Web3 partner" of Atlético de Madrid, RB Leipzig and Tottenham Hotspur. 

According to industry sources, the tightening of regulations around gambling advertisement in key territories such as the United Kingdom will directly increase the amount of money crypto companies invest in the game (there is already 170 million US dollars per year in the Premier League alone).

The 'principle of communicating vessels' is also valid in football when discussing crypto and sports betting. It is perhaps not that surprising, as it can be difficult to tell where one sector ends and the other begins.

Gambling sponsors are very profitable for football clubs

It is easy to guess why football clubs are so keen to be involved in this race for recognition and market share. Baroness Brady put it succinctly in a debate about the British government's Football Governance Bill in December 2024:

"The typical difference in income between gambling and non-gambling shirt sponsorships is around 40%," she explained.

The Conservative peer was well-placed to make her point: she is a former managing director of Championship club Birmingham City (once a partner of illegal Asian-facing sports betting operator 12bet) and the current vice-chair of Premier League club West Ham United FC, which took on and still has UK gambling company Betway as their shirt sponsor since 2015,  and was previously sponsored by another illegal Asian-facing operator, SBOBET.

"For some Premier League clubs, this decision will mean a reduction of around 20% of their total commercial revenues," she continued.

Baroness Brady was referring here to the premium paid by gambling industry shirt sponsors, but what she said also goes for the usually invisible and overwhelmingly Asian-facing 'gambling partners' which have flocked en masse to European leagues in the last two decades. 

Play the Game's research identified 112 different brands, all of them illegal, which, at one point or another became partners of 'Big Five' European clubs from 2006 onwards. 

Play the Game was told about one illegal operator who approached a Ligue 1 club in the summer of 2023, using a well-known European data collection agency as a go-between, offering 500,000 euros per season for the right to use that club's name in its promotional material. From the club's perspective, this was half a million for nothing. 

To the club's credit, they alerted the French regulator, who advised them to stay away from that potential partner, which they did. Most other clubs won't be that scrupulous—in truth, almost none are. 

Spanish football clubs circumvent ban on gambling advertising

Despite the ban on gambling advertising, which was imposed by the Spanish authorities in 2021, Spanish football clubs are proving particularly popular with the illegal betting industry. 

Play the Game's research shows that 15 out of 20 current La Liga clubs have partnerships in place with illegal Asian-facing sports betting operators. Some of these clubs even have multiple gambling partners, like Atlético de Madrid which in the 2024-2025 season has deals with ATY (also known as Aitiyu), Leyu and K8 (whose Manila office was recently raided by the Filipino police). They can be added to the other six partnerships they had in the recent past. 

Atlético does not list any of these partnerships on its own website and made no public announcement in the case of ATY. The only proof of that partnership is to be found on some of the operator's mirror websites, none of which are accessible from Spain and the rest of Europe.

Screenshot showing the Atlético crest on an Aitiyu website

The many partnerships between Spanish clubs and gambling companies are possible because the Spanish ban on gambling advertising does not extend beyond the country's borders. That enables clubs to strike lucrative deals with Asian-facing brands desperate for the exposure - and veneer of legitimacy - they cannot get in their main markets, as sports betting is not just illegal, but criminalised there. Mainland China remains the most important of these.

Moreover, those operators do not ask for much in return for the millions they spend to link their ever-changing brands to famous and not-so-famous football clubs. They simply want the right to emblazon their websites with the logos of the clubs they do business with and plaster their home pages with photographs of their star players. 

What goes for La Liga also goes for the Bundesliga. As our research shows, 15 of its 18 clubs have deals in place with legitimate, licensed gambling companies, with only RB Leipzig, SC Freiburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach steering clear of the industry. 

Well, up to a point.

Borussia Mönchengladbach is one of six clubs, which include Bayern Munich (188bet) and defending champions Bayer Leverkusen (Kaiyun), which have partnerships in place with illegal operators. In the case of Borussia Mönchengladbach, it's not just one, but two of those operators. One is AYX, one of a myriad brands of the giant Yabo-Kaiyun group, coyly described as "a pioneer of digital sports in Asia" on Gladbach's website, and Queen Casino, one of the few operators to target the illegal Japanese market.

Many deals are not public knowledge

Some clubs take extra care not to make this type of deal public. The only trace of the now-expired partnership between FC Köln and 365 Wanmei Sports, another offshoot of the Yabo-Kaiyun group, is a short post on the Chinese Sina platform.

Traces of an expired partnership between FC Köln and 365 Wanmei Sports can only be found on the Chinese Sina platform (screenshot)

Similarly, FC Augsburg, current partners of Xing Kong (also partners of Borussia Dortmund and yet another Yabo-Kaiyun entity), took the page on which they'd announced their partnership with BOB88 offline almost immediately after closing the deal. 

In England, some clubs also prefer to hide partnerships of that kind, given the growing discontent of public opinion with football's addiction to gambling. 

Chelsea FC have been long term partners of the Yabo-Kaiyun group, first promoting their Leyu brand, then switching to Kaiyun itself in 2022. However, British visitors to their website will be unaware of this, as Kaiyun is absent from it. But if visitors use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and access the site from Vietnam or Hong Kong, Kaiyun is back.

Accessing the website for Chelsea FC through a VPN reveals that Kaiyun Sports is a partner of the football club. (Screenshot)

Local legislation can also prohibit clubs from making such partnerships public, as is the case in Italy. There, every single of the twenty Serie A clubs has deals in place with licensed gambling companies that can be advertised legally. In addition, fifteen of these clubs have partnerships with Asian-facing operators that, by law, should not be listed on their websites.

However, this has not prevented Juventus, who hold the current world record for the number of such concurrent partnerships - six! - to include three of them in their list of partners, namely Yabo-Kaiyun-linked OD Sports and Xing Kong, plus Vietnamese DAGA, a name which should be a concern, as it is the term used to describe cockfighting in Vietnam.

Internazionale too do not shy away from telling the world which illegal bookmakers they do business with, namely Kaiyun and its sister brand Leyu, once linked with PSG and now in bed with Milan among others.

Other clubs are more discreet. There is no sign of mysterious Jita 88 on Bologna's website or Nine Game-Jiou Yu on Fiorentina's, though the commercial relationship with those clubs is real.

Then there is Torino, whose "regional partner", illegal bookmaker 2121, is "not visible [...] as per Italian law" when the club's website is accessed from Italy itself. 2121 will not mind that too much, as they have no customers there.

Screenshot from Torino's website accessed from Italy

But access it in Hong Kong or Vietnam, and 2121 pops up.

Screenshot from Torino's website accessed from outside Italy

It is a win-win situation for the illegal operator, who is given visibility where it matters, and who actually prefers to make itself as discreet as possible in countries which it does not target and where it is not allowed to do business anyway. The law, here, ends up playing into the hands of the illegal companies.

Some betting companies pose as news services

A crude, if efficient way to circumvent local advertising and licensing regulations has recently come into fashion in some markets where sports betting is totally illegal, especially, but not only in South Asia. 

Some operators now pose as "news services", using the same names and barely changed logos to promote their brands. This is how "Wolf777 News" can be displayed on the shirts of Indian Super League's FC Goa or "Dafanews" can sponsor Punjab FC and Mumbai City FC, and "batery.ai" partner East Bengal and Kerala Blasters.

They all play in the same competition which is supposed to be 100 per cent sports betting free.

These so-called "news websites" are remarkable in that they have no visible source of financing: they are free to use, do not require prior registration and carry no banners and no advertisements. 

The reason for this is that what they are advertising is themselves, but in their other guise as sports betting operators and online casinos Wolf 777, dafabet and baterybet. 

1XBet use the "1XBat" moniker for the same purpose, whilst Chinese sports betting brand DX (or DXTY) has, somehow, managed to go round the Spanish ban on gambling advertising by posing as 'DXTY News' and entering into a sponsorship deal with La Liga's Alaves. 

DXTY News does not even pretend to be a serious concern: its website is beyond rudimentary, and none of its 'articles' are signed.

Screenshot from the website for DXTY News which has a sponsorship deal with La Liga's Alaves. 

Crypto also goes under the radar

Illegal sports betting operators are not the only partners of elite football clubs to play hide-and-seek. 

Whilst most 'fan token' companies such as the ubiquitous socios[.]com and the myriad crypto exchanges and trading platforms which have proliferated in football over the past years thrive on visibility, as football serves as a public springboard to their business, there are also some who escape detection because advertising them would be against the law. 

What was true of 2121 in Italy is also true of the illegal Russo-Cypriot 1XBet platform. A visitor to Paris Saint-Germain's French website will have no idea that this company, which is not just unlicensed, but blacklisted in France, is one of their club's key partners. 

However, access PSG's own list of partners in Spain, where, to the dismay of other European regulators, 1XBet was granted a licence (and remains, to this day, one of FC Barcelona's main partners), and 1XBet is there, as shown in the screenshots below.

Screenshot of PSG's partners list when accessed from France.

Screenshot of PSG's partners list when accessed from Spain.

But 1XBet is not the only company whose name only appears when PSG's website is accessed from Spain. "Premium Partner" "Brilliantcrypto" is also masked elsewhere. 

However, the French website of the "sustainable play-to-earn game" is not shy about the brand's association with the perennial Ligue 1 champions. 

Screenshot from Brilliantcrypto's website, which has a partnership with PSG.

Brilliantcrypto, the brainchild of Japanese billionaire gamer Baba Naruatsu, purports to be a company devoted to the "development, operation and sales of GameFi and other services utilising blockchain technology, cryptocurrency and NFTs". 

There is no suggestion here that this company is engaged in illegal activities. In fact, by going invisible in territories where it is unlicensed, Brilliantcrypto is showing compliance with local regulations. 

It is used here merely as an example of how easy it is to overlook genuine partnerships, and, consequently, to underestimate the fast-growing reach of crypto businesses within football, just as it is to overlook just how many gambling operators are invested in the sport.