Was the Gambling Sector the Biggest Sponsor of Football in 2022?

Over the past year, gambling sponsors have enjoyed the joint-third most significant rise in front-of-shirt sponsorships. Gambling fans have probably seen that many football athletes are ambassadors at the online casino website realcasinosuk.com and other gambling websites. A study conducted by sponsorship and commercial intelligence company Caytoo looked at the sponsors on the front-of-shirt for over two hundred leading English football, rugby, and cricket teams and found that gambling is now a significant contributor to front-of-shirt sponsorships. Football, rugby, and cricket are the three sports where gambling comes second only to the automotive industry in terms of sponsorships.

Football and Sports Sponsorships

Gambling sponsorships dropped from 15.3% last year to 8.0% as the sector retreated from these sponsorships in 2022. As a result of the increased concentration in specific industries, automotive, gambling, retail, manufacturing/engineering, and professional services remained the top five sectors across the three sports, with 42.1% of sponsors coming from these industries.

The sport of football continues to be dominated by gambling sponsorships (15.4% of all sponsors, significantly higher than Energy & Utilities (8.6%). There has been a nearly quadrupling in the share of Professional Services from 1% to 3.8%. Regarding front-of-shirt sponsorships, manufacturing/engineering saw the largest increase, rising from 4.9% to 7.5%. Retail followed at 6.7% and 8.8%. Similarly, alcohol and consumer goods were down from last year.

The Leading Sponsors

Regarding individual sponsorships, Dafabet, Seat Unique, and Utilita carried the most sponsorships each. The next four were Uptonsteel, Cinch, Stake, John Pye Auctions, Morgan, Kia, and Knight Frank. In English football, 92 sponsors supported men's football, and 12 sponsored women's football.

Sponsorships of Prominent Football Clubs

There is a stronger connection between football and gambling online than many people realise. Sponsorship plays a direct role in this. It is obvious that casinos are going to sponsor football teams. A massive audience of 3.5 billion watches football around the world, which makes it an ideal advertising medium. There is a lot to cover, but you probably know most of its specifics at this point. We'll take a look at football clubs with casinos as major sponsors.

West Ham United

Betway, a leading online gambling company, sponsors West Ham United. With respect to how large and significant the deal was, the deal was huge in 2015. As far as industry standards go, it is still a high deal and is not something that many other clubs can match. The sponsor's logo is displayed on all training shirts worn by senior team members.

Real Madrid

Sporty Group is going big in Africa, partnering with Real Madrid and taking the number one Spanish football team to the continent. Sporty Group has grown into a fully integrated sports entertainment business providing bookmaker services and live event operations across dozens of countries. In March 2022, Real Madrid announced that it had suspended its new agreement with Fonbet that started in 2021. Fonbet has been collaborating with different companies such as Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and other great teams from all over the world for years.

Everton

Everton Football Club has confirmed an agreement with gaming giant Stake.com in 2022. Everton had a sponsorship deal with SportPesa that they terminated in 2020. It was confirmed during June 2022 that Everton had signed a multi-year deal with UK£10 million a year with Stake.com as the shirt sponsor.

Manchester City

Premier League club Manchester City is a well-known and popular club worldwide. As a matter of fact, 8xBet is also one of their sponsors since July 2022. As explained in their statement, 8xBet wanted to give back to the club and its fans for their support due to its great potential. It goes without saying that punters will also reap the benefits. As you might expect, not all details about the deal have been made public.

AC Milan

Another club with a gambling sponsorship. The AC Milan gambling sponsorships are mutually beneficial for both the club and MonkeyLeague. On the one hand, this sponsorship offers the Italian football club a lot of money, which is vital for improving the team and adding new players to compete with big European clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, and FC Bayern. The sponsorship also improves their brand image since it gives them free publicity from an advertisement which will catch the attention of bettors and gamblers around the world.

Conclusion

Football is the most popular sport in the world. Many football clubs have achieved financial success by gaining many fans and followers. They are also able to increase their popularity and gain big sponsorships. The biggest sponsorships of football clubs in 2023 will be done or gambling brands since an increasing number of fans gamble and play casino games.