Betting is, at the moment, one of the single largest industries in terms of sports sponsorships in the UK. Just under half of all Premier League teams are sponsored by one betting company or another, and these deals have naturally been lucrative for both sides. But just how lucrative, exactly?
Today, we’re going to delve into the financial details of the sponsorships deals in UK sports, primarily as they pertain to Premier League football. While betting sponsorships are common throughout UK sports, the amounts of money involved in Premier League deals dwarf all others.
Let’s find out more.
Financial benefits of sponsorships
Let’s first look at the direct financial benefits of these sponsorships. They take more forms than you might realize. Obviously, the most clear and direct are the shirt sponsorships. In total, in the Premier League, sportsbook shirt sponsorships came to a combined total of over £100 million. This increases year on year, up by around 50% from a decade ago.
There are of course other benefits, such as payment to clubs for participating in advertising campaigns of one form or another.
The benefits for the premier league betting operators are also financial to a degree, as well, even though they are paying for the ads. Naturally, the get increased interest from the adverts, which improves revenue. But they can also profit from deals on commercially sold shirts, since they still bear their name and branding.
And it’s not just the teams that benefit as a whole.
Players’ benefits
One thing that many betting operators have done is taken big name celebrities and run marketing campaigns off their known faces. This is very commonly done with well known football players. In these cases, there are huge financial benefits for the individual players, making hundreds of thousands of pounds in some cases just for their appearance.
But players’ wages, by and large, are not really affected by these deals. The money would always be able to be made back somewhere else, and it’s not as though there are no willing sponsors from outside the betting industry who could fill in these gaps.
What, then, would it cost the sports industry in the UK if a ban on these sponsorships were put in place?
The cost
The data seems to suggest that the cost would overall not be that great and would come with many social benefits. A recent report concluded than an outright ban for the EFL would only cost it around £26 million. This might sound like a lot to the rest of us, but is pocket change for an industry with as much money in it as the EFL or the Premier League.
This figure equals around 2.5 percent of annual revenue. Again, this cost could easily be recouped elsewhere with non-betting sponsorships.
For the combined total of Premier League sponsorships to equal only £100 million, this, again, may seem like a lot, but is a tiny figure in the grand scheme of things.
So, while there is currently a lot of money coming into the sports industry from betting, there’s no reason to suggest it wouldn’t flow equally well from elsewhere.
There are clearly arguments on both sides, then. While these regulations are coming under closer scrutiny, some believe that there will be no outright ban on such sponsorships because there’s simply too much money involved. There are always costs, even if social costs, of this kind of sponsorship, though, and more and more people are beginning to take that into account. One thing is for sure, though: these sponsorships are worth a lot of money.
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