Premier League clubs will start the new season without betting companies displayed on the front of their matchday shirts as league-wide restrictions come into effect.
The changes will force eight of the league’s 20 clubs to find new front-of-shirt partners for the 2026/27 season, while also putting some of the most valuable advertising real estate in world sport on the market.
At Fulham Football Club, online betting company SBOTOP has been replaced by Silicon Valley data infrastructure company ClickHouse.
With multiple clubs looking for new sponsors at the same time, companies like ClickHouse suddenly have access to opportunities that might otherwise be difficult to obtain.
“We had a unique opportunity to sponsor an institution like this, and we couldn’t pass it up,” Tanya Bragin, ClickHouse’s vice president of product and marketing, told CNBC.
The influx of available sponsorship inventory may also have given prospective partners more leverage in negotiations.
“If you have more inventory on the market at the same time, it becomes a buyer’s market,” Bragin said.
However, that does not necessarily mean that Premier League sponsorship fees have become cheaper. Bragin said the opportunity presented to Clickhouse remains competitive, reflecting the continued demand for exposure through one of the world’s most-watched sports leagues.
For ClickHouse, choosing a Premier League club wasn’t just about finding the biggest club available. Sponsoring one of the Premier League’s big clubs would have required a fairly significant investment, and Fulham, who finished 11th in the 20-team league last season, became a more attractive proposition.
“Obviously, sponsoring a top team would obviously require a significant investment for us,” Bragin said. “We thought maybe mid-range would be ideal in terms of price range, until we became a publicly traded company.”
London is another big factor, and ClickHouse sees working with a team based in the UK capital as a global marketing opportunity as well as an ideal location to entertain customers and partners.
“For me personally, hospitality has been key in terms of leading marketing and go-to-market efforts,” Bragin said.
For bookmakers, Premier League sponsorship provided access to millions of potential customers who could use their products directly. The companies that replace them may value soccer for entirely different reasons.
This change is also underway elsewhere across the league, with new sectors moving into positions previously occupied by betting brands. Everton replaced betting company Stake with financial services company CMC Markets, while Brentford replaced Hollywood Bets with recruitment platform Indeed.
However, bookmakers themselves will not necessarily withdraw from soccer. Henry Beasley, marketing manager at British bookmaker Fitzdares, said the industry had been preparing for years.
“It’s been expected for a while. Bookmakers are preparing for it,” Beasley told CNBC.
Gambling sponsorships moved elsewhere
Premier League clubs will still be able to display betting branding on their sleeves and training kits, but English Football League clubs, which play in the other four divisions of English professional football, will not be subject to the self-regulation.
This leaves bookmakers with another way to maintain a presence in English football, potentially making some of their remaining sponsor stock more valuable.
“Bookmakers will increasingly participate in sleeve sponsorships and the value of those sleeve sponsorships will increase significantly,” Beasley said.
manchester united They recently signed a training kit sponsorship deal with Betway worth up to £20 million (about $27 million) a year, and Tottenham Hotspur are also reported to be using the Bet brand for their training wear.
Therefore, for bookmakers, this restriction may require a change in strategy rather than an exit from football.
“It’s about being a little more strategic,” Beasley said. “We try to ask ourselves, ‘How can we continue to tell our brand story through sponsorship?’ And ultimately that should be the focus.”
The continued presence of gambling brands elsewhere in the game also raises questions about how much this restriction will ultimately reduce fans’ exposure to gambling advertising, or whether some of that spending and awareness will simply move elsewhere.
