Betting Operators Turn to the Championship Following Premier League Sponsorship Rule Change

For many years, the English Premier League has been a hotbed of gambling sponsorships.

During the 2025/26 season, eleven of the 20 competing teams promoted a betting firm via a front-of-shirt sponsorship deal.

However, a voluntary ban on such partnerships – first agreed back in 2023 – has now kicked in, with the Premier League season set to kick off on Friday without any gambling sponsors allowed.

So, a handful of operators have turned to the next best thing: the Championship. The second-tier campaign got underway at the weekend, with seven of the 24 clubs now bearing a gambling sponsor on the front of their playing shirts.

Brand Awareness

Seven clubs were sponsored by a betting firm during the 2025/26 season as well, however two of those – Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday – were relegated to League One.

So the new campaign number is a real terms increase, with Midnite so keen to promote their platform they now sponsor three Championship clubs: Middlesbrough, replacing former partner Unibet, Sheffield United and Wolves, whose controversial agreement with unlicensed Vietnamese operator DEBET has come to an end.

Birmingham City are to be sponsored by Coral – the first time in the company’s history that they have partnered with a football club in such a way, while Mr Q has switched from Watford to QPR.

Cardiff City (DragonBet), Norwich City (BetWright), Preston (Pub Casino), Southampton (Midnite) and West Brom (Mega Riches) will all have a gambling logo on their shirt sleeves or on their shorts.

Although naturally less prestigious than the Premier League, the Championship still has plenty of appeal to operators as it is broadcast on Sky Sports – with some matches getting nearly one million TV viewers.

ITV, the free-to-air channel, also has access to a handful of Championship games, while fans still continue to pour through the turnstiles in the second-tier – total attendances topped 12 million spectators in 2025/26.

That’s a huge captive audience of sports fans, so you can see why the Championship holds such appeal for betting firms – especially with the Premier League now off limits.

Big Numbers

At the time of writing, 17 of the 20 Premier League Clubs had agreed a sponsorship deal for the 2026/27 campaign.

Tech and finance were the main sectors to replace gambling, while three clubs – the high-flying Arsenal and Manchester United, alongside EPL new boys Hull City – will be sponsored by airlines.

The likes of Everton, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace, who drew criticism for their deals with unlicensed gambling firms in 2025/26, have moved on to CMC Markets, Vitality Insurance and Temporal respectively.

Aston Villa have swapped Betano for Visit Rwanda, while Brentford and Fulham have replaced their betting sponsors with Indeed and ClickHouse.

But the full-time whistle hasn’t been blown on gambling sponsorships full stop, with Premier League clubs still able to show betting logos on their shirt sleeves and/or shorts – Aston Villa, Bournemouth and Everton are just three of the teams to have taken advantage of this loophole.

Buddying up with a Premier League outfit can be lucrative for gambling companies, who are able to advertise to huge audiences around the globe. The data suggests that three billion people watch an EPL game in 188 different countries each season… that’s plenty of eyeballs for your branding.

That perhaps explains why Betway have been willing to pen a deal with Manchester United that will cost them £20 million a year.

Although their logo won’t feature on the front of United’s shirt, they will feature on pitch side hoardings, on TV interview backdrops and on the front of the club’s training kit.