The UK Government this week announced plans for a blanket ban on sports sponsorships from unlicensed operators.
And, unlike recent UK Government announcements (think back to November and the Autumn Budget...) the Betting & Gaming Council has unequivocally backed those plans.
In theory, these are winning policies. Why wouldn't you stop unlicensed operators from gaining the very same advantages as your licensees on a worldwide stage?
Just how effective those policies will be in genuinely curbing illegal gambling, however, is another matter.
What are the benefits of banning black-market sponsorships?
While it is far too easy to criticise policymakers and highlight the shortcomings of potential action (which we will do shortly...), the first step is to commend the UK Government for addressing this problem.
In principle, there is no one (except perhaps the targeted brands themselves) who should disagree with this move. Unlicensed operators won't pay UK taxes or contribute to the UK economy, so why should they be allowed to prosper on a UK stage with a truly global audience?
Licensed operators, needless to say, are facing increasingly tight regulations, with remote gaming duty set to rise to 40% this April. The very least that should afford them is the opportunity to advertise in the Premier League (and Championship), safe in the knowledge that unlicensed operators can't take that very real estate from them.
Stopping illegal operators from signing such deals makes complete sense from a fairness point of view. It acknowledges the unfair advantage black-market operators previously enjoyed and takes a very reasonable step in the right direction.
What are the shortcomings of a blanket ban?
There are, however, naturally several weaknesses with this policy. One of them is timing.
Next season's voluntary front-of-shirt sponsorship ban means licensed gambling operators will already have less exposure from their own campaigns. So, had this blanket ban been proposed years earlier, the actual effect on unlicensed brands would have been far more concrete.
As Adam Rivers, MD at Alvarez & Marsal, points out, the impact on illicit operators is likely to be "modest" as a result, especially when most of these non-UK brands already block British players.
Their primary audience is in Asia, meaning the landscape of UK gambling itself may remain relatively unchanged.
A fair conclusion is that this blanket sponsorship ban is a no-brainer in principle, but a limited policy in practice
In recent years, meanwhile, Yield Sec Founder Ismail Vali has repeatedly pointed out that the bulk of illegal gambling advertisers target illegal streams.
Given the rising costs of actually watching football legally, via Sky Sports, TNT Sports, Amazon Prime and soon-to-be others, a huge portion of the Premier League audience now streams football illegally anyway.
If black-market operators aren't able to target shirts and advertising hoardings, they will simply double down on this method.
How will football clubs respond?
While gambling operators – licensed or otherwise – are the immediate target of public criticism in most situations, the fact there are so many gambling adverts within UK sport has as much to do with the corporate institutions that are the football clubs themselves.
Apart from any black-market operators that would be banned, the only other actual losers in this situation are the clubs. Famously, gambling sponsors pay far more – and it has been very easy for football teams to say yes to increasingly large sums of cash from increasingly large distances outside the UK.
PR-wise, clubs opposing these policies would be the biggest disaster since the proposal of the Super League – so don't expect anything of the like.
But, quietly, boardrooms up and down the country will acknowledge their reduced negotiating position when seeking a new sponsor.
Where does the UK Government's new taskforce offer hope?
A fair conclusion, therefore, is that this blanket sponsorship ban is a no-brainer in principle, but a limited policy in practice.
Critics (and mostly from within the industry here) will point out that any action means little when the regulated sector is weakened by restrictive policies. This proposed ban, though, still deserves credit.
Where the same Government taskforce, led by Gambling Minister Baroness Twycross, offers much more promise is in other key areas.
There is, in fact, real hope of tackling illegal operators – and perhaps serving as an example to countries with far lower channelisation rates – by addressing advertising on social media platforms.
And, of course, genuinely preventing payments to unlicensed sites on a mass scale would truly make a difference.
The issue in both these areas is the need to deal with such large companies in payments suppliers and social media giants. Their willingness to listen will always be, shall we say, distracted by their bottom line.
Once again, however, there is hope. These new policies are aimed in exactly the right direction. Momentum can be a powerful thing.
Previously, many Asian-facing operators were white-labelled in the UK through TGP Europe, which has since wound up its UK operations
