The UK Government may soon block unlicensed gambling companies from entering sponsorship deals with British sports teams.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is set to begin consulting on the plans from this spring.
Lisa Nandy, Culture Secretary, is quoted in the Government’s press release, saying: “When placing a bet on the big match, fans deserve to know the sites they’re using are properly regulated, with the right protections in place.”
Any ban would extend to Premier League football clubs – 11 clubs currently feature gambling sponsorships on the front of their shirts, though from next season there will be none, thanks to a league-wide voluntary cessation of the practice.
Nandy added: “It’s not right that unlicensed gambling operators can sponsor some of our biggest football clubs, raising their profile and potentially drawing fans towards sites that don’t meet our regulatory standards.”
The Government’s plans, if implemented, will restrict any gambling company without a UK licence from entering into any kind of sponsorship arrangement with any British sports club.
That voluntary withdrawal of front-of-shirt gambling advertising in the Premier League still allows for other forms of sponsorship including shirt sleeves, training kits and advertising hoardings.
These new Government measures would prevent even those.
Currently, a number of Premier League clubs have deals with gambling companies that do not possess a valid UK Gambling Commission licence.
Stake, Sbotop, Bj88, Debet and 96.com are among those operators currently gaining massive exposure to UK and global footballing audiences through these deals.
It is thought that as these companies are not legally accessible in the UK, their presence may push people towards gambling on unlicensed sites.
Baroness Twycross commented: “We know the real harm that unregulated gambling can cause, exploiting vulnerable people and leaving consumers without the protections they deserve.”
Twycross is involved in the leadership of the Government’s separate ‘Illegal Gambling Taskforce,’ set up to encourage collaboration between banks, payment providers and social media platforms in order to mitigate the dangers posed to consumers by the black market.
When the Government published the Autumn Budget and confirmed plans to raise remote gaming duty from 21% to 40%, many argued that the unintended consequence would be to embolden and inflate the black market.
By way of counteracting this threat, it was announced that an additional £26m of funding would be injected into the Gambling Commission over three years to aid black market enforcement efforts.
Stake gave up its UK licence after a Gambling Commission investigation into a social media promotion fronted by internet personality and porn actor, Bonnie Blue
