The UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has launched the long-awaited consultation on banning illegal gambling sponsors from sports.
The announcement comes just days after the DCMS confirmed to SBC News that the consultation is pending, at a time when licensed operators – most notably Entain – are becoming increasingly frustrated with the visibility their black market counterparts have across top-flight British sports, namely the Premier League (PL).
And while front-of-shirt gambling sponsorships in the league are coming to an end thanks to a voluntary commitment by a large number of PL clubs for the start of the 2026/27 season, the branding of illegal gambling platforms will still be visible on kits to some extent.
One prominent example of this has been Everton moving the logo of Stake, a major unlicensed online casino, to its sleeve.
Gambling sponsors are a relatively major funding stream for UK sports clubs. It becomes an issue, however, when these sponsors are not allowed to offer services to UK customers, in other words lacking a licence from the Gambling Commission.
Nevertheless, we’ve recently seen such companies nest on the kits of some of the biggest football teams in the UK. Examples from recent years include AFC Bournemouth and BJ88, Wolverhampton FC and DEBET, Fulham FC and SBOTOP, as well as Leicester City and BC.GAME among others.
Both the Gambling Commission and top-level football figureheads thought they had it figured out for a while – just make sure that these companies geo-block their services so that players across Britain can’t access them.
However, as it turns out, this was very easy to circumvent through a simple installation of a VPN, which has now become quite a common practice thanks to other unrelated UK government policies regarding online age verification.
Now that this has become a big enough issue, the DCMS is ready to address it through the latest round of consultation.
DCMS outlines key areas for concern
Citing three main areas of concern – player protection, safeguarding the licensed gambling market’s integrity, and preventing money-laundering risk – the DCMS now wants “to ban anyone, including sports clubs and bodies, from entering into a sponsorship or advertising agreement with a gambling provider that is not licensed by the Gambling Commission”.
In order to do so, the government is looking to introduce secondary legislation to provide the State Secretary with power to make regulation controlling advertising of gambling, subject to Parliamentary approval.
A potential implementation of this legislation would make it a criminal offence to be partnered with an unlicensed operator, with financial penalties for each day of committing an offence likely to follow suit.
Of note, such a ban would not affect white label agreements that are compliant with the Gambling Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP), at least not at this stage, with further discussions between the Commission and the DCMS to explore whether more action is required on that front.
Online advertising and sponsorships are also not included in the primary focus of the consultation, with the DCMS instead finding issue largely with in-stadium advertising.
Therefore, a closer collaboration between the DCMS and broadcasting authority Ofcom is expected, targeting illegal gambling advertisements during broadcasts on television and radio.
Evidence and feedback is welcomed as part of the consultation to fully grasp what impact would a ban of unlicensed sponsors have on the financial viability of sports, clubs, and leagues, and mitigate any unforeseen risks.
Stakeholders have an 8-week period until 9 September, 2026, to submit their responses before any legislation is laid before Parliament.
