SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The global betting sector had a lot to contend with during the peak of summer 2024 with a plethora of major sporting events taking place whilst partnerships, M&As and regulatory developments continued.
July started off strong with Kambi announcing its new CEO, Werner Becher, succeeding incumbent Kristian Nylén, who ended his 14-year tenure as Chief Executive.
Meanwhile, during a time which saw a flurry of football gambling deals, Burnley FC named as its sponsor. The operator’s logo was placed on the front of Burnley’s home, away and third kits for the 2024/25 season.
BC.GAME netted a similar deal at Premier League side Leicester, appearing on the first team kit, as well as bj88 when it became the front-of-shirt partner of AFC Bournemouth for the next two seasons.
Betway was also named the title sponsor of Africa’s top-flight football league, Premier Soccer League (PSL), while Sportsbet.io linked up with Hull City and VBET with the Maltese Premier League – and then the Malta National Team the following month.
However, at Man City, Betway also became the official global betting partner of the club in a deal that “moved away from shirt sponsorships”. Terms of this deal covered marketing activations and content creation, whilst Betway’s logo featured across the club’s digital and in-stadia assets. The brand kept extremely busy during Q3 and continued to secure even more football deals such as with Chelsea.
Over at EveryMatrix, the firm completed the rebranding of DeepCI to PartnerMatrix Intelligence, strengthening its all-in-one marketing solution for igaming affiliates.
The update saw the brand merge DeepCI intelligence solutions onto the PartnerMatrix platform, completing the objectives of an M&A deal announced in July 2023.
Interestingly, still during the month of July, Betway shared that it was to begin its ‘planned exit’ from US sportsbook markets.
The decision followed an ‘extensive internal review’ undertaken by NYSE-listed parent company Super Group, which determined the closure of Betway’s US activity in the states of Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Meanwhile, summer’s main event was of course the 2024 Euro’s – a competition sponsored by Kaizen Gaming’s Betano brand – which saw a heartbreaking final for England against Spain.
For brands such as bet365, the heartache of watching England lose was twinned with the pain of heavy payouts upon some of the final results.
The operator told SBC at the time: “The semi-final markets screamed that both games would be tight and low scoring but we had entertaining matches with early goals and both Super Boosts of Messrs Mbappe (2/5 – Evs) and Kane (1/2 – Evs) having a Shot on Target landing. The early injury to Memphis Depay cost us £2.8m in bet credits thanks to our Soccer Substitute Guarantee.”
For EveryMatrix, the final generated the highest number of bets with 1.7x more placed on the final compared to the average across other Euro 2024 games, but equally it scored the lowest margin.
However, a positive for the competition was that no suspicious betting activity or other match-fixing concerns were detected during 2024, UEFA announced.
To deliver this outcome, the governing body developed a bespoke anti-match-fixing action plan, combining education and prevention sessions with monitoring and intelligence.
New direction for UK sponsorship
Still in July, some great news at the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) as it reported that its largest members donated £122.5m over four years to tackle problem gambling and gambling harm, new figures have shown.
Described as a record funding increase, this total is £22.5m more than the £100m the BGC’s four largest members pledged to contribute between 2020 and March 2024.
Around a similar time, the BGC announced new Codes of Conduct for gambling related agreements across a number of majorsporting bodies.
Aiming to significantly raise the standards of sports sponsorship deals, the BGC had been working alongside the Premier League, English Football League, The FA, Women’s Super League, Rugby Football League, British Horseracing Authority plus official bodies representing darts, snooker and boxing.
Similarly, English football announced that it will adopt a new Code of Conduct on ‘Gambling Related Agreements’, safeguarded by the FA, English Football League (EFL), Premier League and Women’s Super League.
The principles of the Code were agreed upon by football leagues and authorities in response to the Gambling Review, in which the government instructed football to ensure gambling is promoted in a socially responsible manner.
Over at the BHA, Tim Naylor revealed that he was stepping down from his role as Director of Integrity and Regulation.
Having spent seven and a half years at the organisation, Naylor was the first Head of Regulation and oversaw the successful completion of the Rules re-write in 2019.
However, it was an extremely productive quarter for the BHA, as shortly after this, the organisation was awarded the Gold Award by the UK government.
The award is given to employers with a demonstrated “exceptional commitment” to those who serve and have served, such as veterans and reservists, as well as their families.
In the same month, the BHA also highlighted the stewarding process, which occurs at every race meet to ensure that what unfolds on the track does so within the Rules of Racing, expressing its deep care for the sport.
Back to even more football betting partnerships, August saw bet365 become the first official sports betting partner of the UEFA Champions League (UCL) in a three-year deal.
Covering the men’s competition, the move saw the UK operator gain significant brand exposure on in-game perimeter LED boards, media backdrops, as well as Champions League digital channels.
Meanwhile, there was a shock over in Chinese football as the CFA had to enforce lifetime bans on 43 individuals for match-fixing and betting related corruption. This followed a two-year investigation, with the probe uncovering a series of online gambling, match-fixing and bribery cases.
Finishing off the month , La Française des Jeux’s (FDJ) acquisition of Kindred Group officially got cleared by the country’s competition regulator, the Autorité de la concurrence.
Kindred – parent of the Unibet and 32Red brands – also announced a new front-of-shirt sponsorship deal with Rangers FC which cemented the collaboration as the ‘longest running in British football’.
Finally, after SBC Summit Lisbon occurred at the end of September – which drew 25,000 industry professionals to the Feira Internacional de Lisbo – we announced our awards with companies such as Soft2Bet, Betsson Group and Kaizen Gaming amongst the standout winners.
