The Premier League He has broken, at least partially, with one of the longest-standing and deepest-rooted relationships in England. As of the 2025-26 season, none of its 20 teams will be able to carry advertising on the front of their shirts from any bookmaker, a decision promoted from the bowels of the British Parliament and which has voluntarily accepted the league, the first sports competition professional of the country that adopts this position. Although there are nuances, since the teams will be able to promote these establishments anywhere else on the kit, on the training jerseys or on billboards in the stadiums, the truth is that the change in the situation is radical, since there are currently eight teams that have this type of sponsorship. It’s time to reset the accounts.
According to the sports website Sportingpedia, a total of 48 million pounds (about 54 million euros) will be compromised annually by the decision. Everton (11 million), West Ham (11), Southampton (8,5), Leeds (6,8), Newcastle (5,6), Bournemouth (4,5), Fulham (3,4) y Brentford (2.8) entered for wearing the logos of different betting houses on their shirts, shields used to being in the middle of the table or fighting to avoid relegation (this season, except for Newcastle and Brentford, all are in the middle of the table for below).
Teams that the search for new sponsors puts them in a bind, because the great advantage of having bookmakers as allies is that they usually pay up to twice as much as other types of partners. That is why the ban will run from the summer of 2025 and not immediately, so that the less wealthy in the Premier have time to look for alternatives and not break contracts.
In this way, a tribal exercise with hundreds of years of tradition is broken. It is true that since ancient times, already in the first Olympic Games or in the Roman coliseums, betting was one more element of the show, but its most modern modality cannot be understood without the Anglo-Saxon world as its cradle. The first forecasts of leisure or sporting events in the United Kingdom date from the 18th century, in horse and greyhound races, to later adhere to the rise of team sports, almost all of which were invented in ancient Britain, such as football, rugby or cricket.
Such was the fanaticism of the islanders for the forecast that even in the 1962-63 soccer league season, during one of the harshest winters on record and after the cancellation of several games due to weather conditions, the industry decided to gather to a committee of wise men to invent the results of the postponed matches and, in this way, that the citizens could continue leaving the wages. The imaginary results were even broadcast on national radio. A madness that over the years has been surrounded by politics.
Already in 2005 a new law was approved to restrict the free bar of bets that slid across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom and its influence on the beautiful game. Even the second division bears the name of one of the most influential houses in the country (Sky Bet Championship), a commitment that contributes a juicy 47 million euros a year to the silver competition.
In the footsteps of Spain
England follows the path that other major European competitions have already taken, such as the Spanish one, which in 2021 experienced a similar government ban (in that season there were 42 clubs between First and Second with bookmakers as main sponsors), refugees now the national teams in the autonomous communities they represent and in companies of all kinds, from the textile sector to the energy or banking sector. Now it’s up to the oldest league in the world to reinvent itself.
