Sky Bet extends English Football League sponsorship deal
17 November 2017
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Sky Bet has extended its multi-million pound sponsorship handle the English Football League till the summer of 2024.
The gambling operation is the headline sponsor for the Championship, League One and League Two football divisions.
It gets its logo design on t-shirts, and rights for "Bet and Watch" for some matches.
Sky Bet says it will attempt to dissuade issue betting through messaging on t-shirts, and that clubs will benefit through more money.
The deal, which deserves 10s of millions of pounds, has remained in place given that 2013.
Sky Bet said it would be paying 20% more than it has done so far to extend the contract from 2019 to 2024.
This will make the 11-year deal among the longest in expert sport, the firm stated.
The Leeds-based operation, that includes sites such as Sky Vegas and Sky Bingo, is owned by private equity group CVC Capital Partners, external. Broadcaster Sky holds a 20% stake in the company.
The betting industry has actually been under increasing scrutiny from the government, and from the regulator, the Gambling Commission.
Earlier this year the Football Association, English football's governing body, announced it would end sponsorship handle betting companies.
However, competitors organisers, and the clubs themselves, are totally free to take sponsorship from betting companies.
the yohaig code money from the Sky Bet deal will be divided amongst the 72 clubs in the English Football League, which covers the 3 departments below the Premier League.
The president of Sky Bet, Richard Flint told the BBC's Wake up to Money podcast that the English Football League used the profits produced to help them run their daily operations.
He stated: "Without sponsorship from the betting industry there aren't a multitude of sponsors going to get associated with football."
However, there are fears that increasing numbers of young fans are being exposed to gambling adverts.
One of the yohaig code findings of the BBC's annual Price of Football study was that more young football fans bet on video games than play the sport.
About 95% of TV advertisement breaks in live football matches function a minimum of one gambling advert, the BBC discovered in October.
In some matches, 40% of the adverts were for gambling.
Mr Flint informed the BBC that Sky Bet and the English Football League were actively promoting awareness about problem gaming as part of the "When the fun stops. Stop" campaign.
"From the play offs and consisting of next season every t-shirt will have a responsible gambling message on the shirt sleeve and we're tying that into a responsible gaming campaign starting today, that includes a television advert and boundary boards at EFL video games," he said
The "When the fun stops. Stop" project is managed by the Senet Group, which was developed in 2014 by a few of Britain's leading bookmakers in reaction to public concerns about betting and betting dependency.
The head of the GambleAware charity, Marc Etches, said that while it welcomed a commitment to do more to promote much safer betting, "the messaging needs to be a lot more explicit about the risk involved than what the betting industry currently proposes".
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