Sportingbet has been replaced as main shirt sponsor of second-tier football club Wolverhampton Wanderers by housing portal WhatHouse.co.uk.
The end of the sponsorship after four years follows the recent carve up and sale of the Sportingbet regulated and dot.com businesses to William Hill and GVC Holdings for £484m.
Sportingbet originally entered the sponsorship in 2009 prior to the team’s promotion to and subsequent three-season stay in the top division of English football, the Premier League. The original two-year deal was extended by a further two years in the summer of 2010.
Wolves chief executive Jez Moxey offered the club’s “sincere thanks” to Sportingbet for being an “outstanding sponsor” during the last four years, adding that Sportingbet CEO Andy McIver and finance director Jim Wilkinson had become great friends of the club.
Online casino brand 32Red also recently agreed to end its main sponsorship of current EPL club Swansea City a year early, leaving just four shirts in the top tier being sponsored by gambling operators, all of which leverage the partnerships to boost business in Asia.
SBObet and 12bet’s sponsorships are aimed at capitalising on the potential spike in in-play volumes when their sponsored clubs – West Ham and Wigan - appear on TV coverage of the EPL there, particularly in matches against the teams with the largest fan-bases in Asia, such as Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool.
Privately owned bet365, the main sponsor of Stoke City, also operates a sizeable Asian-facing business, but has never publicly disclosed exactly how much of its overall revenue is generated from the region.
Finally, Malaysian casino giant Genting, which recently rebranded its land-based and online businesses in the UK under this name, also sponsors Aston Villa. However, Genting does not currently operate an online businesss in Asia, due to the regulatory risk to its main land-based business of doing so, given most of Asia’s markets remain “grey” or “black” as far as online betting and gaming are concerned.
Forthcoming changes to the tax and regulatory regime for online gambing in the UK may however force Asian brands to reassess their sponsorships of EPL teams, by requiring these to obtain a licence from the Gambling Commission and start paying 15% tax on profits generated from British punters.
Betfred, Dafabet, 188bet, Paddy Power are among the gambling brands currently operating less costly betting partnerships with EPL teams.
Article written by Stephen Carter
