A match made in heaven: The explosion of betting ads in European football

A regulatory back door is being exploited by criminals to use football to advertise unregulated gambling brands targeted at Asian countries where gambling is prohibited. Football's desperation for cash after COVID-19 lockdowns has enabled this industry to thrive.

Keywords betting football sports governance economy

To see how betting ads dominate the world of soccer, visit Villa Park, a soccer stadium in Birmingham, England, home to Premier League club Aston Villa.

When Manchester City visited the stadium in early December 2023, it was impossible to ignore the parade of betting ads displayed on the digital billboards surrounding the stadium.

Advertisements for major American brands such as Bet365 and BetMGM alternate on the billboards, and not a minute of play goes by without betting ads, often surrounding the entire pitch.

On the way to the Molyneux Stadium in the English city of Wolverhampton, Premier League club Wolverhampton Wolves went a step further. The stadium extends its billboards vertically by placing a second row of ads several rows behind the original perimeter ads.

Other clubs that don't have the space to do so at the Molineux Stadium have removed the first row of seats and installed digital billboards on the second wall. This allows the stadium to be surrounded by a wall of advertising that is visible on TV and is roughly the same height as the players on the pitch.

This allows them to provide a platform for licensed, legal betting companies like Bet365, Betway and Unibet, as well as companies like 6686bet, which targets Asian markets where betting is illegal or restricted. 6686bet is a sponsor of Wolverhampton Wolves and operates unlicensed as part of a group of companies with ties to illegal industries, including a Cambodian cyber fraud complex.

Perimeter advertising at Wolverhampton's Molineux Stadium is double-height, with betting ads often appearing higher than the players on the screen (screenshot from Optus Sport)

According to Play the Game's analysis, 17 betting brands appeared on pitchside billboards during matchday 15 of the 2023 Premier League.

Analysis of betting brands featured in FA Premier League matches on Matchday 15 (graphs by author)

At Birmingham's Villa Park Stadium, every match included at least one betting brand, and one betting brand was visible on the stadium's advertising boards during every match. Two of the gambling brands advertised, Fun88 and eKings, appear to be unlicensed.

In fact, gambling ads are so ubiquitous that many clubs have "hidden" deals in non-European service countries.

Chelsea, for example, lists nearly 20 companies on its "Club Partners" page. But to find out about its deal with gambling operator Kaiyun, one must use Google to find an otherwise hidden page on Chelsea's website that lists the Chinese bookmaker as an "official partner."

Screenshot showing English Premier League club Chelsea partnering with Chinese gaming operator Kaiyun.

Virtual ads are imposed on billboards in matches on television

Another way unregulated bookmaker ads can get from European football to Asian football fans is through the use of virtual ad technology.

Virtual ad technology allows ads targeted to different broadcast markets to be seamlessly displayed on billboards, in this way Asian-oriented gambling brands can appear on Asian broadcasts of La Liga, despite a national ban on gambling venues in Spain.

The screenshots below are from the Real Madrid vs Mallorca match.

The first screenshot is the "global feed" displayed by Optus Sports in Australia. The video shows Antonio Rüdiger heading in for the only goal of the game. The billboard advertisement is for the gaming brand KY313. com (known as Kaiyun).

The second screenshot shows the repeated moment from a different angle, without the use of virtual advertising technology. This makes it clear that the billboard that Target had put up was in fact an ad for Adidas.

Bundesliga clubs are also flooding their feeds around the world with ads for illegal bookmakers.

While ads for local cyber companies could be seen in Dortmund's stadium, fans watching in Asia will see ads for Kaiyun (KY313. com) and other bookmakers operating without authorization or with fake licenses.

We have noticed this happening in many German venues this season. However, of the clubs Play the Game contacted, only Werder Bremen has taken measures to stop this from continuing.

The technology that enables such acts is designed and sold by European companies such as Saponers and Interjunal Sports Group (ISG), and many of these transactions are Swiss marketing company infront sports &. Organized by marketing company infront sports. Former FIFA Chairman Zep Blatter's nephew, Philip Blatter, media. The company did not answer questions about the involvement of these transactions.

So-called ‘news' sites are another way to reach targets in Asia

Another means used by illegal companies is the launch of the "News" site to advertise gambling brands. On December 6, ekings News posted an ad on the outer board of the Fullham's Notingham Forest.

However, the purpose is not a news site advertisement, but an affiliated gambling brand. In fact, ekings is the official Asian gaming partner of Sevilla, a Spanish club. It does not have a valid license.

The license page has the name of the owner Kings Technology N. V., but the ekingswin. com is not listed as a "confirmed" domain. Regardless of whether it was a "white label", the "News" site was launched because there were no contracts to advertise in the UK.

Again, the target is Asian countries (in this case, India) with limited gambling. The ekingswin. com site is not accessible from the UK, but can be accessed using Asian virtual private network (VPN). This site claims that it is also affiliated with Leicester City and Juventus.

'White label' agreements enable overseas advertising

Most of the gambling brands that advertise through European soccer games are not interested in the British market. In many Asian countries, the brands are sold to fans in European soccer and Chinese fans by making them displayed on very popular soccer programs and live feeds, despite the illegal or restrictions of gambling. I want.

Overseas gambling brands can advertise in Europe. This is because many of Europe, such as Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain, have acknowledged the s o-called "White Label" contract.

The "White Label" contract enables the gaming brand to advertise in these European jurisdictions, and as a result, on broadcasting provided in Asia. This refers to a contract for a specific law (eg, the UK) licensing to operate an overseas gaming brand website. In fact, licenses are lent to overseas gaming brands, and their brands can operate local sites.

White label providers (many) often charge fees to this service. This may include a revenue distribution contract for new customers introduced through this agreement, and is ideal for money laundering.

It's a profitable business. The operator licensed by the British Gambling Committee has more than 700 white label partners. This is slightly less than 866 betting operators approved by the British Gambling Committee.

A long list of football partnerships with gambling operators

The list of European clubs, leagues, and national teams, which have partnerships and sponsorships with underlined gambling operators facing Asia, has long lists.

The following table shows all of the past and current partnerships with Soccer Group and Asian gambling brands, up to 2006, which was the first European club to be a shirt sponsor with Tottenham Hot Sparrow as a shirt sponsor. It is a list.

The list was created over a year from open source materials, industry publications, and communication inside the club. Many clubs have been published in Europe because many clubs have avoided the negative reputation that may be received from a partnership with a brand that works on legal border (or outside the boundary) in the target Asian market. There are many partners that have never been seen.

England - Premier League

Logo Credit: CATHERINE Ivill/Getty Images

Germany - Bundesliga

Logo Credit: SOPA Images/Getty Images

Spain - La Liga

Logo Credit: SOPA Images/Getty Images

Italy - Serie A

Logo Credit: MONDADORI PORTFOLIO/Getty Images

France - Ligue 1

Logo Credit: SOPA Images/Getty Images

Clubs from other European leagues

Leagues

National teams

Football now sponsors gambling

But why do gambling brands partner with clubs and leagues that are easy to see in European soccer instead of illegal acts on the dark web, which are far from the public and general public?

There are two reasons: to show advertising and illegal profits legally.

According to a play of play the game, 565 million people are interested in soccer in China. Germany, on the other hand, has 42. 4 million. 35 million people in the UK. 33. 7 million Italy. 29. 1 million in France. And Spain is 27 million.

Even if you're not a mathematics genius, you'll see that China is more interested in soccer than the total of the five major European soccer markets.

Only 14 % of Chinese fans watch the English Premier League. However, in China, 565 million people are considered to be interested in soccer, which has 79. 1 million potential spectators. This is larger than all the population in the UK.

In other words, the potential market of gambling in Asia is huge, one of the reasons for the number of advertisements for stadium betting in Europe. Another is that after the closing of COVID-19, Asian criminal organizations needed a new way of cleaning funding.

The gang has traditionally drained funds through a "junket". A junket is a casino providing a fee to the broker, and entering the casino according to the amount bet on the casino. It is often held in a real casino in jurisdiction suitable for gambling like Macau.

However, in late January 2020, the lockout of COVID-19 suddenly stopped visiting the casino. The criminal faced serious problems. They had yet to wash their funds, but the conventional method was suddenly stopped. Cash and casinos were no longer king.

The Asian Gaming Federation predicted in a 2021 report that Triad's dominated Asian casino junkets would diversify electronic gambling. In addition to doing this, they gained their hands on other online scams and used the online gambling project to clean the funds obtained by fraud.

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Despair in European soccer money has given this device a perfect background. Gambling is used to support soccer. Soccer is now a gambling sponsor. Criminals use European sports to illegally aim for market customers in which gambling is prohibited.

Why is this important? Untrained gambling operators do not need to report suspicious bets indicating the match of the match. There is no need to contribute to addiction prevention measures, nor do you pay to the winner. There may be even a connection with organizational crime.