Anti-gambling campaigners have condemned Chelsea‘s reported shirt sponsorship deal with betting company Stake.com as “completely tone deaf” and driven by “reckless billionaire owners”.
The Premier League club have entered “final negotiations” with Stake over an initial 12-month deal starting next season that would come close to matching the £40m paid to the club by previous sponsors Three, the mobile network, whose contract with the Blues expired earlier this summer, according to the Telegraph.
Although Chelsea are allowed to secure new sponsorship deals with betting partners, their decision to do so has led to criticism given Premier League clubs collectively agreed to ban gambling company logos from the front of their shirts from the end of the 2025-26 season onwards.
Controversially, that blacklisting will not extend to sleeve sponsors or pitch-side advertising hoardings.
A Premier League statement said that the three-year interim period would allow clubs to “transition away” from such arrangements, but that has apparently not deterred Chelsea from exploring commercial opportunities from within the sector.
Matt Zarb-Cousin, director of Clean Up Gambling and Coalition Against Gambling Ads told i: “The government’s failure to take proper and immediate action on gambling sponsorship in football is being exploited yet again by a cash-rich sector looking to groom the next generation of gamblers.
“Curbing gambling ads cannot be left up to voluntary agreements while football is run by reckless billionaire owners with no regard for the harm being done to their fans.”
Gambling With Lives, a charity set up by families bereaved by gambling-related suicide, tweeted that the decision was “completely tone deaf”.
The UK Government said it welcomed the move to ban front-of-shirt gambling sponsors from the end of the 2025-26 season, but stressed that sponsorship decisions until then are up to the clubs themselves.
Chelsea would become the second Premier League club to display the Stake.com logo on their shirts next season alongside Everton, who signed a “multi-year partnership” with the brand last summer. Championship side Watford have been sponsored by them since 2021.
Gambling companies accounted for 40 per cent of Premier League shirt sponsors in 2022-23, with financial service companies the next most represented industry with a 20 per cent share.
© Provided by The i Everton signed a “multi-year” deal with Stake.com last summer before the gambling ban was introduced (Photo: Getty)
The Chelsea Supporters’ Trust told i that they would “communicate our position in due course” after surveying its members to “ascertain views and opinions on this matter”.
Football’s relationship with the gambling industry has come under increased scrutiny in recent months after Brentford and England striker Ivan Toney was charged and subsequently banned by the Football Association for 232 betting breaches.
The 27-year-old was suspended from playing any matches until January 2024 and is forbidden from training with his team-mates until September. Toney was diagnosed with having a gambling addiction during the investigation.
“If you have footballers that are forced to endorse addictive products on their shirts, play in stadiums or compete for trophies that are named after gambling companies then inevitably footballers will gamble because they are human and that environment eventually impacts people,” James Grimes, from The Big Step campaign, told i in March, before Toney’s ban came into effect.
i has contacted Chelsea for comment.