A gambling company with close ties to many Premier League shirt sponsors has been issued with a fine of more than £300,000 by the UK gambling operator.

The Gambling Commission has found TGP Europe Limited guilty of anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility failures between April 2020 and August 2022 when it had links to many top flight teams, and issued the firm with a £316,250 fine.

A special investigation in The Athletic in 2021 revealed how many gambling companies who advertise through Premier League clubs do not target UK consumers at all but make use of “white label” arrangements in the UK.

White-label partnerships involve a licensed operator running a gambling business using the branding of another business, which may be based overseas.

The firms target consumers in China but, because gambling firms are banned in the country, the companies are generally based in nearby countries like Vietnam and the Philippines but very little is known about who actually runs them.

In order to access the UK market some of the firms use TGP Europe, an intermediary company based in Douglas on the Isle of Man.

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Multiple companies which have sponsored some of the most powerful football clubs in the world are “powered” by this tiny office, including LeYu Sports, a Chelsea sponsor.

Current Premier League clubs with sponsors which use TGP Europe to access the UK market include Newcastle United (Fun88), Aston Villa (Kaiyun Sports) and Nottingham Forest (6686).

The “social responsibility’ failures highlighted by the gambling regulator were “allowing customers to continue to gamble after hitting multiple safer gambling alerts without intervention”, “relying on automated, as opposed to human, interactions when customers hit safer gambling alerts”.

AML failures included “not having a money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment which adequately addressed risks” and “having ineffective policies and procedures in relation to due diligence”.

The Premier League is expected to soon announce a voluntary end to front-of-shirt gambling sponsors though this will not happen for three seasons and will not include sleeve sponsorships.

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(Photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)