The epitome of the ridiculousness of government attitudes to gambling and football? You’ll find it at Sunderland.

While the club remain in the Championship, where their average crowd of 38,807 is better than all but ten Premier League contemporaries, the SpreadEx logo on their shirts is permissible. EFL clubs will be exempt from government interference in the forthcoming white paper on gambling, for fear the loss of such sponsorships would cause financial hardship. Yet if Sunderland were to get promoted at any time, SpreadEx would have to go before the end of the 2025-26 season. Premier League clubs agreed this last week, in a bid to ward off more invasive government measures.

Yet if gambling advertising is bad, it’s bad. It’s bad on shirts, bad