As English football clubs unanimously decide to drop all gambling sponsorship from front shirts on match days, crypto firms are speedily taking advantage of the opportunity to increase their sponsorship for Premier League clubs.
A recent Bloomberg report revealed that crypto-focused companies have injected $170 million into partnership deals with football clubs in the Premier League 2024/25 season.
A Shift From Gambling Sponsors
Since 2019, a regulatory directive has restricted gambling platforms from being advertised on TV during football matches. From mid-2026, football clubs will be mandated to remove betting sponsors from the shirts worn by players and other kits.
Highlighting how difficult it would be for football clubs to let go of betting sponsors, Daniel McDonagh, an associate at UK law firm Charles Russell Speechlys Llp, stated:
“There’s been a real shift toward limiting visible gambling sponsorship. There’s been an incentive in general for football teams to start seeking out new categories of sponsorship, because obviously that that was quite a lucrative stream — the biggest single industry putting money into the sport.”
Crypto Firms Dive Into Premier League
The regulatory shift has led to a recent influx of crypto firms sponsoring Premier League clubs, which is becoming another source of income for football clubs.
For instance, the popular crypto exchange Kraken appeared on the Premier League sponsorship scene. The crypto exchange signed partnerships with the English football club Tottenham Hotspur and partnered with other European football clubs, such as Atletico de Madrid and RB Leipzig, earlier this year.
In another development, the Union of European Football Association (UEFA) announced that it had sealed a multi-year partnership deal with Crypto.com, with the crypto exchange as their official global sponsor. The three-year partnership will last from 2024 to 2027.
A recent record by an expert sports sponsorship agency that consults for top sports brands reveals that crypto sponsorships for sports clubs have risen from $17 million in 2020 to over $168 million spent by crypto firms in 2024, a more than 800% increase.
The latest record shows that, despite recent market downtrends and criticism, the crypto industry has refused to retreat.
