The link between football and the gambling industry is inescapable. There have been numerous seasons recently when more than half of the teams playing in the Premier League have had a betting company as their main shirt sponsor, with that figure being even higher in the Championship and so on.
Even if a club isn’t sponsored by a betting company then they still can’t avoid betting’s influence on the game, with the Championship, League One and League Two all sponsored by Sky Bet. A big part of the reason for that is that football fans enjoy a flutter on matches, whether individually or as part of an accumulator.
⚽️With lots of football on this weekend, we’re highlighting the risks associated with gambling & sharing resources for those who may need support.
📽️ Dr Matt Gaskell explains some of the dangers of gambling & advises how to get help if you need it.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/WiV84MFSmo
— NHS North East & Yorkshire (@NHSNEY) October 5, 2024
In the past, virtually every football club seemed to have a place within their stadium where you could place a bet. There were such terminals almost everywhere you looked, giving you the chance to have a flutter on the match that you were about to watch. In recent years, however, football has begun to move away from betting where possible.
One of the ways that that seems to be manifesting itself is via fewer and fewer of the betting shops within football stadiums themselves. Quite why that is the case, however, is up for some debate. Is it just the desire to be less dependent on them, or is there more to it than that?
The Gambling Industry Isn’t The Most Popular Right Now
There is an unfortunate truth for the betting industry, which is that it is becoming something of a pariah in many different markets. Although people will always place bets, the number of stories in the newspapers about people taking their own lives after racking up severe gambling debts can’t be ignored.
In 2022, for example, Annie Ashton wrote in the Guardian about how painful it was for her to learn about how much money football clubs made from the gambling industry in the wake of her husband killing himself because of a gambling addiction. It caused her pain that as many as 72 clubs made money from Sky Bet.
Although the gambling industry itself has made moves to curtail the need for a regulator to get involved, such as banning adverts between the start of a match and the full-time whistle, there is no doubt that it still has enough influence to mean that many people like Ashton are going to be upset by the involvement between the two entities.
Betting companies almost feel as though they have to hide their association with football clubs in a way that they never will have done in the past. That might well help to explain why some have begun to remove their betting shops from inside the actual stadiums of the clubs they work with.
People Are Betting Online
The simple reality for most bookmakers to cope with is that football odds are better online. There are countless reasons for this, but it is an inescapable fact that bookies are having to accept. This isn’t a bad thing from their point of view, given that it means that people can place bets on whatever they want whenever they want to place them, but it does mean that companies are having to re-think their previous strategy around betting shops.
Whilst some people do still use them, the majority of punters are turning to their mobile phones before they’re choosing to go into a betting shop.
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This has a knock-on effect for football clubs. Those clubs that would previously be able to take a cut of a bookmaker’s profits from their booths located inside stadiums, nowadays they’re making much less money. The bookies themselves aren’t making as much money from such booths or betting locations either, so it makes much more sense for them to simply close them and take the money from a punter via their mobile app instead.
The downside is that they have to market cornered when they have a location inside a stadium, whereas bets placed online can be with any betting company that had a website that people can use.
Liverpool have signed a “Community-focused sponsorship” with Ladbrokes.
The focus is getting more of the Liverpool community to give Ladbrokes more money. pic.twitter.com/TxMmfscAef
— The Big Step (@the_bigstep) August 28, 2024
Whilst some of the big clubs out there can obviously afford to have the likes of a betting shop within the stadium even if it doesn’t make much money, the smaller clubs simply can’t do that and would be much better placed having a stall that can sell food, drink or even merchandise.
When they can make more money directly from the concession stand then most smaller clubs are going to choose to do exactly that. With betting shops closing up and down the country, it also makes more sense for the betting companies themselves to put their money somewhere else rather than at a football stadium.