Football clubs swerve around Belgium’s ban on gambling sponsorship
The gambling regulator is investigating as top-tier clubs take advantage of loopholes.
Belgium.- Football clubs have quickly found a way around the Belgian gambling commission’s new restrictions on gambling sponsorships. Kansspelcommissie has launched an investigation as multiple top-tier clubs appear to be taking advantage of loopholes to continue to promote gambling brands in a less direct way.
New measures imposed by Kansspelcommissie this month prohibit sports clubs from featuring sponsorship from gambling brands directly and from showing gambling logos on the front of kits or at a size of over 75 cm². Clubs opposed the measures, arguing that they would harm finances in the sport. However, sports teams can still form partnerships with gambling brands in indirect ways, for example via broadcast platforms, news and stats websites, foundations and support groups.
Clubs in Belgium’s top football division, the Jupiler Pro League, have quickly found ways to exploit that. For example, Club Brugge and Charleroi can no longer display the Unibet logo on the front of shirts, so they now display the logo of Unibet’s sports news app U-Expert, which, in turn, has links to the sportsbook.
Meanwhile, Standard Liege shirts now feature the logo of Circus Daily, a news site that promotes the betting site Circus, Cercle Brugge is promoting Golden Palace News, the news site from Golden Palace Casino Sports, and Antwerp is promoting AntwerpFirst, a foundation that’s supported BetFirst.
Clubs in the UK and the Netherlands will be watching as the Kansspelcommissie conducts its investigation. A ban on gambling sponsorship in the Netherlands is due to come into effect from July. Meanwhile, clubs in the English Premier League have agreed a voluntary ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsorship from 2026-27.
In the latter case in particular, the voluntary nature of the ban suggests that clubs will have few restrictions to stop them from finding ways around the restriction, which was self-imposed but somewhat begrudgingly. Clubs will also still be allowed to promote gambling brands directly via logos on sleeves and other locations.
