West Ham swaps Betway for BoyleSports one year ahead of Premier League sponsorship rules
The Irish betting company is expanding its presence in the English Premier League while it still can.
UK.- Just a year before the English Premier League’s ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsorship comes into play, BoyleSports has netted a deal to replace Betway on the front of West Ham United shirts for the 2025/26 season.
The one-year deal with the Irish betting operator ends a decade of sponsorship by Betway and is reported to be worth £12m. It signals a final move by Dundalk-headquartered Boyle to expand its presence in English Premier League football ahead of the new restrictions coming in for the next season. It previously sponsored Birmingham City and Coventry City.
Gambling sponsorship remains controversial in English football. The House of Lords rejected a call to tag a ban on sponsorship onto the Football Governance Act, but the issue continues to attract regular attention, exacerbated by the fallout of white-label operator TGP Europe withdrawing from the British market, which left several major football sponsors without Gambling Commission licences, including DEBET (Wolverhampton Wanderers FC), SBOTOP (Fulham FC), Sportsbetio.uk (Newcastle United), bj88 (AFC Bournemouth) and 96.com (Burnley).
TGP, whose licences were used by 15 brands, decided to exit the market after being ordered to pay a £3.3m penalty over due diligence failings if it wanted to continue trading. The Gambling Commision wrote to clubs to seek assurance that they had carried out due diligence on white-label partners and that consumers in Great Britain cannot transact with the unlicensed sites.
Meanwhile, West Ham midfielder Lucas Paquetá remains under investigation for alleged match fixing. He was accused for deliberately getting yellow cards for the benefit of betting markets and was charged last May with four breaches of FA Rule E5.1.
