Global gambling sponsorship review: Crackdowns in India and Europe, an arms race in North America
Gambling sponsorship in sport is diverging fast. Some markets are tightening, sometimes abruptly. Others are opening up and driving record spend. The result is not one global trend but two competing realities that will reshape rights fees and deals over the next 12 to 24 months.
India and Europe are tightening
India just fired the clearest warning shot. After the new Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, real-money gaming and its promotion have been outlawed. Fantasy sports leader Dream11 has ended its jersey deal with the BCCI. The board has begun the search for a replacement with the Asia Cup looming. This is not a tactical pause. It is a structural shift that takes a big-paying category off the front of the India team shirt for now.
Across Europe, the direction of travel has been consistent. The Netherlands’ full ban on gambling sponsorship in sport took effect on 1 July 2025, following phased advertising restrictions that started in 2023. Shirt deals, competition tie-ups and athlete endorsements are now out of bounds.
Italy has prohibited gambling sponsorship since the 2018 “Dignity Decree,” and Spain’s Royal Decree 958/2020 placed sweeping limits on gambling sponsorship, including practical constraints on shirt sponsorship and brand visibility tied to sport. These frameworks have already suppressed front-of-shirt exposure and will keep pressure on prices where gambling once set benchmarks.
The UK sits in the middle. Premier League clubs voted to remove gambling sponsorship from the front of shirts starting in the 2026/27 season, although sleeves and other assets remain available. That nuance matters for pricing and for how the market rebalances in the next cycle. In June, The Sponsor published the fair market sponsorship value of all 20 Premier League clubs. As part of that analysis, we calculated the gambling ban would cut the average value of front-of-shirt sponsorship by 38% as well as forecasting the resulting 40% boost on sleeve sponsorship values as gambling brands pivot.
North America is still scaling up
North America remains the most liberal major market. U.S. commercial gaming revenue hit a record $71.9 billion in 2024, with sports betting revenue up roughly twenty-five percent year on year to about $13.7 billion. League relationships are now institutional, from the NFL’s “tri-exclusive” betting partners to UFC’s long-term DraftKings deal reported at $350 million. This is the growth side of the split and it continues to attract multi-year, multi-asset commitments.
Ontario tightened its creative rules by banning athletes from appearing in iGaming advertising as of February 2024, yet the region has maintained an open commercial framework. Spend has not disappeared. It has adapted.
Brazil is formalising
Brazil remains open to gambling sponsorships for licensed operators, with no blanket ban in force, although lawmakers are advancing tougher advertising rules that could narrow how betting brands appear around sport. The market is consolidating around authorised players rather than collapsing, and the scale is clear: Flamengo’s new front-of-shirt deal with Betano, widely reported as a record agreement running to 2028 (around R$268m per season), shows major betting brands are still investing at the very top of Brazilian football.
Australia is tightening, but not shutting the door
Australia banned the use of credit cards and crypto for online wagering in June 2024 and continues to debate wider advertising limits. The political pressure is rising, yet proposals have tended to target broadcast and youth exposure rather than outlaw sponsorship wholesale. Gambling sponsorship is still common but uneven by state: an ABC analysis found 10 of 16 NRL teams carry gambling sponsors, and nearly two-thirds of major Queensland teams receive gambling money. At the national level there are strict evening-sport ad curbs, and a federal inquiry has recommended a phased ban on gambling advertising and sponsorship but no nationwide ban has been legislated yet.
Gambling sponsorship in Asia beyond India
Across Asia, the default is restrictive with pockets of permission. Singapore keeps sponsorships tightly controlled under the Gambling Control Act; Southeast Asia is cautious, with the Philippines winding down offshore operators, Indonesia keeping gambling illegal, and Thailand debating legalisation but still unresolved.
In Japan, only public-run pools are allowed, and major leagues (e.g., J.League) bar pachinko/slot brands; South Korea’s state Sports Toto limits private sportsbook tie-ups. Hong Kong/Macau curb visibility via strict ad rules and moves against gambling advertising, while across the Gulf, gambling is largely prohibited, with the UAE building a tightly regulated framework. Overall, prominent betting logos are rare; where deals do exis,t they’re shorter, compliance-heavy, and priced with regulatory risk baked in.
The impact on global sponsorship prices
In tightening markets like Europe and India, the exit of gambling brands from front-of-shirt resets price discovery. Remove the top payer and the clearing price on the main asset falls to what non-gambling sectors will actually pay. The Sponsor’s June analysis found an average 38 percent correction for affected Premier League clubs once gambling deals are stripped out. The money does not disappear; it substitutes across assets. Displaced budgets chase what is still legal, creating inventory compression and a scarcity premium on sleeves, training wear, perimeter LED, in-bowl and club digital. Sleeve rights that often trade at roughly one third to two fifths of a main shirt fee can stretch beyond that when several operators crowd into the same lane.
In markets that still permit gambling sponsorship, like North America, expect operators to invest heavily while they can. That front-loads demand and pushes up prices on the biggest assets and exposure opportunities, especially main shirts, primary naming rights and high-visibility digital.
The global regulation trend is undoubtedly tightening. As more windows close, expect gambling brands to spend even larger sums in the remaining open markets, like a dying star giving its brightest flashes before it fades. For non-gambling brands, it’s a buyer’s market where bans apply and a premium to pay where they don’t.
