Sleeves, Training Kits & The Championship: Where Gambling Sponsorship Went Next
When the 2026/27 season kicked off in August, something happened in the Premier League for the first time in more than a decade: not a single club ran out with a betting brand on the front of its shirt. In 2025/26, 11 of the 20 clubs did.
The temptation is to read that as the gambling sector retreating from football. The commercial reality is different, as the money didn’t leave the game. Sponsorships moved to different areas of the kits, including training kits, as the ban does not cover these areas. It also moved down the pyramid.
The ban removed a shirt front, not a budget
The restriction clubs voted for in April 2023 was always narrower than the headlines suggested. It is a voluntary collective agreement, the first of its kind in a major European league, and it covers one asset, the front of the matchday shirt. Sleeves, training kit, stadium assets, LED, digital and regional partnerships were all left alone.
The replacement cycle has reshaped the front-of-shirt market. Financial services is now the largest single category in the Premier League, with airlines second, and three clubs even started the campaign with no front-of-shirt partner at all. That gap is the clearest signal of what the betting category was actually buying: not just exposure, but a reliable bid at the top of the market that few sectors can match on price.
The sleeve and the training kit became premium inventory
The most valuable deal to come out of the ban is not a shirt front at all. Manchester United’s training kit partnership with Betway is reported at more than £20m a year, covering the men’s and women’s teams, and is understood to be the largest standalone training kit or sleeve agreement in world football. Betway who for years sat on the front of West Ham’s kit while they were in the Premier League.
It is not an isolated case. Betano holds Aston Villa’s sleeve and Tottenham Hotspur’s training wear. Stake moved from a shirt front into Everton’s sleeve. MrQ, which has been among the most aggressive UK operators in football this year, took AFC Bournemouth’s sleeve in a three-year deal running to 2028/29 alongside official UK online casino partner status.
There is a sound commercial logic underneath it. Training kit and sleeve branding is arguably as seen as the front of shirt, as the content clubs now publish most includes training ground footage, arrivals, social clips and behind-the-scenes series that run all week rather than twice a month. For operators competing in a market where dozens of licensed UK casino sites chase the same British customers, sustained weekly presence at a fraction of the front-of-shirt price is a defensible buy.
The EFL is where the shirt front is still for sale
Below the top flight, nothing has changed. The EFL has no equivalent restriction and no stated plan to introduce one, and Sky Bet remains title sponsor of all three divisions under a deal running to 2029. Clubs in the Championship, League One and League Two are free to sell the front of the shirt to a betting brand, and a meaningful number do.
Seven of the 24 Championship clubs carry a gambling brand on the front this season:
– Birmingham City (Coral)
– Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Wolverhampton Wanderers (all Midnite)
– Queens Park Rangers (MrQ)
– Stoke City (bet365)
– West Ham United (BoyleSports).
Midnite’s position is the one to study. The operator now holds three Championship shirt fronts, having signed Middlesbrough and renewed Sheffield United before adding Wolves as principal partner. For roughly what one mid-table Premier League sleeve costs, a brand can own three shirt fronts, three stadium naming conversations and three sets of matchday and community activation rights.
MrQ has run a similar dual strategy, pairing its Bournemouth sleeve with QPR’s shirt front and a back-of-shirt deal at Sheffield Wednesday. In League One, Reading announced Mr Vegas as a club record front-of-shirt partner in the same week the Premier League ban took effect. The timing was not a coincidence.
What that means for commercial teams below the Premier League
Three things are worth acting on.
First, betting operators are frequently the marginal bidder on Championship and League One shirt fronts, which means they set the floor on the whole market. Clubs negotiating with a non-gambling brand should know what the category would pay, whether or not they intend to sell to it.
Second, there is obvious unsold inventory. Twenty of the 24 Championship clubs have a sleeve partner, and none of them is a gambling brand. In the Premier League the sleeve is precisely where betting money went, because the front was closed. In the Championship the front is open, so the sleeve conversation has barely started. Clubs with a committed shirt front and an unsold or underpriced sleeve are sitting on the exact asset the category has just been forced to value more highly.
Third, contract length deserves more attention than it usually gets. The Premier League showed that a category can be removed from a club’s most valuable asset within three years of a vote, with no regulator involved. Any long-term deal in this sector should be written with that in mind, on both sides.
The scrutiny follows the money
The obvious risk is that visibility now concentrates in the EFL just as attention does. Campaigners who pushed for the Premier League change have already turned to the divisions below it, and the 2023 white paper’s approach of asking the industry to write its own code of conduct rather than legislating leaves the settlement open to revision.
Clubs taking this money should expect to be judged on how they handle it: visible safer gambling messaging in activations rather than in the footer of a press release, age-appropriate content controls, no targeting of youth audiences, and clear signposting to deposit limits, self-exclusion and support services such as GamCare and GambleAware.
Supporters should treat betting as entertainment with a set budget, never as income, and the clubs taking the sponsorship are the ones best placed to keep saying so.
