Sportsbooks are the main sponsors of eight senior championships in six team sports in Portugal, with a special focus on men’s football and each level of indoor football and basketball.
AI Football League was renamed Liga Betclic for 2023/24, after two seasons under the name Liga Bwin, a company that was already the ‘name sponsor’ of the competition from 2005 to 2008 and replaced the operator NOS in 2021, with an agreement valid until 2025/26.
“The new partnership is a sign of the value that the I Liga has. Bwin has achieved its goal, but this is the advantage of adding value to partners and these are the market rules that work, so that we now have Betclic as a partner, who is the market leader”stressed Pedro Proença, president of the Portuguese Professional Football League (LPFP), in July, praising the “most robust agreement ever signed” in that sector at national level.
The funds in question were never disclosed, but the Portuguese top flight maintained a gambling house under its official name, a scenario repeated by Azerbaijan, Austria, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Croatia, Slovakia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, Sweden and Ukraine in the European context.
The Portuguese Cup has been sponsored since 2015/2016 by Placard, a territorially based gambling game operated by the Santa Casa Games, which also features in the men’s competitions – League, Portuguese Cup, League Cup and Super Cup – and in the women’s competitions. indoor football championship.
The men’s handball and roller hockey championships were given the same name, while Solverde has been promoting the women’s volleyball competition since the start of this season, with Betclic sponsoring the highest level of basketball in each genre.
The Santa Casa Games also support handball, athletics, cycling, canoeing, equestrian, football, gymnastics, judo, motorcycling, swimming, skating, rowing, rugby, surfing, table tennis, triathlon, volleyball and sports for people’s federations with disabilities.
Entities such as the Portuguese Olympic Committee (COP), the Portuguese Paralympic Committee (CPP) or the Portuguese Sports Federation (CDP) are other beneficiaries of this distribution of social gaming results, carried out by Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, which in 2024 it will collaborate with the government to maintain sponsorship for the sector.
On October 20, Parliament broadly approved a new legal regime for the integrity of sport, which will include the creation of a National Council and a monitoring platform to systematize the fight against match-fixing.
The Government understands that the business volume of sports betting on a territorial and online basis, which amounted to approximately 2,000 million euros (ME) in each of the last two years, poses a growing threat to the integrity of competitions, an issue motivated by investigations in Italy into the involvement of footballers in illegal networks.
In October, international midfielders Nicolò Fagioli (Juventus) and Sandro Tonali (Newcastle) were suspended by the Italian federation for seven and eighteen months respectively, eight of which were complicit, subject to participation in a recovery program.
The majority of the I Liga without the ability to bypass betting sponsorship
Most clubs in Portugal’s First Football League “have less capacity to do good business” by advertising on match shirts at companies far removed from the sports betting sphere, says specialist Daniel Sá.
‘If we look [os equipamentos de] The enormous dependence on these sponsors is easy to see at thirteen of the eighteen clubs. The explanation is related to the inability of most national teams to attract other types of sponsors. These are the easiest to achieve. In other words, they require little fundraising effort because the brands themselves are very active in wanting to join clubs.”acknowledged the Executive Director of the Portuguese Institute of Marketing Administration (IPAM) to the Lusa agency.
Boavista, Desportivo de Chaves, Famalicão, Farense, Moreirense and Vitória de Guimarães (Placard), Casa Pia (ESC Online), Estoril Praia, Rio Ave and Vizela (Solverde), FC Porto and Sporting (Betano) and Sporting de Braga (Moosh ) contribute to a 72% penetration of gambling houses in the front zone, in contrast to the smaller exposure channels explored by Arouca (Solverde), Benfica (Betano) and Estrela da Amadora (ESC Online).
“The width [de valores contratualizados] It will always be of great importance, as Portuguese clubs, even those in the I League, have a very different visibility at the moment. I believe that a sponsorship of this caliber can range from a minimum annual value of 250,000 euros to millions of euros (ME). It’ll be out there somewhere”he estimated.
The competition itself was renamed Liga Betclic in 2023/24, after two seasons under the name Liga Bwin, a company that was already ‘name sponsor’ of the competition from 2005 to 2008 and replaced the operator NOS in 2021, with an agreement valid until 2025/26.
“All this has its life cycles. Many years ago, football was dependent on oil companies and tobacco companies, but legislation put an end to this sponsorship. Then we had another generation that followed the big telecommunications companies. This one follows the “Daniel Sá commented.
The amounts involved were never revealed, but according to the 2021/22 Professional Football Yearbook, the Portuguese Professional Football League (LPFP) received 12 ME in bets that season, compared to 28 ME from the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF).
“Clearly there is a very big elephant in the room. If tobacco had its reputational problems and its health damage problem, then so does this industry and there is a very important shadow in its model. From my perspective there is no courage to implement more aggressive legislation, especially because of the power it exerts [o setor] at this time and because it is clear that the sport will suffer seriously if these sponsors are removed”he warned.
According to the latest quarterly report from the Gambling Regulation and Inspection Service (SRIJ), odds sports betting generated 40.8% of total gross revenues in the country between April and June 2023, with football at the forefront of customer preferences. gamblers (68.4%) were closely followed by tennis (20.1%), basketball (7.4%) and other sports (4.1%).
In terms of sports competitions, the I Liga represented 11.2% of the volume of football betting, followed by its English counterparts (7.9%), the Spanish (6.2%) and the Italian (5.3%) , while the ‘Grand ‘Slam’ Roland Garros was clearly visible in tennis (20.2%).
“The new generation has a number of social concerns that the previous ones did not have. I believe that in the medium term it will be difficult to continue to accept the visibility of betting, with all the clouds that surround it. will be a point where legislation will be tightened or consumers will ‘get over it’ themselves. The issue of social responsibility is just as important as having visibility. This sector comes with risks, in addition to a series of stories that leave it a bit confused. realm of doubt”concluded Daniel Sá.
From January to June this year, the 13 companies licensed to operate sports betting on a quota basis registered 799 MU in betting volume, for daily expenses of 4.4 MU and gross revenues of 169.7 MU, values of which are excluded from the effects of the parallel bet. market, also of considerable size and constantly under the crosshairs of the authorities.
Legal platforms surpassed the influx of 3.8 million registered gamblers, but the same person may be registered with one or more operating entities.
Spain and Italy without bookmaker sponsorship, England goes there
Sports betting companies have been banned from sponsoring the front area of the match shirts of clubs in the Spanish and Italian football leagues, a scheme that England has in the pipeline and Portugal in the opposite direction.
Pioneering the application of licensing and legalization measures for online gaming, in 2019 the Transalpine team became the first country in the European Union to veto this type of advertising in football competitions, while the Spaniards did the same in 2021.
National leagues and clubs even expressed concern about the impending loss of major revenues and competitiveness, but considering the damage caused by the increased prominence and influence of social games on human life, the decrees were here to stay.
Some teams have been slow to fill this equipment gap with new sponsors of equal financial size, with Sevilla, from La Liga, and Lazio, from Serie A, both participating in the Champions League and operating without a ‘main sponsor’.
Spurred by the English government’s review of the matter, the Premier League in April approved the elimination of gambling advertising until the end of 2025/26, a move that, if brought into force now, would impact Aston. Villa, Bournemouth, Brentford, Burnley, Everton, Fulham, Nottingham Forest and West Ham, eight of the twenty clubs in the first division.
The legislation is less restrictive in Germany, where the Bundesliga has Tipico as a sponsor and Stuttgart is a unique case, and in France, where Montpellier, Le Havre and Strasbourg – only in their alternative equipment – spread bets and Betclic in the Ligue 1 sponsors occurs. , in the same way as 1xBet appears in the Serie A.
Institutionally, Bwin and Interwetten are associated with the German Football Federation (DFB) and Betclic presents a partnership with the French Football Federation (FFF), a scenario repeated in Portugal by the support of the Santa Casa Games to the Portuguese Football Federation. Football (FPF) and, as a whole, for the respective national teams.
In the Portuguese First League, Gil Vicente and Portimonense go against a Portuguese tendency that is unparalleled among the ten countries with the highest European coefficient, with Belgium as the main pursuer (43.8%), where the government has banned the sponsorship of games of fortune or bad luck in virtual or static media at locations from 2025 and at sports clubs in 2028.
In Portugal, the decree law promulgated in March 2020 in the most recent update of the legal regime for online gambling and betting states that advertising “must be carried out in a socially responsible manner” and to move away from the call for “easy acquisition of a gain.”
Source: DN
