Spain Wants to Put an End to Gambling Sponsorships in Sports

La Liga

Spanish La Liga is perhaps one of the top football leagues in the world. Through this league, we learned about many bookmakers, such as Bwin and bet365. However, in 2021, this country is looking to stop this trend of promoting bookmakers through football teams and matches.

Gambling sponsorships, in other words, will be a thing of the past in this country.

The Spanish government is trying to prevent this kind of sponsorship before the start of the 2021/2021 season, which is slowly approaching. As we speak a total of eight football clubs from La Liga have names of different bookmakers on their shirts. One of the teams is Valencia, whose major sponsor is Bwin. A few years prior, Real Madrid is known to have dresses with the Bwin logo, as well.

Which Teams Will be Affected?

Although it’s speculated that 8 teams have a gambling company as their main sponsor, it’s suspected that all 17 teams have some sort of sponsorship with at least one bookmaker.

Some of the teams are Sevilla, Valencia, Mallorca, Levante, and Leganes. The Spanish government is strict when it comes to this new law, which means that ALL of the La Liga teams will have to end their gambling sponsorships.

When will the New Regulations Apply?

Is this law going to apply as soon as possible? Probably not. At the moment, this is just a request from Spain’s Royal Decree on Advertising. According to the law of this regulatory body, gambling companies have a limited advertisement period of 1 AM to 5 AM every day, including weekends.

For the new regulations, Alberto Garzon, Minister of Consumer Affairs, will make sure that everything goes according to plans. Alberto will make sure that not a single gambling company won’t be able to sponsor any aspect of the sport and/or football clubs.

This means removing logos from shirts, stadiums, and other equipment. The only problem with the new law is that it’s not yet in effect, and it can’t be if the European Union doesn’t approve it. Spain already submitted it to the EU’s headquarters in Brussels and they hope that it will be accepted in the following year.

Currently, only 8 Spanish La Liga teams will have to remove gambling logos from their shirts. Otherwise, they will face a temporary ban until the issue is fixed.

Response from Richard Masters

Richard Masters, Premier League executive strongly disagrees with the new laws. He thinks that the betting industry needs “slightly firmer regulation” but he states that prohibiting gambling sponsorships isn’t a solution.

Another side, House of Lords Select Committee opposes this idea, thinking that this ban will have a strong, positive impact on the gambling regulation. They state that low-tier clubs will suffer the most but on the other hand, they can continue their gambling sponsorships if they’re still active.

As soon as the sponsorships expire, they won’t be allowed to sign another gambling sponsorship. In other words, they’ll have to find a new sponsor or sponsors so that they don’t face serious revenue losses.

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