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Entain to Football Regulator: End Illegal Gambling Sponsorship
Entain to Football Regulator: End Illegal Gambling
About this update from Entain Plc
Entain to Football Regulator: End Illegal Gambling Sponsorship 07 May 2026 Share viafacebooktwitterlinkedinLadbrokes and Coral's owner says the regulator should stop clubs from taking sponsorship from criminal gambling operators London, 7th May: The Independent Football Regulator (IFR), the new statutory regulator of English men's football, should stop clubs accepting illegal gambling sponsorship, according to Entain plc, the global sports betting and gaming group and owner of Ladbrokes and Coral. The call was made today in response to the IFR's Second Licensing Consultation (CP 2/26), in which the IFR is seeking views on a new club licensing regime for the top five tiers of English men's football. The IFR's draft already prohibits English football clubs from accepting income "connected to serious criminal conduct". Entain is asking the regulator to confirm, in a single line of guidance, that the rule covers the unlicensed gambling operators currently sponsoring six Premier League clubs - operators that commit a criminal offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 every time they accept a bet from a British consumer. Stella David, Chief Executive of Entain plc, said: "Premier League clubs are being sponsored by criminal gambling firms. The Independent Football Regulator can stop this tomorrow by simply acknowledging that unlicensed gambling companies targeting UK customers through English football are breaking the law - plain and simple. The regulator does not need any new powers, new legislation, or even a new rule to make this happen. In fact, it has already drafted one. We are asking the regulator to define and apply it before the next season begins. The IFR was created to fix English football's governance failures. This is one of them." The scale of the unlicensed market is significant and growing. Research by Frontier Economics, commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council, found that 1.5 million Britons stake £4.3 billion a year on unlicensed sites, which already account for 9 per cent of the total UK gambling market, according to analysis by Yield Sec. One in five 18-to-24-year-olds has used illegal channels. An estimated 420,000 British schoolchildren are gambling on the black market, routed there through social media, VPNs and crypto wallets. The Gambling Commission has found that 67 per cent of GamStop users (people who have actively exc...