Spurs End 1xBet Partnership — Chelsea and Liverpool to follow suit?

18+ | commercial content | begambleaware.org

Last week Spurs announced that they were ending their deal with global betting operator 1xbet. The deal had only been in place just over a year and was due to run until the end of the season in 2022. 1xBet’s agreement with Spurs was for them to be the “African betting partner” of Tottenham. This deal allowed Spurs to maintain their existing UK partnership with William Hill while having a separate betting partner on the books.

Why did they end the deal?

This is where things start to get interesting, for other clubs too. The deal was ended after the UK gambling commission withdrew their UK license application as they advertise illegally – they were even described as “toxic” in some reports.

Their advertising was found to be showing on the following types of sites, where it is not permitted.

Illegal streaming sites
Pornography
Cockfighting
Children’s Sports

As expected 1xBet have hit back around this –

“We take very seriously the allegation that 1xBet’s brand has been promoted on prohibited sites, which is strictly against our policies, and we have launched an investigation. Pending the outcome . . . we believe it is responsible to temporarily suspend our advertising activity in the UK.”

This seems to be the case that they are passing the buck on to affiliates for the matter and I’m sure they will be blaming them further down the line. Under UK reglation the behavior of affiliates comes back to the 1xBet who are responsible for their actions and should be managing these.

Fairer Gambling spokesman Zarb-Cousin said –

“It is shocking that these football clubs failed to do the most basic due diligence checks on 1xBet before signing up for these multi-million-pound deals. It’s an absolute debacle.”

and he’s right! It seems football clubs are all too keen to make money off betting companies without doing any background checks into them as 1xBet should have flagged up straight away.

Here’s how Spurs adverts with 1xBet looked –

Spurs players who have appeared in 1xBet adverts

Harry Kane
Deli Ali
Victor Wanyma
Christian Eriksen
Harry Winks

What happens now?

For Spurs, nothing will happen except the loss of revenue from this partner. InterestinglyHarry Winks 1xBet sponsors both Chelsea and Liverpool too under various titles for world betting partners.

Liverpool

Liverpool is yet to make an official statement on their partnership with 1xBet but we have found that they have been removed from the Liverpool FC partners list and website. This looks like the start of a move to terminate their agreement as both Liverpool & Chelsea have been warned they face unlimited fines if in breach of the gambling commissions regulations.

Liverpool players in 1xBet adverts

Virgil Van Dyke
Allison
Firmino

Here’s how the ad looked for the announcement

This was a big deal for Liverpool as they had worked with long term betting partner Bet Victor for over 3 years and we would assume this was a large deal. The deal was described as a long term contract and gave 1xBet in gound advertising, access to players and legends for marketing work, and the right to use Liverpool’s logos alongside their advertising and branding.

At the time Liverpool’s Managing director, Billy Hogan said

“We are delighted to welcome 1xBet to Liverpool FC as our newest partner, I know that their games and special offers will appeal to our fans around the world and we look forward to seeing these as we go into the new 2019/20 season.”

Chelsea

Chelsea has gone down the same route as Liverpool and has removed 1xBet from their partner’s list and they have removed their logo from the site. They have not made an official announcement on this but we would expect to hear soon that they have terminated their agreement and will announce a new betting partner soon.

Players who have featured in ads