Circumvention of the ban: five Premier League clubs caught secretly advertising Asian bookmakers without a licence

Journalists from The Guardian conducted an investigation that revealed the use of a regulatory vulnerability by five English Premier League clubs to cooperate with Asian gambling companies that do not have a license in the UK.

The list of teams seen in this practice includes Chelsea, Aston Villa, Leeds, Nottingham Forest and Sunderland. Since the beginning of the current season, these clubs have been actively demonstrating the brands of operators "8Xbet", "Nova88" and "Kaiyun" on the LED boards of their home arenas. It is noteworthy that the vast majority of the mentioned clubs prefer not to advertise these partnership agreements on their official websites.

Specific methods of camouflage were also discovered. For example, Chelsea does not hide its ties with 8Xbet, but information about the partnership with Kaiyun becomes available only if the user visits the club's website from an Asian IP address. Aston Villa previously announced a deal with Nova88 as part of a pre-season statement, but this company still does not appear in the official list of partners on the club's website.

The Guardian sent inquiries to all five clubs. Aston Villa, Leeds, Nottingham Forest and Chelsea chose to ignore journalists' questions. Sunderland provided a response, saying that they "politely refuse to comment."

As it turned out, this scheme became possible due to changes in the requirements initiated by the British gambling regulator (UKGC). In May, the department sent a letter to the teams with updated rules. According to them, it is now enough for clubs to get confirmation that their partners do not accept bets from British players in pounds sterling and correctly use geo-blocking for users from the United Kingdom.