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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
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UK based gambling company, Bet365, has just become the first ever sports betting brand to sponsor the UEFA Champions League Tournament. From what we've seen so far, the three year deal covers the men's competition and is well positioned to bring net commercial positives for the biggest European football event on the calendar and to a wider extent football in general. Bet365 itself will of course also gain massive benefits in the world of sports thanks to its latest partnership. In today's episode, joining me, Victor Kyat, senior journalist at SBC News, are Kieran O'Connor, journalist for Insider Sport, and Martin Elliott, project director of SBC Media. Together we'll discuss the latest news, but before that, a message from our sponsor, Optimo, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. As a special offer OptiMove is giving away a free first month to new clients. For more information and to claim the offer, go to optimove.com slash SBC. Links will also be left in the podcast episode description. All right, fellas, thanks for joining me today. How are you doing, Kieran? I'm great. Thank you, Victor. How are you? I'm doing all right. Excited to get into the news and you, Martin, how are you? Yeah, very well. Thanks, Victor. I'm looking forward to discussing what's Quite an exciting development in the world of sports betting. It is breaking news. It actually broke this morning of the 20th of August. So let's get right into it. I would like to start off with the first question. And I'm going to ask you, Martin, what other reason do you see behind the timing of this partnership? besides the fact that European football viewership as of now is arguably at its highest that it's ever been? Well, from UEFA's point of view, it's nice to have the cash. We don't know how much it is but it's rumoured to be worth about £50 million, this sponsorship deal. And they need all the money they can in terms of Champions League sponsorship because they... There's still that looming threat of clubs breaking away. We saw that with the European Super League thing, which those clubs that wanted to break away actually made a real mess of that, with the ludicrous format they had for the competition and not signing a TV deal first and so on. But that threat hasn't gone away. They need a lot of prize money at UEFA. So this works. I presume they've looked at it and just said, we've had it in the Europa League for the last three years with BWIN. why not go for the big one this time round? One other thing to look at there, they don't have access to sponsorship from Russian companies currently as well, so that's a big chunk of money that they're missing out on potentially from sponsors. For Bet365, I think this is a really interesting development because... It's really hard for the UK bookmakers to get value from sponsoring, for example, a Premier League club, which is a similar sort of value probably over three years to this deal. But what it does for Bet365, it gives them huge reach into audience around the world. One of the advantages Bet365 has is that it's a single brand company. Most of the other major players actually have multiple brands, so that you then... it becomes more complicated to reach the right people in all the different markets. It's depending on which of your brands are in which market. For Bet365, really simple. One of the most viewed sporting tournaments in the world gives them huge visibility for... yeah, it's a lot of money, but they are going to get some great value out of this and be associated with... football's most prestigious club tournament. Mason Fiery-Knighten Given the fact that major deals like the one with Bet365 are now a fact, should we expect top-flight European football, namely all of the UEFA championships, to take a more proactive role towards gambling harm prevention? Do you think, Martin? across Europe like working with regulated operators and making sure that the partnerships almost act as a seal of approval for those operators who are involved with it. So really they want to direct their football fans to play at the safest sites, the ones who have proper safer gambling procedures and so on in place. There's no doubt that the UE4 gets some criticism of this. Same as we've seen the football clubs in England come in for huge criticism, which I know Kieran, you can speak a little bit about because that's something you cover quite regularly on Inside a Sport. But I think in general, working with a Bet365 or one of the Flutter brands, or one of the Entaine brands, or Bitano, who obviously figure quite prominently in football sponsorship, is way better than some of these offshore operators and Asian operators who are taking real estate on the front of Premier League shirts. People aren't really sure how safe their procedures are and whether players can safely gamble at those sites. I think this is a good thing. We've seen recently, for instance, the Premier League, the FA and the Women's Super League have had an agreement Again, I know Kieran, you've covered a little bit about in terms of a code of conduct for betting sponsorships. Yeah, so I think mine's hit the nail on the head there really. Pretty much what this deal does with Bet365 is it takes away from these unregulated operators that we're seeing in a lot in English football. For example, you've had teams like Palace. Forest and others sort of really trying to nail down money because at the minute a lot of these clubs are all desperate for money as always just trying to stay in the league and in doing so they partner with offshore would you say or unregulated companies which has sort of created a storm in the supporters, from the supporters and also other organisations like the Big Step. This sort of causes big issues from the league's point of view as they're sort of thinking, how can we make sure that these betting sponsors are, if I can think of the word, sort of moral in a way. I mean, gambling companies, they're not completely moral as we all know, but having a regulated gambling company like Bet365 who have real responsible gambling initiatives and practising plays, there is some trust there from supporters. Whereas these are offshore and unregulated market, unregulated companies that are in the league, they really, nobody really knows what you're getting from them. Nobody really can bet with them in some instances. So it's just a bit, it's just a bit strange really. Yes it is. I agree with you Martin, you wanted to say something. Yeah, I was just going to say, as the club I support, Newcastle United, we had one of these Asian betting companies on the front of the shirt for quite a long time, Fun88, and like all of them, they have a white label deal which gives them access to the UK market. They're not interested about having players, if they were honest about it, from the UK. It's all about promoting them in Thailand and Vietnam and the Philippines and so on. But fans were upset about having that brand on there. If it had been a Ladbrokes or Paddybar or something, fans wouldn't have been that bothered about it. That's a recognisable UK brand that people are betting with. But people do object to these companies that seem, they might not be. I've got no idea what the FON88 is doing in the Philippines or whatever, but they give the impression of not being... quite as safe, quite as regulated, quite as customer-first as somebody like Bat365 or Panty Power. Yeah, yeah. I agree. The bigger the company name is, the more credibility customers get along with it. But let me review back to this deal specifically, the Bat365 one. Given that the billing firm will receive prominent visibility on stadium LEDs during Champions League matches, how will this fit into the context of a wider crackdown on sports betting ads across countries like Spain and Italy? Martin? Well, that's interesting. I think Ciaran will know a lot more about how those LEDs work than I do. But just in general. It's not entirely clear from the press release, but they won't be able to run a betting advert at a Real Madrid home tie in the Premier League and the Champions League for instance, or with any of the Italian teams as well. But what we've seen in other sports, let's think of an example. UFC I think. Formula One is a great example. So there's a steak.com of a team in Formula One. But when they have races in places like Spain and Italy, it becomes the Kik Formula One team. It has the Kik streaming company branding on it instead, which is the same company. I believe that Bwin, when they sponsored the Europa League and Europa Conference League, you would see in some countries safer gambling messages and entained foundation messages sort of prompting you to bet with Bwin. So we might see some of that. There are options maybe to donate to charity, which is what we see. Give that space to charities, which we've seen companies doing before as well. Mason Yeah, absolutely. So there are all sorts of ways to get around this. But the other part of this is when Real Madrid play that second leg at... I was going to say Man United but I guess you're unqualified for it either aren't you? Not next season. No. At say Man City, those Bet365 adverts will be at the ground and then it's possible that those will be visible on Spanish TV but it depends what sort of system they're using. Yeah so we recently covered Inside is Sport, a deal between Bundesliga side Stuttgart and a crypto casino called Lucky Block. pretty much that deal consisted of Lucky Block becoming the club's Asian betting partner. This obviously meant that the deal was Asian front facing I believe, so there would be absolutely no marketing or sponsorship arrangements put in place in Europe, therefore meaning that no European fans or German fans even of Stuttgart would be able to see any advertising from Lucky Block. Now this was quite a timely deal because the team were at the time in Japan on preseason tour so there was a lot of opportunities for the casino, for the crypto casino to get some advertising and marketing arrangements. At the same time the games were still broadcast to fans in Germany and around Europe so the way around these was some games they had quite I suppose intelligent technology. which can change the advertising boards depending on which broadcast you're on. So what you're seeing at the game isn't necessarily what people are seeing while they're watching the game. At the same time, like Martin says, it can just be a case of if that technology isn't available, you literally just don't advertise it or you get the advertisements out of the way. Another way of seeing it. It's on top of my mind, but I can't think of the exact deal. But I'm pretty sure we were talking in the office of the day about there was a club or a sport and they were actually having the betting gambling sponsorships in front of the family stand I think. So it wouldn't be visible obviously to the people in the stand as the kids and the families but it will be visible in TV broadcasts. So there's loads of ways around it and obviously when there's so much money involved they'll always find a solution to these problems. Yeah, of course. And yeah, we're again, I'm going to ask you a question, Kiran. We say that B365 is first ever sports betting sponsor of the Champions League, but it's not UEFA's first ever sports betting sponsor. It was actually Betano when it was announced as a sponsor for the Euros. And you covered that deal. and you also spoke with Betano's global head of sponsorships recently. Can you tell us a bit about the highlights coming from that deal? Yeah, so I've pretty much picked up about three highlights here of the deal and of the conversation I had with the global head of sponsorships. The first one, the big one was the exclusiveness of this deal. So the Betano deal saw... the UEFA Euros sponsored by Betting Partner for the first time, which is historical obviously and just completely huge. I mean the Euros is probably, you could put it, maybe I'm being a bit European biased here but I would say it's the second biggest international tournament behind the World Cup. I know the South American and the African tournaments have very... strong fan bases and very passionate. I'd say they come pretty close to each other. But the thing is with exclusiveness was Batano were not competing at the time with any other tournaments. The only tournament that was on at the time and the only football that was on at the time was the Copa America, which Batano also sponsored. Meaning they were not competing with any other betting operator. And I think in fact he actually said that there was some football on at the time. in the Brazilian league which Batano also have a lot of deals in. So there was no competing with the Champions League that won't be the same for Bet365. It's a midweek competition in between regular season games. But at the same time on them Tuesdays and Wednesday nights everybody's watching the Champions League and they're on late. So for that Tuesday and Wednesday they will have exclusiveness. Another one was brand visibility. Obviously, just the brand visibility across Europe was huge for them. The logo and branding displayed during matches and in various marketing materials, advertisements on the boards. And with this international deal, for them, he said it was a short-term but high visibility goal, and that's what they got from it. So... It's quite interesting to see how that's what they thought about the deal with the international tournament whereas Bet365 may have quite similar within the short term high visibility but the tournament goes on for quite a lengthy time so they'll actually have a lot more opportunities to engage with certain matches and teams and sort of draw on. things that happened in the first week of the tournament rather than just the space of two weeks So that's quite interesting and the third one was sort of fan engagement Which we've obviously seen Bet365 announcing their press release today that they'll be offering. I think it was immersive Immersive opportunities for fans which usually come in the form of hospitality tickets given out and competitions like that. Yeah, and it's not only as obvious that companies are aiming at UEFA. UEFA is taking a liking to betting companies as well and we mentioned Betano and the Euros. And Martin, I've also heard rumors about Betano also being in the lineup of sponsoring the Europa League. Rumor has it that's the case. I mean, hearing you spoke to the Bitano's global head of sponsorships and he must be one of the busiest men in the world, given how much sport Bitano currently sponsors. So Bwin, I believe, has had the last three years of Europa League and Conference League sponsorships. That deal ran out with the finals at the end of last season and it's strongly rumoured that it'll shortly be announced that Bitano will take on that. the Thursday night competitions for UEFA for the next three years. That fits quite well with their profile of markets in Europe as well because you tend to get teams from different nations doing well in that and from the Champions League. I think it fits that profile because if you do watch that Thursday night coverage there's an awful lot of clubs who are sponsored by Batano. I think the winner of the conference league actually talked about this in the interview as well. The winner was Olympiakos of the Conference League. He became the first Greek team to win that competition. So yeah, we talked a little bit about it, but I will say Victor at the minute, his rumours and Thomas didn't mention anything about the Europa League to me, so we can sort of have a little guess and that, but we don't really know yet. Sure, sure, yeah. Like I mentioned, it's only Roma's at the moment. But after the news came out that Betano sponsored the Euros, I remember some criticism followed by several NGOs that UEFA and I quote was failing to address the issue of problem gambling. Is there a chance that we might hear that again soon as a result of the B365 partnership, Martin? I don't think there's a chance. I think it's absolutely certain because these... The people looking at gambling reform and campaigning on the issue of problem gambling are very well organised, very vocal, very consistent in their messaging. They know that for the same reason that the betting companies want to be aligned with football is that it's a lot of publicity. They know if they target their campaign about gambling on football, they also get a lot of publicity. So I think we're certain to see the same backlash. once again. I disagree with their arguments in some forms. Obviously, it's a serious issue that needs to be addressed. But I think UEFA, in its choice of partners, has gone for the companies who put responsible play right at the forefront of their message, right at the forefront of their interaction with players. So I think actually it should be seen as a positive. in terms of safer gambling. All right. And with that, we're going to end it on that note. Thank you both for coming to the podcast today and discussing this with me. And for all of you out there listening to this episode, tune in for the next one. My name was Victor Cahier and it was a pleasure hosting this podcast. Bye bye.