The online casino industry is one of the largest worldwide and shows no slowdown in expansion. Online gambling sites can thrive in an environment that is not conducive to other industries. The prime reasons for casino sites success are that they function online and cannot be influenced by external factors. To expand their profits, most operators turned to football team marketing. The first operator to do so in 2005 was Bwin. At the time, this was a completely unknown platform and did not have many registered users. They signed a sponsorship with the first Portuguese football league.
Two years later they collaborated with Real Madrid. The collaboration with Real Madrid led to Bwin achieving record net earnings. Many others followed in Bwin's footsteps. The marketing of football teams has become a standard and something that many operators are working on. Some of the best online casinos that payout are turning to sponsorships to increase their exposure and reach a wider audience. Also, the activity of promoting teams is one of the ways to beat the competition in the gambling industry. Continue reading and get to know how sponsorships between football clubs and casinos work. Also, you will see all the benefits that gambling sites have from this collaboration.
One of the primary goals of promoting football teams by casinos is to make financial profits. For the teams, money is necessary for the purchase of sports equipment and to organize training. Without high enough capital, some of the most famous football brands would not have even half the success they currently enjoy. Casinos, on the other hand, also benefit financially from promoting some of the most popular names in the sports industry. We’ll explain that later, but let’s look at some statistical information first.
Statistics showed that the market value of professional European football reached 28.9 billion euros in 2019. According to data from 2020, from 2016 to 2019, revenues increased by 1.25 each year. The research and calculations did not include the African or South American market, otherwise, revenues would certainly be even higher. With this data, we wanted to show you how much money the football industry is taking. Also, prominent gambling sites have a lot of capital at their disposal. This allows them to focus their income on promoting football clubs and reaching a wider audience. So, a large part of the capital of football clubs comes from sponsors.
We will now explain how casinos make money by promoting some of the most popular football clubs. First, casinos make arrangements with teams to sponsor them on social media and official sites. Football clubs have a lot of communication platforms that are visited by different categories of people. Given these casinos usually choose a particular social platform like Twitter and create content on it. Then the football club just retweet the content that will reach a large number of fans who follow their Twitter profile. Activities that are aimed at promoting the content of gambling sites take place on other social media like Instagram, Facebook, etc. Also, clubs post links to their websites that lead to the operator’s site. Mostly they do this in case the operator offers bonuses for slots, poker, or others.
Another way for sponsored football clubs to publicize the casino is to wear logos on jerseys. Football teams wear jerseys with the gambling brand logo at very popular matches. The name of the site thus reaches the widest audience. For example, an average of 4.7 billion people watch the Premier League and other popular football tournaments live. It is the best opportunity for all emerging platforms to reach a large number of potential users of their services.
According to statistics from 2019, 26 out of 44 clubs in the Premier League were sponsored by casinos. That's an incredible 59%. Now, these sponsorships are even bigger. So, we can conclude that the marketing potential is highest in well-known tournaments. As we have already mentioned, casino promotion does not come for free. Gambling operators pay millions of euros so that their logos can appear on football club jerseys. The higher the sponsorship, the higher amounts the operator pays. This means that if the casino wants its brand to appear in all matches and popular tournaments, it has to set aside a lot of money for it. But, through the promotion, the casino makes a profit which compensates for the capital invested in the football club.
We will now try to explain how this promotion of certain operators can affect you. First of all, these promotions have a psychological impact on you. That is, if you see a casino logo several times in every match or tournament, you will form an attachment to that name. Even research shows that people tend to be associated with sponsors who advertise regularly. Instead of looking at the casino as a regular site, you will look at it as a brand. Also, you will register on a platform promoted by the team you favor rather than on any other. It may seem to you that your team would not promote anything that is not of good quality and safe.
As you have seen, cooperating with football clubs can bring many benefits to gambling operators. We will now present them to you in one short list:
- Promotion of casino platform services
- Greater publicity and access to a wider audience
- The sponsor stands out from the competition
Last words about casino sponsors
There is no more convenient investment for casinos than making sponsorships with popular football clubs. All the sporting events that are being broadcast these days include sponsors who are thus trying to break through. As you learned from this article, sponsorships are the best way to stand out in the gambling industry. The logos of online casinos that appear on the players' jerseys reach a large audience. In popular matches, even millions of people can see the name of the operator, which attracts a large number of players to the platform. As a result, sponsors earn huge capital on an annual basis.
Also, gambling sites invest a lot to be seen by as diverse an audience as possible. Operators pay for the club's sports equipment, invest in the training that the team goes through, and more. But any investment in sponsorship pays off. In the end, despite investing millions, casinos remain with a net profit. We can conclude that concluding cooperation with football clubs is a winning formula for the casino. Both sides of this collaboration are making huge sums of money. Therefore, we can see that more and more casinos are sponsoring lesser-known teams. But the first operator in this branch (Bwin) also started that way. Later, this operator signed a contract with Real Madrid and broke through to the top.