The Betway Premiership – Gambling and football is a lucrative, controversial partnership

On the face of it, the Premier Soccer League’s partnership with online gambling company betway, the new sponsors of South Africa’s top flight, is a game-changer for domestic football.

Valued at around R900 million over three years, the biggest single investment in South African sport, it more than doubles the reported annual value of the previous deal with DStv, which was said to be R137 million a year.

The betway premiership is set to come with increased prize money, meaning the clubs should also benefit, even if PSL chairman Irvin Khoza was evasive on whether the new influx of cash would mean an increase on the grants dished out to Premiership sides.

The deal is also not surprising in the sense that it follows a global trend of gambling companies gaining an increasing foothold in football sponsorship.

New rules

In the English Premier League, 11 sides will start the coming season with different gambling companies on the front of their shirts. Betway is one of those companies, emblazoned across the West Ham shirt since 2015.

This, however, is not going to last, with a rule passed that betting companies will not be allowed front-of-shirt sponsorship in the English Premier League from the start of the 2026/27 season.

They will be allowed to advertise on the sleeve of the jersey, but the move has come in the face of increasing concerns about the amount of exposure an extremely addictive pastime like gambling is getting.

“Premier League clubs must know that gambling harms are a serious public health issue that destroys many lives in their communities and around the world, yet continue to blindly sign these desperate deals for a few extra quid,” a spokesperson from the Big Step, a campaign dedicated to removing gambling advertising and sponsorship from football, told the Guardian newspaper.

Here in South Africa, it seems there is no attempt being made to regulate gambling advertising or sponsorship in football. But there should be, even more so in sub-saharan Africa where gambling problems and poverty appear inherently linked. Betway’s money may be good for the PSL, but is it good money? That is surely up for debate.