Betting providers increasingly present in the Bundesliga & not only there
Gambling and football have been inextricably linked for a number of years. For many fans, the excitement gained from gambling on a game of football is just as great as watching the game itself. For others, having a bet on a match simply makes up a key part of the whole experience.
Many football stadiums even house their own bookmakers, which shows just how many fans like to wager on the match before heading into the stands.
Over the years, the union between betting companies and football has grown stronger. Team partnerships, shirt sponsors, pitch-side advertising boards and TV ads during live match broadcasts have all been overtaken by betting providers.
Some of these betting providers, like BWIN, have become very prominent in football around the world. Football fans will probably associate BWIN instantly with Real Madrid’s shirts at the start of the 2010s. Click here to view the BWIN review on Casino.Guide.
Nowadays BWIN is partnered with German Bundesliga giants Borussia Dortmund and is also a sponsor for the German national team.
It isn’t just BWIN that are involved with German football, betting providers have become more and more present in Germany’s top league and other major leagues around the world.
Betting Provider Shirt Sponsors
Although teams such as Borussia Dortmund are partnered with betting companies, there are currently no teams in the German Bundesliga with a betting provider as their main shirt sponsor.
The last team to feature such a company on their shirts was SC Paderborn who were sponsored by Sunmaker. The club was in the Bundesliga for the 2019/20 season but ended up finishing bottom of the table so were relegated down to Germany’s second tier.
Unfortunately, Sunmaker fell upon financial trouble as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. This lead to SC Paderborn and 13 other German clubs losing Sunmaker as their main sponsor for the latter part of the season.
The lack of betting companies on the shirts of the top teams in Germany could be due to a ban on online casino games and slots in the country. Clubs and TV broadcasters have been warned that displaying logos of betting companies who also offer these casino games could result in games being prohibited from being aired on TV.
German Bundesliga Betting Partnerships
Although there aren’t any teams that currently display the logos of betting providers on their shirts, there are plenty of clubs who still have sponsorships agreements and partnerships with betting companies.
We’ve already discussed that Borussia Dortmund is involved in a partnership with BWIN.
In addition, Hertha Berlin and RB Leipzig are sponsored by Betway and Uni-Bet respectively. Both of these companies also sponsor other teams around the world such as Spanish sides Celta Vigo and Real Betis who are both partnered with Betway. Betway also sponsors West Ham United in the English Premier League.
Moving back to the Bundesliga, VfB Stuttgart is another big club who have an agreement with a different betting provider. Back in 2018, Stuttgart signed a deal to make the private sports-betting company Betano a premium partner of the club.
As you can see, there are plenty of clubs in the top German league who have agreements with betting outfits even if none of them is currently being advertised on the team’s match shirts.
TV Sponsorships and Adverts
Even if a company isn’t directly involved with a club, they can still advertise themselves during matches elsewhere and an excellent place to do so is during the ad-breaks of live broadcasts.
As long as it is allowed in the broadcasting country, you’ll see betting companies being advertised heavily during every ad-break in a live match broadcast.
Currently, The Bundesliga is broadcast by BT Sport in the UK and regularly shows adverts from Bet365 during all the ad-breaks. As of the 2021 season, the German Bundesliga will be broadcast in the UK by Sky who have their very own betting company called SkyBet.
Betting on Bundesliga matches
Alongside the English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, the Italian Serie-A and France’s Ligue 1, the Bundesliga is one of the world’s 5 major football leagues.
As a result, many of the teams are well-known and the matches are regularly broadcast on live TV. All of this means it has become a popular league for fans to place bets on.
The Bundesliga was also the first major league to restart after the Coronavirus put a stop to sporting events. Since it was the only “big” league in operation, many more regular gamblers turned their attention to the Bundesliga while the other leagues were still out of action.
Finally, Bayern Munich winning last season’s Champions League has brought more attention to the Bundesliga, which will also mean more people placing bets on the matches.