Manchester United have struck a multi-year training kit sponsorship with Betway worth around £20 million a season, a deal that has drawn attention because it sits alongside the Premier League’s tightening gambling rules.
The club announced Betway as its new training kit sponsor after a season without an apparel sponsor. United said the agreement will begin from the new campaign, and that the Betway logo will appear on the men’s and women’s training kits.
Betway branding will also be visible on matchdays at Old Trafford and the Progress with Unity Stadium. United described Betway as its official principal partner, while Betway said it had become the club’s exclusive global betting partner.
Marc Armstrong, United’s chief business officer, said the scale of the partnership reflected the club’s growth strategy, global strength and ability to attract leading brands. Neal Menashe, chief executive of Super Group, said the deal would showcase the Betway brand at Old Trafford and beyond, and pointed to the club’s reach across English football and global markets.
The questions around the agreement stem from the Premier League’s gambling code of conduct, which the league, the EFL, the FA and the Barclays Women’s Super League formally agreed in July 2024. Season 2024/25 was its first year of implementation.
Under that framework, clubs agreed to withdraw gambling sponsorship from the front of their matchday shirts from the start of 2026/27. The code also defines gambling-related agreements broadly, including shirt sponsor contracts and gambling partner appointments, and says such partnerships should be designed to limit their reach to under-18s and people at risk of gambling-related harm.
The same code says the commercial income raised from gambling sponsorship should be reinvested in infrastructure and programmes that serve football fans and communities. It also says audits were carried out in 2024/25 to make sure gambling logos and promotional material did not appear on child-focused sections of club media content.
That wider compliance backdrop is reinforced by long-standing Gambling Commission guidance, which reminded operators in 2018 that gambling logos and sponsorship links should not appear on child-targeted football web pages or on children’s merchandising, including replica shirts.
Even so, the Premier League’s ban applies to front-of-shirt sponsorship, not to sleeve or training kit deals. United’s Betway agreement therefore falls into a space the current rules still allow.
