Betano is going back to the European Championship. On Wednesday 7 October, UEFA and Kaizen Gaming announced that Betano, the Greek group's sports betting and online casino brand, will be an official sponsor of UEFA EURO 2028. The agreement was signed at Kaizen Campus in Athens, with UEFA general secretary Theodore Theodoridis and UEFA marketing director Guy-Laurent Epstein sitting alongside Kaizen Gaming co-founder and chief executive George Daskalakis and chief commercial officer Julio Iglesias Hernando. Neither side disclosed the value or the length of the deal.
On paper it is a renewal. Betano became the first betting brand to partner UEFA's flagship men's national team tournament at EURO 2024 in Germany, and it has been the official global sponsor of the UEFA Europa League and UEFA Conference League since the 2024/25 season. What makes this one different is the destination. EURO 2028 will be played from 9 June to 9 July 2028 in England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland, across nine stadiums in eight cities. That is a part of the football world where gambling advertising is watched more closely than almost anywhere else in Europe.
So a sports betting brand will put its name on the biggest football event ever staged in Britain and Ireland, at the very moment Premier League clubs have taken bookmakers off the front of their shirts, the UK government is consulting on a ban on sponsorship by unlicensed operators, and Ireland's new gambling regulator is getting its powers. For anyone working in sports sponsorship, iGaming or brand strategy, it is a deal worth reading closely.
The official wording is short. UEFA described Betano as Kaizen Gaming's premium online sports betting and gaming brand and confirmed it as an official sponsor of the 18th European Championship. According to iGaming Expert, Betano intends to use the partnership to raise the entertainment experience for football fans, with what the release called "the best responsible gaming practices and most advanced features at the core of its platform." No specific rights package, territory list or activation plan has been published yet, and both sides were careful not to talk numbers.
Daskalakis framed the renewal as the continuation of a relationship rather than a new purchase. "UEFA EURO 2024 marked the beginning of an important partnership for Kaizen Gaming and Betano," he said, as quoted by SBC News and Gambling.com. "Returning to the competition for UEFA EURO 2028 is particularly meaningful for us." He added that the tournament offered a chance to "build on everything we have created together so far," and, with the ceremony taking place in Athens, spoke of sending the ball on its way from Greece towards the tournament.
Theodoridis kept to the same tone. "We are delighted to continue our successful partnership with Kaizen Gaming," he said, adding that "this agreement reaffirms our commitment to both developing the game and improving the matchday experience." UEFA's statement connected the renewal to the work the two organisations have already done at EURO 2024 and in the club competitions.
The timing is notable. The opening match is still twenty months away, and Sportcal reports that UEFA has already been filling its EURO 2028 partner roster, with Booking.com and BT Group among the recently announced names. Securing a returning betting sponsor this early tells you that UEFA sees the category as a settled part of its commercial programme, not an experiment from 2024.
Sky Sports has set out the shape of the tournament. Twenty four teams will play at Wembley and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, the Hill Dickinson Stadium in Liverpool, St James' Park in Newcastle, Villa Park in Birmingham, Hampden Park in Glasgow and the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. The opening game is in Cardiff on Friday 9 June 2028 and the final is at Wembley on Sunday 9 July. Northern Ireland was originally part of the bid but is no longer a host after the UK government said in September 2024 that it would not fund the Casement Park redevelopment in time.
Every one of those venues sits in a market where the debate about gambling and sport is loud. In Britain, the conversation has moved from voluntary codes to tax, licensing and shirt policy. In Ireland, a new regulator is taking shape under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024. SBC News noted that betting sponsorships are under pressure in several European markets, including the UK and the Netherlands, yet that pressure has not discouraged either Betano or UEFA.
That contrast is the heart of the story. A tournament sponsorship is not the same thing as a club shirt deal. It is sold centrally by UEFA, it runs for a few weeks, and it reaches a global television and digital audience far beyond the host countries. The value for an operator lies in that worldwide reach, but in the host markets it is the betting brand inside their own stadiums that will draw attention.
The Premier League's voluntary ban on gambling brands on the front of matchday shirts took effect this season. Clubs agreed to it in April 2023, and it covers the front of the shirt only. As Gambling.com has reported, sleeves, training kit and pitch side or stadium advertising were left outside the restriction. Clubs have moved quickly to use that space. Everton moved Stake from the front of the shirt to the sleeve and brought in CMC Markets as its main shirt partner, while AFC Bournemouth signed MrQ as its Official UK Online Casino and Sleeve Partner.
Betano has been one of the most active brands in that reshuffle. It became Aston Villa's principal partner and front of shirt sponsor from the 2024/25 season, according to iGaming Business, and in July it signed a three year extension that moves its logo to the left sleeve, as iGaming Expert reported. The partnership covered a remarkable run for the club, including Villa's Europa League win in May. iGaming Expert also noted a detail that says a lot about the reality of multi market sponsorship: during some European fixtures in markets where Betano could not advertise, the shirt space was given to causes such as Acorns Children's Hospital and the Aston Villa Foundation.
At Tottenham Hotspur, Betano signed a three year agreement in July. Inside World Football reports that it starts as Official Training Wear Partner for 2026/27, with pitch side advertising and stadium branding, and then becomes Tottenham's Official Europe and Latin America Betting Partner through 2029. Spurs chief revenue officer Ryan Norys said the partnership would help "enhance knowledge around responsible gaming." Kaizen Gaming's head of sponsorships, Tomasz Majewski, put the wider shift plainly in comments quoted by Insider Sport: "Ultimately, the future isn't about finding one single replacement for the front-of-shirt spot." We have looked at how Brentford, Nottingham Forest and Tottenham are reshaping their betting partnerships in separate pieces on this blog.
The structure of the Spurs deal is telling. The long term value is defined by markets, Europe and Latin America, rather than by a piece of kit in north London. That is exactly the logic of a EURO 2028 sponsorship: the stage is in Britain and Ireland, but the audience Betano most wants to reach is spread across its own markets.
Kaizen Gaming operates Betano across Europe, Africa and Latin America, and its football portfolio reads like a map of those markets. Sportcal lists the main pieces. Betano was named FIFA's first ever betting partner in 2022 and is an official tournament supporter of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America. It sponsored the 2024 Copa America and the 2025 Copa America Femenina under a multi year CONMEBOL agreement running through 2028. In Brazil it is title sponsor of the top flight Serie A and became Flamengo's shirt sponsor in August 2025. In Argentina it backed the top flight as "Torneo Betano" in 2024 and has sponsored River Plate's shirt since May 2025. SBC News adds that it became an official sponsor of Argentina's national team in April 2026.
Portugal is another stronghold. According to Sportcal, Betano is title sponsor of the Super Cup, front of shirt partner of Sporting, sleeve partner of Benfica, and renewed with FC Porto in July. In 2025 it added Bayern Munich and a league wide deal with Denmark's Superliga. Put the national team tournaments on top of the club portfolio and you can see the design: Betano buys the biggest stages in the sport and then works local clubs and leagues underneath them in the markets where it actually takes bets.
Iglesias Hernando explained the thinking in an interview with iGaming Business in July. "The real value of this relationship isn't just the badge on the broadcast," he said of the UEFA partnership. He also set out a clear rule for how Kaizen chooses partners: "If there is no trust that the partnership has the potential to be a long-term one, there is no deal." A second European Championship, signed nearly two years before kick off, fits that description well.
Betano launched in the UK in May 2024 through a partnership with BVGroup, which iGaming Business described as holding UK, Irish, Gibraltar and Ontario licences. Iglesias Hernando admitted at the time that entering "one of the largest regulated online gaming markets in the world" was a challenge. A EURO 2028 sponsorship lets Betano be visible in the UK and Ireland while speaking mainly to fans in Brazil, Argentina, Portugal and its other core markets.
For UEFA, the case is simple. A betting sponsor is a reliable, well funded buyer that wants exactly what a tournament sells: huge live audiences, emotional moments and a reason for fans to engage with every match. Since 2023 UEFA has turned Betano from a first time tournament partner into a sponsor of its national team and club competitions. iGaming Business points out that the Europa League and Conference League deals run until the end of the 2026/27 season, so the EURO 2028 extension also keeps the relationship alive while those club rights come up for discussion.
When Betano first signed for EURO 2024, Insider Sport reported Guy-Laurent Epstein describing it as "a leading digital sports betting operator, with a focus on cutting-edge technology and responsible gaming." That emphasis on technology and responsible gaming has stayed in UEFA's language around the partnership, and it matters more in 2028 than it did in Germany. A rights holder bringing a betting brand into British and Irish stadiums will want to show that it has thought about protection as carefully as it has thought about revenue.
There is a broader lesson here about brand awareness. A tournament gives a sponsor a short, intense window in which the whole football world is watching. For a sports betting operator whose growth markets are thousands of kilometres from the host cities, that global attention is worth more than any single domestic deal. For UEFA, a category partner that keeps coming back is proof that the product works.
Britain is changing the economics of online gambling quickly. Law firm Kennedys summarises the measures announced in the Autumn Budget 2025: Remote Gaming Duty on online casino style products rose from 21% to 40% from 1 April 2026, and a new 25% rate of General Betting Duty on remote sports betting arrives on 1 April 2027. Remote betting on UK horse racing stays at 15%. Those increases change the sums behind every marketing budget aimed at British customers.
Then there is licensing. On 15 July 2026 the Department for Culture, Media and Sport opened a consultation on banning gambling operators that are not licensed by the Gambling Commission from sponsoring or advertising with clubs, leagues, events, venues and individuals in Great Britain. The document, published on GOV.UK, estimates that about 40% of Premier League clubs had deals with unlicensed operators in the 2025/26 season. Its preferred start date is a fixed point in August 2027, ahead of the 2027/28 season, and it says the ban would apply to any competition held in Great Britain regardless of where the participants usually come from. The consultation closed on 9 September, with a government response expected later in 2026.
That is directly relevant to any betting brand planning a presence at a tournament in England, Scotland and Wales in the summer of 2028. The consultation says the government does not expect to extend the ban to licensed white label arrangements, and online and digital advertising sits outside its scope. How the final rules treat a centrally sold international tournament will be one of the details to watch when the response is published. Betano launched in Britain through BVGroup, a UK licence holder, rather than as an offshore brand, but the wider point stands: sponsors will be expected to show exactly how they are licensed in the host market.
Ireland adds another layer. The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 created the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland, and a commencement order in February 2026 brought its licensing and enforcement powers into force. The Act also contains a watershed in section 149 that would ban gambling advertising on television, radio and on demand services between 5.30am and 9pm. OLBG reports that this provision, like almost all of the advertising code, still needs a separate ministerial order before it applies. If it is switched on before 2028, Dublin's matches at the Aviva Stadium will be played under a very different set of advertising rules from those in place at EURO 2024.
The first lesson is that the front of the shirt is no longer the centre of football sponsorship for betting brands in Britain. Betano has spread its presence across sleeves, training wear, stadium inventory, regional betting rights and centrally sold tournaments. Majewski's point about there being no single replacement is the right one. Operators that want visibility now need a portfolio, not one big logo.
The second is that market mapping comes before media buying. Betano's portfolio follows its business: Brazil, Argentina, Portugal and the wider Latin American and European audience. A tournament in Britain and Ireland makes sense because the broadcast audience reaches those places. Any online gambling brand weighing a similar move should start with a simple question: where are our licensed customers, and does this property reach them? This is the core of good iGaming consulting work, matching rights to markets before a contract is signed.
The third is that compliance has become part of the creative brief. Different markets will have different rules on the same night of football. Villa's practice of handing shirt space to charities when Betano could not appear is a practical example of planning for that. At a tournament spread across four nations with distinct regulatory regimes, operators will need activation plans that switch cleanly between versions, especially in digital advertising and social content where audiences cross borders constantly.
The fourth is patience. Iglesias Hernando's comment that there is no deal without trust in a long term relationship is a useful benchmark. Betano is now on its second EURO, its third UEFA competition and multiple FIFA and CONMEBOL tournaments. That continuity builds credibility with rights holders that short term buyers struggle to match.
For brands in the Gulf watching all of this, the message is relevant too. Companies in the UAE that look at European football as a marketing platform, whether they are in iGaming, fintech, travel or property, are entering a market where rules on who can sponsor what are tightening each season. Understanding those rules is now as important as understanding audience figures. The same discipline applies to sports sponsorship opportunities in Dubai and to UAE football club sponsorship, where brands also need to know exactly which categories a rights holder can and cannot sell.
Several questions will shape how this deal plays out. The UK government's response on unlicensed sponsorship, the final position on Ireland's advertising watershed, and the outcome of UEFA's next club competition sales from 2027 will all affect how and where Betano shows up. So will the 25% remote betting duty in Britain, which takes effect in April 2027 and will test how much British and international operators are willing to spend on domestic visibility.
For the casino and sports betting industry more broadly, EURO 2028 will be a showcase of how far gambling sponsorship can go in a high scrutiny market. If Betano and UEFA run a careful, responsible campaign that respects local rules while speaking to a global audience, it could become a template for how betting brands stay inside elite football.
Either way, Kaizen Gaming has made its choice early. While others in online gambling retreat from British football because of tax and regulation, Betano is doubling down on the biggest stage the region has to offer, betting that a global audience and a long term relationship with UEFA are worth more than the risks. For operators thinking about their own football strategy, and for anyone who needs iGaming consulting on where sponsorship money still works, that is a decision worth studying. It also shows why online gambling brands, casino operators and sports betting companies increasingly need specialist iGaming consulting before they commit to a major rights deal.
Sources: UEFA, iGaming Business, SBC News, Gambling.com, Sportcal, iGaming Expert, Sky Sports, Insider Sport, Inside World Football, Kennedys, GOV.UK, OLBG
