Inverness Signs BetGoodwin Shirt Deal as EPL Bans Gambling

Inverness Caledonian Thistle has agreed a front-of-shirt sponsorship with online bookmaker BetGoodwin that runs to May 2028. The deal will place the BetGoodwin logo on shirts as the club prepares to return to the Scottish Championship after winning League One.

The agreement comes after a season in which Inverness recorded losses of £1.7 million for 2023/24 and entered administration in October 2024. The club released five players and manager Duncan Ferguson departed when administrators took control. No buyer submitted an accepted offer by the formal sale deadline in March 2025, and the club continued operating with roughly £1 million in financial support from former chairman Alan Savage.

The English Premier League will prohibit gambling companies from appearing on front-of-shirt positions from the start of the new season in August. The restriction applies only to the top tier. At the start of the current season, 11 of 20 Premier League clubs carried gambling operators on their shirts; analysts estimate those deals were worth about £90 million a year in total. Some top-flight teams have negotiated lower-value replacements or shifted gambling partners to sleeve sponsorships, where allowed.

Clubs outside the Premier League face different commercial conditions. The English Football League has no ban on gambling shirt sponsorship; Sky Bet sponsors the Championship, League One and League Two under a contract through 2029 valued at about £40 million a year. Six Championship clubs began the season with gambling operators as their main shirt sponsor. The Scottish Premiership has not adopted a league-wide ban: Celtic is partnered with Dafabet, Rangers with Unibet and 32Red, and Dundee United with QuinnCasino. SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster has said the league has no plans for a blanket ban.

Financial reports show pressure on lower-tier clubs. Deloitte’s 2023/24 review recorded an average pre-tax loss of £5.2 million for English League One clubs. The Championship reported aggregate operating losses of £411 million and total net debt around £1.5 billion. Surveys of Scottish football note average attendances in the Championship and lower divisions typically range from about 1,000 to 6,000, and financial distress is concentrated in lower tiers.

BetGoodwin is owned by Goodwin Racing, a family-run firm with horse-racing roots dating to 1997; the BetGoodwin online platform launched in 2022. For many smaller clubs, gambling operators remain among the sponsors willing to pay higher fees for front-of-shirt visibility.

Campaigners are calling for stricter limits on gambling advertising in sport. The Independent Football Regulator in England is reviewing potential rule changes, the U.K. government opened a consultation on banning unlicensed gambling operators from sports sponsorship, and industry bodies have highlighted the potential growth of offshore, unlicensed sponsors by the end of 2027.