Scamurai Weekly: The Premier League and its shady shirt sponsors
Plus why cash is important, shutting down Royal and some new lawsuits
It’s football season.
My brother spent the whole week hyping up a pizza party for Saturday’s Sunderland versus West Ham match. When the game kicked off, he launched into a stream of commentary about transfers, new players and tactics, the sort of insider football chatter that might as well have been in another language to me.
I tried to steer the conversation toward the sponsors. Specifically, the logos plastered across the pitch that trace back to murky gambling outfits and organised crime networks in Southeast Asia. 8XBet. BJ88. W88.
For years, UK football clubs, and sports brands more broadly, have signed questionable partnerships. Some raise human rights concerns, others revolve around questionable industries.
But lately, scrutiny has focused on obscure crypto and casino brands paying well above market rates for sponsorship deals.
Many of these sponsors don’t disclose who owns them. Or just make it up. More worryingly, some are linked to TGP, a shuttered UK white-label gambling service believed to have been controlled by SunCity, a notorious Macau casino junket operator whose founder is now in prison.
Teams were warned earlier this year by the Gambling Commission about working with such partners but the warnings have been largely ignored beyond geofencing related content on their websites to lock out UK viewers.
Other sponsors have also been connected to casino towns in Cambodia, where scam compounds siphon billions from victims of investment fraud and pig butchering schemes each year.
As you can probably tell, I’m great fun at parties. I went on about this in great detail, my brother’s expression suggesting I should probably just shut up and eat my pizza. In the end, I was thrown out of the room and instead spent my time writing a series exploring the shady sponsorships haunting UK football this season. A link to part one is below.
Trying to move to a more regular schedule putting out these newsletters going forward. If you've got stories you'd like to see covered, please get in touch at callan@scamurai.io.
Cheers,
Callan Quinn
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