Exclusive: Bwin, Mangas, Unibet sports sponsorship threat 12/11/2009

Stephen Carter

BWIN, UNIBET AND MANGAS GAMING'S Bet-At-Home, Betclick and Expekt brands are among operators whose football sponsorship deals in Poland are under threat from a proposed ban on marketing and advertising by bookmakers in that country, EGRmagazine.com can reveal exclusively.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk unveiled plans this week to regulate Poland’s offline bookmaking industry which include a ban on advertising of any form of gambling which would make the PLN50m (£11m)’s worth of sponsorship of Polish sport made by egaming companies each year illegal, with the threat of a PLN35,000 (£7,600) fine on any person or business in breach of the law. 

Current deals between egaming companies under threat from the law include Expekt’s sponsorship of the Polish national team; BetAtHome’s shirt sponsorship of Wisla Krakow, champions of last year’s Ekstraklasa top league in Polish football; Betclick’s shirt sponsorship of Ekstraklasa team Lech Poznan and Bwin’s role as a principal sponsor of Ekstraklasa team Legia Warszawa. 

The loss of Unibet’s title sponsorship of the second tier of Polish football, Unibet 1.Liga, could alone cost the Polish National 2nd League €4m a season. 

The Polish prime minister announced a clampdown on all forms of gambling in the wake of four senior Polish officials being forced to resign on suspicion of their decisions being unduly influenced by gaming industry lobbyists, including sports minister Miroslaw Drzewiecki. 

Betsson country manager for Poland Maciej Poschwald said that the proposals, which also include raising the tax on offline operators from 10% of stakes to 50% of gross profit and even outlawing branded giveaways, also posed a threat to online gaming operators. 

Poschwald said: “It’s as if the Polish government went through every single campaign undertaken by egaming companies in the last few years and defined these in the new gambling act as forbidden.” 

Filip Sosnowski, a Polish betting journalist and owner of affiliate site Bet1x2.pl, told EGRMagazine.com that the Lech Poznan and Wisla Krakow teams have already sent official statements to the government outlining how the proposed advertising ban could be financially damaging. 

However Sosnowski also argued that the extent of any marketing ban’s application to online operators would only become clear in two weeks’ time when the Polish parliament has debated Tuesday’s proposal and released a second proposal aimed at regulating online gambling markets. 

Sosnowski said: “While yesterday’s proposed law would impose a ban on advertising for Polish offline bookmakers and could affect online bookies advertising offline, we do not know if the same law would be used for the second project to regulate online markets. This second law will also need to be agreed by the EU.”

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Posted: 12/11/2009