You say sponsorship, I say partnership: what gambling operators should look out for

First published in iGaming Business

Any quiz boffin worth their salt will know that the first English football team to wear sponsored shirts was not Arsenal, Man United or Chelsea but non-league Kettering Town. It was January 1976 and the sponsor was Kettering Tyres. Despite the fact that Kettering was a relative footballing backwater and 1976 was a very different era in media coverage, it took the Football Association just four days to order the removal of the branding. Following a brief period of cat and mouse during which Kettering reduced their branding to "Kettering T" (claiming it stood for "Town" rather than "Tyres"), the threat of an FA fine finally wore Kettering's defiance down.