One of the most amusing trends of the summer has been the outrage from fans that has followed every new commercial partnership that the club has announced. While we’ve been desperately awaiting announcements of new signings the club has instead tried to keep us happy with updates of their latest sponsorship that they’ve managed to line up. There is literally no limit to the number of commercial partnerships that the club can arrange from official lubricant partners, taxi companies and, back in our Premier League heyday, Falconry Partners. But today I’m going to look a little deeper into our relationship with our ties with Sports Broker.
We’ve been sponsored by Sports Broker for around a year now but this partnership was renewed and extended a few weeks ago, with the Sports Broker logo now featured more prominently on the shoulders of new Town shirts and just about every piece of advertising the club creates. Like many fans, I wasn’t really sure what Sports Broker was so I thought I’d write an article to find out.
What is Sports Broker?
Here’s how Sports Broker describe their business in their own words:
SportsBroker allows you to trade virtual shares that rise and fall based on team performance.
The aim is to buy shares and sell them for a higher price, teams will rise in value if they perform well.
We only sing when you’re winning. SportsBroker is a peer to peer gaming platform, this means you are trying to win money from players who have backed the opposite team – we only take a small commission if your team goes up in value.
So, it’s a bit like a made up stock market, where you use real money to buy virtual shares in a football team at a price Sports Broker’s algorithm sets and then the price fluctuates depending on the performance of the team based on their results and other factors they used to determine the value Sports Broker assigns them. So Town’s unexpectedly good season last year most likely meant their value would have gone up over the course of the season and a team like Everton that performed well below expectation probably lost value throughout the season.
Some football fans may have alarm bells ringing, because their model sounds quite similar to Football Index, which blew up spectacularly last in March 2021 and saw people lose thousands of pounds when their market crashed. However, Sports Broker is different to Football Index in some key ways which will mean that they are not likely to fail in the way that Football Index did.
The article linked to above goes into a lot more detail but the key difference is that with Sports Broker is a much simpler system and they don’t interfere with their virtual market in the way that Football Index did. They provide the platform for people to trade the virtual shares in football teams but they don’t pay out dividends or buy back people’s shares like Football Index did, which avoids a lot of the issues that led to the implosion of the latter company.
Who regulates Sports Broker?
Sports Broker calls itself a “real-time game with virtual shares” rather than a gambling platform, so it is not regulated by the gambling commission. As people can win and lose real money and these outcomes are influenced by the results of football matches then it certainly sounds a lot like gambling but I presume they have done their homework on this issue.
It is also not considered an investment platform either (you’re not buying real shares) so the Financial Conduct Authority doesn’t regulate them like they would if you were buying shares in an actual company.
However, they do hold a Malta Gaming Authority license which is apparently quite a common thing across Europe.
Are betting sponsors on their way out?
There are rumblings that gambling sponsorships may be banned from football in the near future, with a government white paper set to be published any day now. However, wider turmoil in Westminster could see reforms kicked down the road. Add to that the powerful lobbying power the gambling industry has and it’s possible that plans to stop gambling companies from being applied to football shirts could be either watered down, pushed back or lost in the shuffle with all the change that is currently taking place.
There is also the possibility that any changes to gambling sponsors on shirts could bypass Huddersfield Town’s arrangements with Sports Broker because they are not classed as a “gambling product” as mentioned above. Though, I think this may be something that other clubs may get into a bit of a flap about if they have to remove their bookmaker sponsors but Town keep hold of their sponsor for a virtual online trading platform. As always, the devil is in the detail.
Sports Broker’s new deal with Town that was only announced a few weeks ago runs for a further three years, so there must be some confidence that any new legislation either won’t affect clubs in the Championship, won’t affect existing deals, won’t affect Sports Broker or won’t ever see the light of day at all. Otherwise, why sign such a long deal in the first place?
Should Huddersfield Town be in partnership with Sports Broker?
I was skeptical when I started writing this article but the more I looked into them the less concerned I felt. I’d read some deeply troubling things about Football Index when they went belly up and I thought that Sports Index sounded like another version of that business model. The idea of buying and selling virtual shares in football clubs might not appeal to everyone but if that’s the kind of thing you fancy then I don’t see any harm in it.
I think it’s important to be aware that there are risks involved with any form of gambling and despite the fact they are not regulated by the gambling commission, you are risking your money on this platform and it’s important to only put in money that you’re happy to lose. If, in the current cost of living crisis, you have a bit of spare cash you don’t mind risking on a fairly meaningless game then I don’t see the harm in it if I’m honest.
Importantly they don’t pretend that you’re making an investment and it’s clear that any money you put in is at risk of going down as well as up. That’s vital to note and it’s really important that nobody puts money in that they need for something else. I’d hate to think any football fan would be risking their rent money on a virtual football trading game, and there seem to be systems in place with Sports Broker to prevent that.
If I was going to open an account with them I would feel more reassured if they were regulated by a UK institution such as the Gambling Commission or the Financial Conduct Authority. I suspect this lack of regulation may point more towards the UK authorities being slow to understand these kinds of products rather than anything to worry about.
So, while I’m not interested enough in this kind of product to become a customer myself, my research has led me to think that they are not a dodgy company and there is nothing wrong with Huddersfield Town being in a partnership with them. My only criticism I will make of them is their somewhat selfish placement of their logo on the back of this year’s kits. Underneath the numbers last year seemed fine and out of the way but up on the shoulders this season makes it look like each player on our team is called Sports Broker. It’s like a couple called Mr and Mrs Broker had eleven children, called them all Sports and they all signed for Huddersfield Town.