Examining Cricket’s Stance on Gambling Sponsorships and What Might Be Next

Sponsorship agreements in sports have long offered a key source of revenue for teams and competitions. While sports like football can create rules where they essentially decline the best offers on the table, the sports with less of a guaranteed revenue cycle mostly cannot. To help grow the sport further, restrictions were lifted in cricket.

Domestic teams and competitions have been able to strike deals with gambling sponsorships for a long time. In fact, alongside the rise of the Indian Premier League came a new form of betting in cricket daily fantasy competitions. In 2023, however, international teams were permitted to make these deals.

So, what’s happened in the years since? Will opening the sponsorship field help to grow cricket, and what might be next?

What Cricket Organisations Accept Gambling Sponsorships?

Just about every form of cricket organisation is now allowed to accept gambling sponsorships, from competitions to teams and individual players. The International Cricket Council made the huge announcement in April 2023 that sponsorships on playing equipment and attire would be allowed to show gambling brands in bilateral matches.

The meeting in Dubai lifted what was a sponsorship restriction immediately for most contests. However, the major ICC tournaments, such as each World Cup format, would still be without gambling sponsors. Other cricketing boards have followed with their own rules – many of which offer guidelines for these permitted deals.

The English Cricket Board, for example, says that professional county clubs and teams competing in The Hundred must use the sponsorship income to reinvest in the sport while upholding a strong code of ethics. In this way, the ECB has allowed some of the pro scene’s not-quite-major teams to funnel lucrative deals into cricket.

Research has found that, since 2020, gambling brands have made themselves all the more appealing to team sponsorship deals. This is shown by the increase in deals struck. Before 2020, a handful of new deals, at most, were gambling partnerships. In 2024, there were 41, and 31 in 2025 by the halfway mark.

Will Cricket Expand in the Gambling Space?

The long-held, close ties between DFS – which can be argued either way as being gambling or not – and the IPL, and the revenues that have brought the big-money league, have set a standard. Teams and competitions can engage with the gambling space in a responsible way to get more money flowing into the sport.

Next, perhaps, the focus will turn to expanding on the platforms themselves rather than just wearing logos and participating in marketing. There are many branded games on gambling platforms, even among the relatively new section of slingo slots. Here, users can play Deal or No Deal Slingo, Slingo Deadliest Catch, and sports slingo.

Slingoooal! and Slingoooal! Championship show football’s place in the arena. Cricket could team up with the developers to create a themed game that expands the sport’s reach and appeal beyond the wicket. An in-theme The Hundred slingo game, for example, that captures the colours and bombastic play could do rather well here.

With the focus being on generating greater revenues to help grow cricket across all levels, big-money gambling deals have become a viable option. Going forward, seeking more income, dedicated games could be an option.