Aston Villa defends BK8 sponsorship, despite fan protests
Premier League football club Aston Villa has told its supporters that it undertook due diligence before agreeing a new sponsorship deal with BK8.
The Asian betting company had a full agreement with Aston Villa to become the next main sponsor of the club until the club’s fans protested the deal.
Anti-gambling charities also pushed Villa to cancel the planned partnership, saying the club needed to hold itself to a ‘higher standard.’
However, alongside BK8’s history with sponsoring other Premier League teams, like Norwich – where the gambling company was criticised and dropped by the Canaries over its sexualisation of women in advertising – the deal with Villa is expected to go ahead.
A statement by the Fans Consultation Group said that Christian Purslow had met with the group to allay the fears caused by the deal, stating: “While some fans will be disappointed after Villa’s current front-of-shirt sponsor moved away from gambling companies, the commercial reality is that to teams outside the top six, such sponsors offer clubs twice as much financially as non-gambling companies.”
However, Purslow had stated previously that the club would be moving away from gambling sponsorship, which is part of the reason why the move had caused such ire among the supporters and anti-gambling charities.
Clubs had faced pressure to drop gambling brands as their main shirt sponsors, but a government shakeup led the League to relax these plans.
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