In England, sport teams have it tough. On one hand, the booming gambling market in this country presents numerous attractive financial possibilities and on the other, the regulations are so strict that it's mind-blowingly easy to get into all sorts of trouble if you're not careful. It’s easy not to be not careful even if you're a top flight professional football club with a long and rich history.
Newcastle United F.C. is a Premier League team whose results and table standings may not be up to standards that their supporters have gotten used to, say, during the 1990s. Even so, we are talking the pride of the Northeast, one of the clubs with the richest footballing history and enormous fan following. The club from St. James Park has suddenly found itself in jeopardy because it failed to meet the gambling advertising regulations.
The English Football Association (FA) has charged Newcastle United after they've shown official promo photos of their youth team squad wearing jerseys with the Fun88 sponsor logo on their chest. The Fun88 logos are also worn by the senior team, but the regulations for these are a bit different.
To make matters confusing as to how this happened in the first place, the FA rules and regulations state quite clearly that no team can have sponsor logos promoting gambling or alcohol on under 18 squad kits and Newcastle United signed a three year sponsorship deal with Fun88 in May 2017. In other words, the club's officials must have known what they're doing and must've been aware of the consequences, and yet they still went ahead and did it. Odd.
Back in January, the club decided to take measures and removed the logo from the under-18 team kits, but it was too late and it seems the rules and regulations are catching up with their actions only now.
Newcastle United F.C. may respond or file in a complaint to this FA charge until March 27th.
Source:
“Newcastle charged over betting logo on under-18 side's shirts”, bbc.co.uk, aMarch 20, 2018.