Leicester City football fans are worried over the potential sponsorship deal with Asian gambling website kbet.asia following their previous crypto gambling sponsor going bankrupt.
The Foxes have been relegated to the Championship, the second tier of English football, following their relegation from the Premier League in the 2024/25 season.
Losing all of the revenue that comes with being a Premier League team will ensure some financial difficulties for the club this season but securing a new sponsor would help alleviate some of those issues.
However, they will want to ensure they don’t go through the same hardships again. Their previous deal with BC.Game, who signed on to be their front-of-shirt sponsor, went sour after the crypto casino went bankrupt.
Their company held a license from Curacao and unlike the likes of West Ham United and others who have deals with gambling companies who have official heavily regulated licenses, Leicester looked to have chosen a more difficult path from a regulatory standpoint.
In May, 2025, news broke that BC.Game had been accepting UK customers without a licence, putting club officers at risk of prosecution, according to Sky News. It also stated that BC.Game had lost its licence in December 2024 and they no longer sponsor the club.
In their pursuit of finding a new company, the fan forums have been discussing a new gambling site – Kbet.asia – a company which has little to no concrete information available.
Furthermore, they are banned from operating in the UK, have not renewed their licence under the Curacao Gambling Control Board, were rebranded and sold to new owners in 2024 in an undocumented sale and created all forms of social media in early-July.
Plus, their official website appears to have FIFPro licenses featuring stars like Manchester City’s Phil Foden, Real Madrid’s Trent Alexander-Arnold & Heung-Min Son — but there’s no public confirmation they’re PAGCOR-licensed.
More investigative work shows their official YouTube was only created on July 2 and the domain for their website was only registered in April – casting more doubt over their legitimacy and Leicester’s business decision making.
The one thing we do know is that fans are dismayed over the potential deal, one fan wrote ‘very dodgy’ and another said ‘definitely a very real company who didn’t just appear two months ago with millions to burn on advertising…’.
Leicester will have to tread carefully but there multiple Premier League clubs who have been warned they could be liable to prosecution if they promote unlicensed gambling businesses that transact with consumers in Great Britain.
TGP Europe brands bj88 (Bournemouth), SBOTOP (Fulham), DEBET (Wolves), and 96.com (Burnley) all currently appear as matchday shirt sponsors and TGP surrendered its licence after being told it needed to pay a £3.3m penalty and “make significant improvements” to continue trading.
The risk is there for clubs who do pursue these deals and regulations have been tightened in recent months. Therefore, Leicester may want to consider their options. Take a look for yourself at KBet to draw your own conclusions on the current situation.
