What Does BOYLE Sports' Nottingham Forest Deal Show About Life After The Shirt Ban

A pattern, not a one-off

The Forest deal is BOYLE Sports' third English football partnership in around six weeks. In late July, the operator became Leeds United's official betting partner for the UK and Ireland, marking its return to Premier League-level sponsorship. 

In early August, it sponsored the pre-season friendly between Manchester United and Leeds at Dublin's Croke Park, branded outright as the BOYLE Sports Cup. 

BOYLE Sports also remains the front-of-shirt sponsor of West Ham United, a deal that has been able to continue only because West Ham were relegated to the Championship at the end of last season, a division the shirt ban does not touch.

Taken together, that is three active partnerships across two divisions, using three different routes onto a shirt, a hoarding, or a competition name, all in the space of a single summer.

Viewers will have already seen the effect of this in practice. During Forest's 0-1 defeat to Leeds this weekend, BOYLE Sports appeared intermittently on LED boards at the City Ground alongside Forest's 2025/26 front-of-shirt sponsor Bally Bet and Asia-facing operator Fun88, a reminder that gambling branding at Premier League grounds has continued even where it no longer sits on a shirt.

How Midnite is using a different route

BOYLE Sports is not the only operator working around the edges of the ban, and not every operator is doing it the same way. 

Midnite, a London-based betting brand, has taken the more direct route of front-of-shirt sponsorship itself, just one division down from where the ban applies. 

Midnite is principal partner and shirt sponsor of three separate Championship clubs for 2026/27: Wolverhampton Wanderers, Middlesbrough, and Sheffield United, where it is entering a second consecutive season in the role. 

Its Wolves deal was signed shortly after the club's relegation from the Premier League, and like BOYLE Sports' West Ham arrangement, it exists specifically because the Championship falls outside the ban.

Where BOYLE Sports has built a spread of smaller-scale partner and signage deals to maintain a presence inside the Premier League itself, Midnite has concentrated on securing full front-of-shirt status in the tier directly below it. 

Both routes are direct results of where the ban does and does not apply.

The state of play

Put simply, the Premier League's shirt-front ban has done exactly what it was designed to do: gambling logos are no longer appearing on the chest of any top-flight shirt this season. 

What it hasn't done is remove gambling sponsorship from Premier League football, or from English football more broadly. 

Clubs can still sign official betting partners, gambling brands can still appear on LED boards inside Premier League grounds, and any Premier League club that drops into the Championship is immediately free to carry a betting logo on its shirt again.

BOYLE Sports' deal with Forest is one example of the first of those routes. Its West Ham arrangement, and Midnite's three Championship shirts, are examples of the second. Together they give a reasonably complete picture of how gambling sponsorship in English football has adapted since the ban came into effect, rather than disappeared because of it.

For more on the wider picture behind these deals, see last week's feature on the state of Premier League gambling sponsorship since the ban.