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An exclusive (and somewhat unusual) sponsorship deal will be discontinued at the end of this season.
Betting website BetVictor has an ongoing sponsorship arrangement with Liverpool and, for the 2016-17 season, included an exclusive shirt deal with manager Jürgen Klopp. For all televised games, as well as some photo ops during training sessions or press conferences, Klopp’s official gear featured BetVictor’s logo on the front of the shirt where Standard Chartered might otherwise be.
The Echo is reporting that the FA wasn’t too keen on this arrangement and has asked the club to stop. By all accounts, Liverpool seem willing to comply.
The FA’s rationale seems to be twofold:
First, they want to avoid anything resembling a conflict of interest with the manager of a club giving betting advice or promoting gambling in general. FA regulations forbid anyone in English football from trading on insider information or betting on games anywhere in the world. Relatedly, given the corruption and double-dealing controversies surrounding the previous England manager, the FA likely is justified in its concern.
The second is that the FA also already has a sponsorship deal with Ladbrokes. While they couldn’t outright tell the club to end its arrangement with BetVictor, they did ask in order to avoid any awkwardness, and Liverpool agreed.
The club’s deal with BetVictor is set to run for another two years and will otherwise continue unabated, but neither Klopp nor any player will bear their logo for the rest of the deal.