Leicester City’s supporters’ trust has turned on the club’s front-of-shirt sponsor BC.Game, after the crypto casino signed Russian adult film star Eva Elfie as a brand ambassador. In a statement headlined “It gets worse” and published on 4 November, the Foxes Trust said the deal links gambling and pornography to Leicester City by association. Its blunt question to supporters, “Is this who we are now?”, has since been viewed more than 150,000 times on X. Within a day, the club had confirmed that it had raised the concerns directly with BC.Game, which has sponsored the Leicester shirt since 2024.
BC.Game, which also owns s1mple’s Counter-Strike 2 team, announced Elfie as its newest ambassador on 3 November, presenting her as an “international content creator and esports personality”. According to the company, the partnership covers content collaborations, promotional campaigns and appearances at sports and esports events. Chief executive Ali “Ako” Muhanned said she “has built an incredible relationship with the gaming and esports community”. The Foxes Trust was far less polite, describing her as someone “who continues to make their name via adult content”.
Why the Foxes Trust says the BC.Game deal “gets worse”
The Trust has opposed BC.Game’s sponsorship since it was first announced in July 2024, when it said that a gambling website on the shirt was another step away from Leicester’s “well run family club” reputation. Its latest statement goes further, arguing that the club picked a gambling company that is “unlicensed to operate in the UK” and lets customers play with cryptocurrencies. It also says BC.Game “has unanswered questions about the legitimacy of its funding and its origins”.
The objection is not only about BC.Game’s business model, however. “Both gambling and pornography can have devastating impacts on people’s lives, in particular young people,” the statement reads, adding that partnerships like this bring both worlds to a larger audience. The Trust also points to its end-of-season survey, in which 73% of fans said they felt negative about the BC.Game relationship and only 5% were content with it. Its advice to supporters has not changed since 2024 either: anyone buying a replica shirt should pick one without the BC.Game logo on it.
Leicester’s own response, by contrast, has been noticeably more cautious. A club spokesperson told the BBC that Leicester “recognises the concerns raised about recent developments” and had taken them up directly with the sponsor. The club added that it is “continuing discussions with the company to explore a mutually acceptable resolution”, wording that stops well short of saying the deal is under threat. When Leicester first announced the partnership in 2024, it described BC.Game as a “socially responsible platform”, and the BBC notes that the company’s services are not available to users in the UK.
How a $40 million shirt deal became a headache for Leicester
BC.Game became Leicester’s principal partner in July 2024, a few months after the club had won promotion back to the Premier League, in a deal the company’s own press release valued at $40 million. Trouble followed within months, when the Norwegian football outlet Josimar reported that Curaçao’s gaming regulator was moving to revoke the licence held by the company behind BC.Game. There were also reports of a bankruptcy case brought by customers in Curaçao, although BC.Game strongly denied the accusations and assured the club that it was appealing and had no liquidity issues.
On the pitch, the club’s decline since then has been brutal. Leicester went straight back down from the Premier League in 2025 and were docked six points in February 2026 for breaching spending rules. Their relegation to League One was then confirmed in April, ten years after their famous 5,000-1 title win. Chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha said in a statement on the relegation that there were “no excuses”, and apologised for the disappointment the club had caused. By October, the Trust was complaining that Leicester were “languishing towards the bottom of another division”, while City AM reports that the Thai owners are now looking for a buyer.
Why football’s gambling rules still allow BC.Game on the shirt
Nothing about the BC.Game deal breaks football’s rules as they currently stand. Premier League clubs agreed in April 2023 to remove gambling sponsors from the front of their matchday shirts from the 2026-27 season. That pledge only covers the top flight, however, and Leicester are now two divisions below it. As City AM points out, neither the Premier League nor the EFL bars clubs from taking money from unlicensed gambling firms, provided their services cannot be accessed in the UK.
Even so, the Elfie signing sits uneasily with the rules football has written for itself. The voluntary code of conduct adopted by the Premier League, EFL and FA in July 2024 asks clubs to limit the reach of gambling sponsorship to under-18s and people at risk of harm. Meanwhile, the Gambling Commission says offering gambling in Great Britain without its licence is illegal “regardless of where in the world the gambling is provided from”. It adds that advertising unlawful gambling to consumers in Great Britain is a criminal offence.
The same debate is playing out across esports, where Brazil’s betting rules are already reshaping CS2 sponsorships and gambling brands own or back several top teams. BC.Game’s own side, led by s1mple, will start in Stage 1 after Valve cleared its route to the Major through Asia, when the PGL Major Singapore opens on 24 November. BC.Game has not said how long the Elfie partnership will run, how much it is worth or which events she will attend.
