Juventus has named bet365 Scores, the betting operator’s media and livescore platform, its official sports infotainment partner in Italy. The Turin club and bet365 announced the deal on 27 July, tying one of Serie A’s biggest names to the bookmaker’s brand at a point when direct betting sponsorships of Italian football clubs remain illegal.
bet365 Scores is a free app that gives users live scores, real-time statistics and personalised match updates across major leagues and tournaments. Under the agreement it becomes the vehicle for bet365 to associate its name with Juventus without breaching Italian law. Neither side disclosed the financial terms or the length of the contract.
Why the deal is structured this way
Direct deals between betting companies and football clubs are banned in Italy under the 2018 Dignity Decree, which prohibits gambling advertising and sponsorship across sport and media. Operators have worked around the ban by signing clubs to their media brands rather than their betting brands. These “infotainment” agreements carry the operator’s name through a livescore or content platform, which is not itself a gambling product.
The Juventus deal follows that template. A club statement said the partnership would give fans “simple, immediate and customisable tools to follow their favorite team, stay updated on results and access live data and statistics wherever they are: at home, on the move, at work or at the stadium.”
“The partnership stems from a shared desire to put fans at the center, offering them simple, immediate and customisable tools to follow their favorite team, stay updated on results and access live data and statistics wherever they are: at home, on the move, at work or at the stadium.”
bet365 has used the same structure before. bet365 Scores signed SSC Napoli last summer, giving the operator a foothold in Serie A before adding Juventus.
bet365’s Italian brand push
The partnership is part of a wider effort by bet365 to raise its profile in Italy, one of Europe’s largest betting markets. By the Blask index, Italy is the third largest market in Europe after the UK and Russia, with a competitive earnings baseline of $6.4 billion (€5.6 billion) spread across 185 brands. bet365 ranks as the fourth biggest brand in the country on the same measure.
Italy is now more than halfway through its first full year under a regulated online market that took effect in November 2025. Operators have reacted positively to the framework, and the Italian government declared roughly €6.66 billion in non-lottery gambling tax and duties for 2025. bet365 secured one of the licences and is competing for share against established local operators as well as international firms such as Betsson, which counts Italy among its priority markets. The scale of the online opportunity is set out in TGE’s profile of the Italy iGaming market.
The sponsorship question hanging over Italian football
The absence of shirt and stadium sponsorships remains a point of tension between operators, clubs and the government. Club finances have leaned on gambling money elsewhere in Europe, and the ban cuts Italian clubs off from a revenue stream their rivals can still access. It is a fight playing out in other leagues, where operators and regulators are contesting which betting brands can appear on kits.
Pressure to revisit the Dignity Decree grew this year after the Italian national team failed to qualify for the World Cup for the fourth consecutive time, an outcome the Italian press labelled “La Apocalypsia.” The result fed public debate over whether lifting the sponsorship ban would help the domestic game’s finances. Betting sponsorships were a talking point in the most recent election for president of the Italian Football Federation, though Giancarlo Abete, the candidate more open to reversing the decree, lost his bid.
For now the ban stands, and infotainment deals remain the only legal route for an operator to attach itself to a club. Whether Juventus and bet365 expand the arrangement, and whether the government reopens the sponsorship question, will decide how far the workaround has to stretch.
Source: Juventus
