Matchroom Holdings is actively looking to court sponsors outside of betting amid regulatory uncertainty for the UK gaming sector.

The holding group behind Matchroom Sport, most widely known for its promotion of professional boxing and darts events, revealed this in its latest Companies House filing, detailing finances for the year ending 30 June 2025.

Eddie Hearn’s sports business has multiple betting partners across its portfolio of Matchroom Boxing, Matchroom Multi Sport, World Snooker, and the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC). Hearn is Chairman of both Matchroom Sport and the PDC.

The regulatory situation around betting partnerships in the UK is a little uneasy at the moment, however. Where there is no major legal challenge in the works to ban gambling sponsorship, pressure has been mounting in recent years, particularly during the Gambling Act review of 2020-2023.

“Any change to gambling legislation may affect the ability of companies in the Betting and Gaming sector to exploit their brands at group events,” Matchroom’s Companies House statement read.

“The directors are working to diversify the group’s sponsors away from this sector.”

Matchroom – a long-time betting partner

As the promoter of major boxing, darts and snooker events, Matchroom has understandably attracted a lot of marketing and commercial attention from betting firms. 

Huge events like world heavyweight title fights involving big names like Anthony Joshua, and annual mainstays like the World Darts Championship (WDC) and World Snooker Tour (WST) have a vast audience and reach that bookmakers have understandably wanted to seize on.

Matchroom Boxing maintains partnerships with British group Betfred and Antiguan-based .com brand Betonline. It has also counted William Hill as a partner in the past, prior to the firm’s acquisition by evoke.

The bulk of partners are spread across the PDC, however. Fluter Entertainment’s Paddy Power is sponsor of the WDC and MGM Resorts’ BetMGM is partner of Premier League Darts.

Betfed is also sponsor of the World Matchplay, BoyleSports is sponsor of the World Grand Prix, Entain’s Ladbrokes is sponsor of both the UK Open and the Players Championship Finals, and BetVictor is sponsor of the World Cup of Darts.

Betting deals are also spread over Matchroom’s snooker portfolio. Yolo Group’s Sportsbet.io is a major partner of the Masconi Cup and the WST, while Midnite is also a partner of the latter.

These sponsorships likely contributed significantly to Matchroom’s 2025 performance. 

The group reported profit after tax of £44m as of 30 June 2025, with £16.1m profit from darts, £9.9m from boxing, £2.5m from the Multi Sport division, £1.3m from snooker, and £2m from media, streaming and productions.

Who exactly Matchroom would replace its betting partners with is uncertain. There have been some murmurs that clubs in the Premier League, which are ditching front-of-shirt betting sponsors at the end of this season, may strike deals with prediction platforms or financial trading firms.

Matchroom could do the same, though given predictions have much more limited exposure in the UK than in the US this is far from guaranteed. 

Regardless, the business would have a big hole to fill in its commercial revenues should regulatory uncertainty push betting partners out – or for that matter, if betting partners opt to cut their own sponsorship budgets in response to the UK tax raises, something Entain, evoke and Flutter are all already doing.