Bet-At-Home Extends Schalke Sponsorship
First division German football club, FC Schalke 04, has announced an extension of its sponsorship deal with leading online gambling operation Bet-at-Home.com.
The Malta-listed group, which is owned and operated by the BetClic Everest Group, said that it would be extending its deal with the Bundesliga club for a further two seasons.
Bet-at-Home will be Schalke 04's premium partner as the team heads to the UEFA Champions League, after securing automatic participation through its third place listing on domestic tables.
Bet-At-Home will remain the football club's chief sponsor until at least June 2014.
The Sponsorship Manager for Bet-At-Home.com, Klaus Gruber said about Bet-At-Home extending the Schalke sponsorship deal: "With our brand, we have worked for many years with the best sports clubs in Europe and FC Schalke 04, as one of the biggest football clubs in Germany, is a very attractive club for an international company like Bet-At-Home.com.
Schalke 04 and Bet-At-Home Well Suited
"This past year has shown that we are ideally suited to each other because we can use our collective creativity," he said. "In future, FC Schalke 04 will become even more important in all of our communications across Europe."
The Marketing Director for FC Schalke 04, Alexander Jobst, said that he was pleased to engage in the online betting arena with one of the leading suppliers in the industry, and the team was happy that the already very productive partnership had been extended as early as possible.
"From the perspective of FC Schalke 04, we also appreciate our future involvement in the Europe wide advertising campaigns from Bet-at-Home.com," he added. "It shows the emotional significance that our club has."
Bet-at-Home Awarded German Gambling License
The sponsorship deal with the football club comes one month after Bet-at-Home was awarded an online gambling license by the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The gaming license taxes companies 20% of their gross gaming profit and allows them to offer sports betting services to German players.
Recently, however, a new government was voted in to Schleswig-Holstein which is seemingly anti-online gambling, leaving Bet-At-Home and the other licensees such as Bwin and Bet365 questioning their future in the German state.