The highest level of system football in England, dubbed the Premier League, got founded in its modern form in 1992 and now ranks as the most-watched national football competition on the planet. Today, the EPL gets broadcast to two hundred and twelve countries, available in more than six hundred million homes, and exposed to a potential audience of 4.7 billion people. To say that those numbers are stunning would be an understatement.
Without question, interest in the EPL has now transcended on-the-pitch action. It has moved into a vast array of spheres, and one of those most intrinsically linked with sports is the gambling sector, which has drastically affected football development worldwide.
Online sportsbooks are running rampant these days, with revenues from this market section projected to reach $43 billion in 2023, as the number of sites advertising themselves as homes to the best betting accounts on the Web keeps rapidly swelling. And at the center of all this wagering mania is the EPL, a canvas that showcases many of the world’s best players and an arena to some of the fiercest rivalries the planet has ever seen.
Many cite the league’s highly competitive nature, the high-stakes drama it generates, its media coverage, and its rich history as the primary reasons it has attained such global appeal among casual fans and those who love betting. Nowadays, anyone would be hard-pressed to find a sports wagering hub that does not feature the EPL prime and center on its homepage. That also holds for Croatian-ran platforms since Internet wagering has gotten fully regulated in the Land of a Thousand Islands for over a decade, and this country has had a steaming footie feud with England stemming back two decades.
Why Croatian Bettors Love the EPL
Croatia has many heated football rivals, such as Serbia, Slovenia, Italy, Germany, and, of course, at the top of this list sits England as well. Tensions between the Three Lions and the Vatreni developed as early as the late 20th century, but their rivalry gained public attention at the 2004 EURO when England beat Croatia 4-2. The Croats got their revenge in the EURO 2008 qualifying stage when they stopped England from qualifying for the competition by beating them 2-0 at Wembley. Hence, from this point on, the two sides have hated each other, but that has not stopped Croats from paying attention to the EPL, as dozens of the country’s famous players have worn kits of famed EPL teams like Slaven Bilic, Davor Suker, Mario Stanic, and so on.
There is pretty much always a Croat active in the EPL, and aside from this, the nation’s residents like betting on the competitions’ matches, like everyone from around the globe, chiefly because of robust statistical analysis and data availability on its games, the top-notch coverage EPL matches receive, and just the star power the annual tournament boasts. Plus, it is super easy for anyone to get started with sports betting in Croatia, and this is one of the leagues that is most available for wagering fun as it features twenty matches in specific weeks of the year.
EPL’s Focus on Betting Partners
While other sports leagues have turned to harnessing the power of gambling companies, with the NBA and NFL diving deep into this sphere, no one has done such a dive as the EPL. In the eyes of many, EPL and betting partnerships have gone so out of hand that Premier League teams have now agreed on introducing a voluntary front-of-shirt sponsorship ban, starting from the 2026-27 season.
Bookmakers quietly entered the EPL at the start of the 2000s, with one of the initial first deals getting struck by Fulham FC, which entailed an agreement with the Betfair exchange to become one of the club’s official sponsors. After that occurrence, in the 2010s, clubs like Stoke City, West Ham United, Bournemouth, and Crystal Palace hopped on this train, and now eight EPL teams have shirt-front sponsors. Plus, virtually everyone else has worked with entities from this sector in some capacity.
