Leicester were set to unveil their kit for the new season last week, but the announcement was postponed. Was it because their new sponsor KBET is a hitherto unknown – and illegal – online bookmaker?
By Philippe Auclair
Leicester City FC has a long history of partnering with illegal (*) Asian-facing sports betting platforms. In fact, Josimar's research shows that the Midlands club is the world record holder of the number of such partnerships, with a total of thirteen since 2016, when 12bet became the first such operator to sign a deal with the Foxes. 6686, 8Xbet, Dafabet, EKings, HTH, JiangNan Sports, Kaiyun, Leyu, M88, OB Sport, Yabo and, until the end of last season, crypto casino BC.GAME were the others. All of them Asian-facing. All of them illegal.
It now looks that a fourteenth name should be added to the list: multiple leaked photographs purporting to show the Championship club's 2025-26 home strip suggest that their main sponsor for the coming season will be KBET, a hitherto unknown operator which claims to be "Vietnam's leading reputable online betting house", with 1 million customers and 13,000 agents in that country alone. These are impressive numbers – all the more impressive since the domain name of their main website, kgame.asia, was only registered on 18 April of this year by Singaporean web registrar GNAME. Impressive and, in all likelihood, pure fantasy.
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