French football clubs rush to terminate binary options partnerships

Maria Nikolova

Under Article 77 of the Sapin II law, football teams have until the end of June this year to terminate all sponsorships and partnerships with companies offering trading with high-risk financial instruments.

The number of French football clubs putting an end to their partnerships with trading firms offering high-risk financial products is rapidly growing. This, of course, has to do with the “Sapin II” law, which has dramatically affected the status of the online trading sector in France.

Looking at the text of the law itself, we see that it prohibits all forms of sponsorship and partnership that results in the advertising, be it direct or indirect, of high-risk financial products. That is how sports teams got touched by the ban, as the recent influx of sponsorship deals with binary option firms and FX brokers had to cease.

The law provides some more time to end such partnerships – this has to be done not later than June 30, 2017. However, French football clubs are not ready to wait for the deadline and are in a hurry to terminate the deals. A report by Challenges.fr estimates that five of France’s Premiere League football clubs have terminated their partnership deals with online trading companies before the end of 2016. The list includes names like PSG, Olympique lyonnais and OGC Nice.

Looking at the three FCs mentioned above, we have to note the following: the three of them had partnership deals with binary options brokers – OptionWeb, 24option.com, and InteractiveOption.com, respectively. At the time of signing the deals, all three binary options providers labeled themselves as leaders in their segment. In addition to that, when the deals were sealed, these firms were not sanctioned (or blacklisted) by the French financial markets’ regulator AMF.

These facts should be sufficient to justify the actions of the FCs back in time, when the partnerships were formed.

None of the football clubs was eager to admit (at least, not to Challenges.fr) that they terminated the deals because of the law. All of them, however, have confirmed that they were aware of the new rules envisaged.

The trend of FCs dropping partnerships with binary options brands is apparent outside of France too. An example is Southampton FC, which in September put an end to its sponsorship agreement with Banc de Binary, following a successful FinanceFeeds lobbying campaign. Yesterday, January 11, 2017, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) announced the renouncement of the Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) license of Banc de Binary.

Read this next

Retail FX

Prop firm The Funded Trader shuts down, claims relaunch in April

Prop trading firm The Funded Trader has ceased all operations, with claims for a relaunch in the near future.

Digital Assets

Ethereum-Based Tokenized Real Estate Platform USP Launches On Republic

How This Californian Startup Is Revolutionizing Real Estate Investment through Ethereum-Based Tokenization.

Digital Assets

Sui Spikes in Weekly DEX Volume, Joins Top 10 of All Blockchains

March DEX volume on Sui stands at over $2.88B – up more than 49% from February – with decentralized exchange Cetus and wholesale liquidity layer DeepBook leading.

Digital Assets

Prisma Finance suffers $10 million crypto exploit, attack ongoing

Liquid staking protocol Prisma Finance fell victim to a security exploit on March 28, resulting in nearly $10 million in Prisma mkUSD and wrapped stETH being stolen by hackers.

Digital Assets

Masa and LayerZero: Bridging Blockchains for Data Sovereignty

Masa Network is poised to revolutionize the personal data landscape with its upcoming launch as a cross-chain platform, making it accessible on a variety of blockchains right from the start.

Digital Assets

Big Time Generates over $100M in Revenue since Preseason

Innovative game developer Big Time Studios announces that its highly anticipated free-to-play multiplayer action/MMO RPG Big Time, has generated $100M in revenue. According to the team, players transacted a total volume of over $230M, without selling a single token.

Digital Assets

Centralized exchanges are 10 times more popular than DEXs in Western Europe

Western European traders are found to prefer centralized exchanges over decentralized ones as CEX traffic outpaces DEXs by a factor of ten.

Market News

Stock Market Analysis: Is NVDA Losing Its Leadership?

Since the beginning of the week, the S&P 500 Index (US500) has seen a modest increase of about 0.58%, whereas NVDA’s share price has experienced a decline of approximately 3.8%. This recent divergence raises concerns among Nvidia stock investors — could it signify a loss of NVDA’s market leadership?

Industry News

ESG: Australian regulator wins first greenwashing court case against Vanguard

Vanguard admitted that a notable portion of the securities within both the Index and the Fund did not undergo the promised ESG scrutiny.

<