Respect of copyright law has never ranked highly in the list of priorities for unlicensed sports betting operators. Crests of famous clubs and \u00adphotographs of star players are routinely used to promote brands that could not care less about image rights and trademarks, because these operators know any kind of enforcement is impossible.<\/p>\n
Illegal gambling platforms \u00adoperate almost exclusively from offshore jurisdictions where the anonymity of their ultimate beneficial owners is protected by local regulations and, to further darken the picture, the use of multiple shell \u00adcompanies that exist only as entries on a \u00adregistry hidden from public view.<\/p>\n
Cease\u2011and\u2011desist letters will be ignored. Legal action? Against whom? You can\u2019t sue ghosts.<\/p>\n
Yet, until now, those illegal casinos stopped short of claiming they had been officially endorsed by active footballers. The \u201cglobal ambassadors\u201d they recruit by the dozens have retired from the game and no longer have to abide by article 27 of the Fifa code of ethics, which prohibits footballers, coaches and officials involved in football from deriving any benefit from their association with sports betting operators, legal or not. Active players who ignore this rule would risk a fine and a ban. Yerry Mina, then at Everton, was fined \u00a310,000 by the Football Association in 2019 after appearing in a TV advert for the Colombian sportsbook Betjuego.<\/p>\n
In a significant development, the illegal online casinos \u00adNightwin and QH88 have hijacked the \u00adidentity of two of the world\u2019s most famous \u00adplayers, Real Madrid\u2019s Jude\u00a0\u00adBellingham and \u00adManchester United\u2019s Bruno Fernandes, to \u00adpresent them as official partners of their brands, using fake news articles, \u00adphotographs and AI-generated video to fool their customers into \u00adbelieving that the stars\u2019 endorsement was legitimate.<\/p>\n
In the case of Bellingham, \u00adNightwin bought advertising space on Instagram to target users with a made-up story attributed to the BBC, which announced that the player had launched his own \u201cBellingham Bet\u201d (tagline: \u201cBritain\u2019s most honest betting app\u201d), whose logo incorporated the footballer\u2019s stylised signature used by his sponsor Adidas.<\/p>\n
Clicking on the link provided led to an app named \u201cBellingham Bet\u201d, complete with a (fake) rating of 4.9\/5 and boasting a fanciful 1.9\u00a0million+ downloads. One more click, and the visitor was taken to the gambling platform, which, if it needed to be said, has nothing to do with Jude \u00adBellingham. Nightwin is an online casino and sportsbook which it is possible to access and register within the United Kingdom without a VPN; this, when no \u201cNightwin\u201d appears in the gambling business register of the Great Britain Gambling Commission.<\/p>\n
The one jurisdiction where \u00adNightwin is licensed is Cura\u00e7ao, a longtime offshore haven for dubious operators, where it was launched this year by Flybergom B.V., a company incorporated in the same jurisdiction in May 2024 which acquired its \u00adgaming licence there in \u00adSeptember 2025. \u00adFlybergom B.V. also \u00adoperates the DK88 (or \u00adDashking88) brand that targets the illegal \u00adMalaysian and \u00adSingaporean markets. \u00adFlybergom\u2019s registered address in \u00adWillemstad is an office building known for \u00adhousing corporate services \u00adcompanies that act as trustees for thousands of opaque businesses; and there the trail ends.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for Bellingham, the scam was short-lived. The \u201c\u00adBellingham Bet\u201d Instagram ads \u00addisappeared in days and screenshots are the only traces left.<\/p>\n
Bruno Fernandes has not been as lucky. The Vietnamese \u00adsportsbook and casino website QH88 was not satis\u00adfied with a made-up BBC story and a couple of fairly crude links. It built a website around the brand\u2019s fictitious association with the \u00adPortugal international and devoted \u00adconsiderable resources to pro\u00adducing a strikingly realistic \u00adAI\u2011generated deepfake video purportedly \u00adshowing the playmaker signing his \u201c\u00adambas\u00adsadorial contract\u201d with \u00adrepresentatives of QH88. The venue? Old Trafford.<\/p>\n
Screenshot of QH88 landing page with Bruno Fernandes on it Photograph: Screenshot<\/p>\n
The Norwegian website Josimar had this one-minute film analysed frame-by-frame by an expert who identified multiple tell-tale signs of AI intervention; but these red flags (blurred details, minute \u00adcontinuity mistakes, generic faces) would have been undiscernible to casual viewers, who can watch the video on QH88\u2019s main website, where it plays on a loop. The brazenness of the appropriation somehow makes it even more credible.<\/p>\n
It is easy to understand why a sportsbook that operates in \u00adVietnam should pick Fernandes as its fictional ambassador: he is the \u00adcaptain and serial player of the year of a club who remain, by some distance, the most popular in that country. If any player was more vulnerable than others to an attack of this kind, it had to be him, a footballing victim of a deepfake. Unless regulators worldwide can somehow coordinate their \u2013 so far sketchy \u2013 efforts to combat \u00adillegal sportsbooks, what happened to Bellingham and Fernandes is bound to happen to many others.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Great Bri\u00adtain Gambling Commission did not address specific questions related to Nightwin and QH88, but said: \u201cWhenever we become aware of an unlicensed operator we take action. Before depositing money we urge consumers to check the \u00adbusiness holds a commission licence and consequently must ensure the gambling it provides is safe, fair and crime-free.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Guardian contacted QH88, the management of Bruno Fernandes, Real Madrid and Manchester United, who did not respond or turned down the opportunity to do so. The global players\u2019 union Fifpro passed on our request for comment to its legal department, which was not able to respond in the timeframe provided by the Guardian before publication. It was impossible to reach Nightwin or Flybergom B.V. for comment. The Premier League directed the \u00adGuardian to Manchester United and Fernandes\u2019s representatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cIllegal sports betting\u201d is defined by the Macolin Convention, of which the UK is a signatory, as \u201cany sports betting activity whose type or operator is not allowed under the applicable law of the jurisdiction where the consumer is located\u201d, a definition that is also accepted by the World Lotteries Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Respect of copyright law has never ranked highly in the list of priorities for unlicensed sports betting operators.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-781072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}