League of Ireland director Mark Scanlon has said it is more important than ever to have gambling safety awareness after it was revealed €5 million is traded on every single Premier Division match worldwide.
The LOI has announced the rollout of an educational programme for the prevention of gambling harm in Irish football – a first-of-its-kind initiative for League of Ireland clubs.
EPIC Global Solutions – a consultancy firm currently working with several other major sporting bodies globally – will lead the sessions.
Endorsed by the FAI, National League Committee and the Professional Footballers Association of Ireland (PFA Ireland) the programme will also see coaches, match officials and FAI staff receive training.
The LOI has been hit with scandals surrounding match-fixing in the last decade, while the danger of problem-gambling for footballers has also been evident according to the PFAI.
It is estimated that one in 30 adults in Ireland suffer from problem gambling.
Scanlon said 2025 brought a record amount of money gambled on Irish football.
The summer season and increase in popularity are factors in its popularity.
The league director said: “Significant amounts of money are bet on a week-to-week basis.
“There’s two important parts of rolling out that programme. One is the education itself to make sure players are aware of the dangers of problem gambling. Hopefully it’s not a cycle that they would get into themselves.
“So obviously a small number of people are affected by problem gambling and we want to make sure that the footballers in our league aren’t part of that cohort and everything we can do to educate them, we’ll do, and that’s why we’ve launched this new initiative, but also the integrity side of the game as well, to make sure we avoid any potential areas of match-fixing or any illegal betting patterns that might come into the League of Ireland. It’s something we’re very proud to launch.
“We get the stats from UEFA on an annual basis and there has been a significant increase again across 2025. So again, that’s why it’s really important to make sure we work on this.
“We look forward to working with Epic Global Solutions, who’d be rolling that programme out now over the next couple of months.”
Meanwhile it was also confirmed that prize money for the league winner will be unchanged in 2026 at €125,000.
The figure has become a fraction of what UEFA distributes to some Irish sides, with Shamrock Rovers banking over €7.5m through their Conference League exploits in the last two campaigns.
Shamrock Rovers have been the biggest earners in Irish football
While UEFA solidarity money offers some compensation to those outside the top three or FAI Cup winners with a six-figure sum, it means the leading clubs are becoming stronger through their success in Europe.
Scanlon has defended the FAI’s inability to increase their prize fund from the total of €445,000 for all Premier Division clubs.
Indeed First Division winners Dundalk were handed just €38,000 for coming out on top last season.
He pointed out the FAI have doubled their distribution of funds to the club in recent seasons when not just including prize money, with grants and others initatives factored in: “The money in European football is obviously something that we’re very envious of and we’d love to be able to have them sources of revenue here to spread across our clubs.
“This year, we would hope to see some new sponsors come on board. We’d love to see increases in the prize money across the League and Cup competitions and anything we can do to help generate more revenue for the clubs will obviously be a benefit to the league.”
Scanlon stated that LOITV revenue exceeded €1m last season, a 128% increase since the launch of the service in 2021.
Over 20,000 are expected to attended the Bohemians v St Patrick’s Athletic clash on the opening weekend of the Premier Division in February, while over a million people came through the turnstiles in all matches last campaign.
It was also revealed that the rollout of academies across the league will be finalised by the end of the year.
Government support has finally allowed League of Ireland clubs to hire more academy staff in the bid to develop players, both for the good of international football and revenues.
Asked when every club can expect to have their positions in place, Scanlon said: “Once all of the clubs work through the process with us over the next couple of months, we would hope that would be the case and that would be a significant improvement.
“Something that’s never happened before, lots of club have never had any full-time staff working in their academy.
“As long as we get that engagement with the clubs this year, then through our own academy development team, Will Clarke at the head of that, we would hope to see a significant number of new staff.”
He said he hopes the process is completely in train by next season, although it may conclude sooner.