Daily Mail - 07.08.2019

Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 7, 2019 Page 
QQQ

‘So far all they’ve sent

us is Wayne Rooney’

Bad bet, Rooney

Ex-England captain accused of ‘selling his soul’ with £7.8m

deal to wear number 32 – promoting gambling giant 32Red

WAYNE Rooney sparked a furious

row last night after accepting mil-

lions of pounds to wear a shirt

with a number on the back pro-

moting a gambling company.

The former England captain was

accused of ‘selling his soul’ after agree-

ing an 18-month contract with Cham-

pionship side Derby County, which

has just signed a major sponsorship

deal with online casino 32Red.

Rooney will wear the number 32 shirt

when he joins the club in January from

DC United in America. He will work with

the casino brand on ‘community initia-

tives’ as part of the deal.

Within hours of the announcement the

33-year-old father of four, who has admit-

ted to gambling away thousands of pounds

as a player, had posted photos with 32Red-

branded shirts, and the hashtag ‘#WR32’,

to his 31.3million followers online.

Rooney, who wore the number ten shirt

for a decade at Manchester United but

By Tom Witherow

of his wife Coleen’s anger when

he lost £50,000 through betting,

and in 2006 the Football Associa-

tion investigated claims he had

racked up debts of £700,000 in an

England dressing-room gam-

bling ring.

Labour MP Carolyn Harris,

chairman of the all-party parlia-

mentary group for gambling, said:

‘When will celebrities realise that

involvement in gambling is not

right or moral?

‘Many people look to Wayne

Rooney as a role model and yet he

is prepared to sell his soul.’

Former Conservative leader Iain

Duncan Smith MP added: ‘Celeb-

rities like Wayne Rooney should

think very carefully about endors-

ing this almost unregulated indus-

try. The amount of money they

are prepared to pay for this says

all you need to know about the

huge profits they are making.’

Football clubs have been attacked

for normalising gambling in sport

and contributing to a public

health epidemic.

Half of the 20 Premier League

teams and 16 out of 24 Champion-

ship clubs are sponsored by gam-

bling firms this season.

Former football stars such as

Alan Shearer and Robbie Savage

have also been criticised for pro-

moting gambling firms on social

media, despite appearing on the

publicly-funded BBC. James

Grimes, from the charity Gam-

bling With Lives, which asks foot-

ball clubs to review their relation-

ship with gambling sponsors, said:

‘This move is one of the clearest

signs yet of the immense power of

gambling firms in football.

‘Football fans are already bom-

barded with betting advertising.

We know addiction can have disas-

trous consequences and even lead

to suicide – Derby County and

Wayne Rooney should ask what

price they put on the lives and

wellbeing of their young fans.’

Derek Webb, a gambling cam-

paigner from Derby, added: ‘Fans

want a better deal, rather than the

involvement with these gambling

companies. The harm to young

people is too great.’

It has been reported that Mrs

Rooney wanted him to leave

Washington, where DC United

is based, for family reasons. The

couple have four children – Kai,

nine, Klay, six, Kit, three, and

toddler Cass – who can now be

educated in Britain.

32Red, a firm based in Gibraltar,

also sponsors Championship

rivals Leeds United, Preston and

Middlesbrough, and Rangers in

Scotland. It first signed a one-

year deal with Derby in May 2018.

Gambling companies have

pumped hundreds of millions of

pounds into English professional

football in recent years. Almost

every club in the top two divisions

has one as a shirt sponsor or ‘offi-

cial betting partner’.

It has raised concerns that

young fans feel they cannot enjoy

the match without placing a bet,

putting thousands of people at

risk of addiction.

This month a self-imposed

‘whistle-to-whistle’ ban on

adverts for gambling during live

televised sport came into force.

But critics say young fans are

still bombarded with adverts on

social media, players’ shirts and

pitch-side hoardings.

The Gambling Commission says

there are 55,000 youngsters aged

11 to 16 and 340,000 adults with a

gambling addiction in the UK.

Rooney, England’s record goals-

corer, declined to respond to the

criticism last night. Derby Coun-

ty’s executive chairman, Mel

Morris, said: ‘The commercial

opportunities this creates are

widespread and significant.’

Family: Wife Coleen and the star’s four sons

Betting his shirt: Wayne Rooney yesterday with the strip he’ll wear for new club Derby displaying its gambling firm sponsor

Chelsea’s sex abuse shaming

has never played as number 32, will be

paid £7.8million over the course of the

deal. Experts suggested last night that

Derby County would not be able to afford

a player of Rooney’s calibre without

32Red’s ‘record-breaking’ sponsorship

deal due to strict Football Association

rules on expenditure. The club has refused

to confirm the value of the 32Red deal.

MPs and gambling campaigners said the

arrangement was a clear sign of the iron

grip betting firms had on football.

The transfer also caused astonishment

given Rooney’s own issues with gam-

bling in the past. The striker has written

SPORTSMAIL – SEE BACK PAGE

£100k a week? You bet!

CHELSEA apologised yesterday for the

sex abuse of young players in the 1970s

by a former chief scout after the

release of a damning report.

The 22-page review was heavily

critical of former assistant manager

Dario Gradi, who has been accused of

failing to escalate concerns about

Eddie Heath. A parent of a player

made a series of allegations about the

scout to Mr Gradi, whose alleged fail-

ure to act has been described as ‘a

lost opportunity to expose Heath and

prevent further abuse’.

Mr Gradi, 78, who has been sus-

pended by the Football Association

since 2016, claimed to the review that

he passed on the complaint to another

member of staff and denied he had

tried to ‘smooth over’ the matter.

But Charles Geekie QC, who led the

external review of the scandal, wrote:

‘The consequence of my findings is

that the complaint made about Mr

Heath was not referred to more sen-

ior members of the club.’

Twenty-three witnesses were inter-

viewed about Heath, who died in 1983.

Fifteen reported ‘serious and unam-

biguous sexual assaults’ while others

spoke of grooming boys aged ten to

17. In a statement yesterday, Chelsea
    described Heath’s conduct as ‘beyond
    reprehensible’ and apologised that it
    had gone unchallenged.
    See Sport

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