Affiliate Disclosure

Last updated: May 2026

This page describes Football Insider’s affiliate-marketing relationships, the categories where we participate, the categories where we do not participate, and the disclosure practices we apply. The disclosure framework is informed by the U.S. FTC disclosure guidance for affiliate relationships, EU consumer-protection frameworks, and Italian Codice del Consumo (D.Lgs. 206/2005). Headline: limited non-gambling affiliate participation, disclosed inline at the article level, no bookmaker / betting-operator participation.

1. What an affiliate relationship is

An affiliate relationship is one in which Football Insider may receive a commission when a reader clicks an affiliate link on the Site, follows it to the partner’s site, and then makes a purchase or completes a qualifying action on the partner’s site within the affiliate-tracking window. The reader pays no more for the purchase as a result of using the affiliate link; the affiliate commission is paid by the partner from the standard purchase price.

The arrangement is widely used by online publications. We participate selectively, with categories and partners chosen based on relevance to our editorial focus.

2. Categories where Football Insider participates

Kit, merchandise, and football-retail affiliates

• Official-team-store affiliate programs where the team or its retailer offers an affiliate program.
• Sports-retail affiliates (general retailers carrying football kit, training equipment, fan merchandise).
• Football-related fashion / streetwear partners where a brand intersects football culture.

Books and educational content

• Football-related book retailers (Amazon-equivalent affiliate programs where applicable).
• Football-history, football-business, and football-tactics publishers with affiliate programs.

Sports-streaming services where legal in the user’s jurisdiction

• Streaming-service affiliate programs for legal football-broadcast services (DAZN affiliate program where available; Sky affiliates; equivalent regional streaming partnerships).

Other non-gambling football-adjacent categories

• Fitness / training products with football-adjacent positioning (boots, training equipment) where the affiliate program is reputable.
• Football-travel categories (away-day travel, tournament-travel packages from licensed operators).
• Football-experience products (academy clinic packages, stadium tours from official-channel providers).

3. Categories where Football Insider does NOT participate

Categorically excluded from the Site’s affiliate-marketing scope:

• Bookmakers and betting operators. No affiliate relationships with sports-betting operators of any kind, regardless of jurisdiction or licensing status. This is required by Italian Decreto Dignità (D.L. 87/2018) for the Italian audience and is the Site’s editorial standard for the entire audience. Full framework on Gambling Content Policy.
• Casinos and other gambling operators — not relevant to our editorial focus and excluded for the same reasons as betting operators.
• Cryptocurrency and fan-token affiliate programs — the volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and consumer-protection concerns make these incompatible with our editorial standards.
• Adult content of any kind.
• “Investment opportunities”, forex / CFD trading platforms, or related high-risk financial-product affiliates — consumer-protection concerns; not within our editorial scope.
• “Get-rich-quick” schemes, MLM programs, or business-opportunity affiliates.
• Affiliates that require deceptive framing, affiliate-link cloaking that hides the affiliate relationship, or other practices contrary to FTC and EU disclosure standards.

4. Disclosure standards

Where an article on the Site contains affiliate links, the affiliate relationship is disclosed:

• Inline at the point of the link with clear language (“affiliate link”, “we may receive a commission”, or equivalent).
• At the top or bottom of the article in articles with multiple affiliate links, with a single block-level disclosure covering all the article’s affiliate relationships.
• In the footer of the Site with the standing disclosure that affiliate relationships exist and that this page describes them.

The disclosure language is intended to be clear to a reasonable reader: “Football Insider participates in [partner]’s affiliate program. If you click an affiliate link and complete a purchase, we may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Our editorial coverage is independent of these relationships — see Editorial Independence.”

5. Editorial independence from affiliates

The wall between affiliate relationships and editorial coverage is operational, not aspirational:

• Editorial decisions (what to cover, what angle, what tone) are made by the editorial team without input from affiliate partners.
• Affiliate partners do not have advance review of articles that may reference them.
• Negative editorial coverage of an affiliate partner is not avoided. Where a kit retailer with whom we have an affiliate relationship is the subject of news (poor customer-service patterns, supply-chain ethics issues, etc.), we report the news on the merits.
• Affiliate partners do not select or veto coverage of competitors.
• The publisher does not negotiate “preferred coverage” terms with any affiliate partner.

The full framework on Editorial Independence.

6. Specific affiliate program names

The specific affiliate programs the Site participates in vary over time as partnerships start and end. The list at the time of writing is available on request to info [at] footballinsider [punto] store; we do not maintain a public real-time partner list (the partner list is operational, not editorial). Where an article references a product, the affiliate relationship if any is disclosed inline regardless of whether the partner is on a public list.

7. FTC compliance (U.S. readers)

For U.S. readers, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s disclosure guidance for affiliate marketing applies. Football Insider’s practices are designed to comply:

• Material connections (affiliate relationships) are disclosed clearly and conspicuously.
• Disclosures are placed in proximity to the affiliate link, not buried at the end of long articles.
• Disclosure language is plain English (or plain Italian for Italian-language audiences).
• The connection is not concealed by URL-cloaking or visually-deceptive presentation.

8. EU and Italian consumer-protection compliance

For EU readers, including Italian readers, the framework includes:

• Italian Codice del Consumo (D.Lgs. 206/2005) — consumer-protection law including disclosure of commercial communications.
• Italian D.Lgs. 70/2003 (e-commerce directive transposition) — identification of commercial communications and the persons on whose behalf they are made.
• EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC — prohibition of misleading commercial practices including hidden commercial intent.
• Italian Decreto Dignità (D.L. 87/2018) — specific framework for advertising of gambling products; the Site’s exclusion of betting-operator affiliates is consistent with the broader Decreto Dignità framework.

9. How we are paid (or not)

For transparency: affiliate commissions are paid by the partner program after a reader’s qualifying purchase clears the partner’s return-or-cancellation window. Commission rates vary by partner and product category. We do not participate in commission-share arrangements that would create perverse incentives (e.g., we do not receive higher commissions for steering readers to specific products within a category, except where the partner’s own rate-card differs).

The proportion of Site revenue from affiliate marketing is currently small relative to display advertising. Affiliate revenue is supplementary to advertising, not the primary funding mechanism. The Site’s primary funding is described on Ownership & Funding.

10. Reader rights

You can choose not to use affiliate links by accessing partner sites directly through their public URLs rather than through links on this Site. Doing so produces the same purchase experience for the reader; the only effect is that Football Insider does not receive an affiliate commission on the purchase.

If you have questions about a specific affiliate relationship referenced in an article, email info [at] footballinsider [punto] store.

Related pages: Editorial Independence · Ownership & Funding · Gambling Content Policy · Editorial Standards · Disclaimer