A company behind a Joseph Muscat-led sponsorship agreement dubbed “the largest ever sponsorship deal in Maltese sports” technically does not exist yet.

360Sports, which is owned and led by Azerbaijan oil and gas magnate Nasib Piriyev, is not listed on the Malta Business Registry, has a limited web presence and no social media profiles.

A spokesperson for Piriyev’s business empire confirmed that the company is still in the process of being incorporated. It will be registered in Malta under the name 360 Holdings Ltd and serve as a subsidiary to Piriyev’s UK-based PNN Group Holdings, the spokesperson said.

Incorporation is the legal process by which a business entity is formed and recognised as a separate legal entity from its owners.

360Sports was last week unveiled as the official sponsor of the 2024-25 Malta Premier League. The deal also grants the company naming rights for Malta’s top-flight football league, and the company’s name appears on the league’s newly designed emblem. 

Muscat, a former prime minister who is facing corruption charges in court, leads the Malta Premier League as its chairman. He was described as the “mastermind” behind the 360Sports sponsorship when it was unveiled to the public last week.

Journalists were told that 360Sports will be pumping €600,000 over three years into the Maltese top-flight football league, with Muscat describing that as an “800%” increase in sponsorship revenue.

The company says it intends to develop a sports “superapp” that will combine video, social media, e-sports, e-commerce and betting capabilities into one. It also claims to have grandiose expansion plans: a roadmap on the 360Sports website states that the company intends to expand to Asia and South America in 2025 and North America in 2026.

A top executive at Woodford Finance, a London-based venture capital firm led by Piriyev, said the 360Sports team has an “extensive track record in delivering sophisticated projects”.

“We are excited to have Malta and the local clubs as the testbed for a whole series of fintech and gaming products we will deploy over the course of the next 12-24 months.

"As the clubs and fans adapt our products, we will roll them out globally and make Malta our hub for further expansions,” Woodford Finance COO Richard Shirley told Times of Malta.

Those big plans jar with 360Sports’ current web presence, however.

The company’s website, 360Sports.co, does not appear on Google search results for ‘360Sports’. And that website is sparse, featuring a promo video, team biographies and no detail about their product.

Links on the website to its LinkedIn, X and Instagram pages did not work at the time of writing.

Muscat told Times of Malta that he was “very confident” that the deal would be a success.

“The 360Sports sponsorship offers a unique synergy and opportunity for our topflight football to serve as a testing bed for new technologies being rolled out by an international player which chose Malta as its base,” he said.

Alan Abela, who will lead the newly formed premier league as chairman of Premier League Limited, said the deal was “by far the most advantageous” of those made. The company was selected following a roadshow to promote the league’s naming rights, he said.

Scepticism among footballing circles

But the deal has prompted questions within local footballing circles.

Sources within the Malta Football Association told Times of Malta there was some discomfort at the prospect of a Muscat-led Azerbaijan investment, given the former prime minister’s ongoing court case.

Muscat faces unrelated corruption charges in connection with the deal to privatise three hospitals signed during his time in office.

This whole situation is not bringing any positive media to Maltese football

“Even if everything was above board, and keeping in mind that everybody is innocent until proven guilty, this whole situation is not bringing any positive media to Maltese football,” they said.

Separately, various club officials also expressed scepticism about a fledgling sports-betting company with links to Azerbaijan choosing Malta as its base country. Others also questioned what benefits local clubs would truly get from the deal.

Muscat’s ties to Azerbaijan 

Muscat’s ties to Azerbaijan stretch back to his time in politics. As Malta’s prime minister, he piloted a deal for Azerbaijan’s state-owned gas supplier, SOCAR, to supply Malta with LNG for 18 years.

SOCAR also owns a stake in the Electrogas consortium that was awarded a contract to design, build and operate an LNG power station in Delimara. That deal, which is the subject of an ongoing magisterial inquiry, was being investigated by journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia when she was murdered in 2017.

Muscat maintained ties to Azerbaijan following his forced resignation in 2020 and serves as a board member of an Azeri think tank, the Nizami Ganjavi International Centre, which was founded by the country’s leader, Ilham Aliyev.

Who is Nasib Piriyev?

The man behind 360Sports, Nasib Piriyev, is no stranger to football-related ventures.

In 2021, he led a consortium that tried to take over English Premier League side West Ham United in a £400 million (€470 million) purchase. The deal fell through, with club owner David Sullivan saying the Piriyev-led consortium had “zero interest in the football side and saw it as a property move”.

Later, Piriyev also showed interest in acquiring Derby County Football Club, but nothing came out of it.

Piriyev made his fortune as co-founder of PNN Group, an oil and gas behemoth he established in 1993 together with his father Nizami, a former executive at Russian energy giant Gazprom. PNN made its fortune building oil terminals and supplying the fuel across Central Asia before diversifying into other sectors. 

Piriyev and his father have clashed with the Azeri government. Azeri authorities arrested his father in May 2015 and issued an Interpol arrest notice for the London-based Nasib Piriyev that same year. They say PNN Group did not repay a massive loan it obtained from the state-owned Azerbaijan International Bank.

The Piriyev family has said that that the accusations are untrue and politically motivated.

‘Thorough’ due diligence exercises

In comments to Times of Malta, Premier League Limited emphasised that 360Sports had been thoroughly vetted before the sponsorship deal was signed.

“Although not legally required, the Malta Premier League carried out all necessary background checks and due diligence exercises,” the company’s chairman-designate Alan Abela said.

“A thorough due diligence exercise was conducted, addressing all questions. The client’s source of funds is verified by a report from a Big Four audit firm, and the sponsor has provided explanations for all adverse media coverage through their lawyers, backed by supporting documentation.”

Abela said that most questions about the company “stemmed from misinformation or partial information found in open-source media”. All those inquiries were “fully clarified,” he added.