There's a few aspects to that.
Firstly, there's a difference being disappointed with the sponsorship and 'kicking off' about it, which I addressed in my own post. I would rather we didn't do this but I believe it would be hypocritical of me to make a big fuss about it, because I've never complained about gambling ads on billboards at the ground, or the betting kiosks in the stands, or the fact that the league we were very close to spending next season in is sponsored by a gambling company or any of the other myriad of things that link football and gambling. If you have then that's genuinely great and I applaud you for your stance. If you haven't then for me personally this particular sponsorship being seen as completely unacceptable doesn't really make an awful lot of sense.
What should and shouldn't be advertised is a moral maze. I'm vegan, so personally I don't like the normalisation of the meat and dairy industry at events kids go to, but it isn't illegal and if Everton were sponsored by McDonalds or whatever then once again I wouldn't like it but i'd just accept that they were looking out for themselves and not thinking of my sensibilities. Whether someone like Standard Chartered who've made it almost a personal crusade in recent years to breach trade sanctions and fail to comply with financial regulations would be a morally superior sponsor I don't know either.
Finally, what reputational damage is there really? Virtually half the teams we shared a pitch with last year were sponsored by gambling companies, and almost every game we played in had gambling ads round the pitch. There've been some hatchet jobs this week in the media but the reality is there's pretty much no reputational damage in the grand scheme of things. If we really were some sort of anti-establishment club who were known around the world for our moral stance then it would be different but we're absolutely not that, so this idea of irreparable damage to the brand just seems like straw clutching to me.
