Premier League Confirms Indefinite Suspension

At a meeting of Premier League Shareholders today, clubs discussed in detail how to respond to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

First and foremost, it was reaffirmed that the overriding priority is to aid the health and wellbeing of the nation and our communities, including players, coaches, managers, club staff and supporters.

Season restart

It was acknowledged that the Premier League will not resume at the beginning of May – and that the 2019/20 season will only return when it is safe and appropriate to do so.

The restart date is under constant review with all stakeholders, as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic develops and we work together through this very challenging time.

The Premier League is working closely with the whole of professional football in this country, as well as with the Government, public agencies and other relevant stakeholders to ensure the game achieves a collaborative solution.

With this, there is a combined objective for all remaining domestic league and cup matches to be played, enabling us to maintain the integrity of each competition.

However, any return to play will only be with the full support of the Government and when medical guidance allows.

The sporting and financial implications for Premier League clubs as well as for The FA, EFL and National League were considered at today’s meeting.

Consulting players

In the face of substantial and continuing losses for the 2019/20 season since the suspension of matches began, and to protect employment throughout the professional game, Premier League clubs unanimously agreed to consult their players regarding a combination of conditional reductions and deferrals amounting to 30 per cent of total annual remuneration.

This guidance will be kept under constant review as circumstances change.

The League will be in regular contact with the PFA, and the union and the LMA will join a meeting which will be held tomorrow between the League, players and club representatives.

Solidarity with clubs below PL

Discussions also took place regarding financial relief for clubs in the short term and while there is no single solution, measures are to be put in place to immediately deal with the impact of falling cash flow.

Critically, the League unanimously voted to advance funds of £125 million to the EFL and National League as it is aware of the severe difficulties clubs throughout the football pyramid are suffering at this time.

Supporting NHS

Further to that assistance, the League remains committed to supporting the National Health Service, its staff and helping people in communities, not least those who are most vulnerable.

The League, clubs, players and managers express huge appreciation for the heroic efforts of NHS staff and all other key workers who are carrying out critical jobs in such difficult circumstances.

In consultation with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Premier League is immediately committing £20 million to support the NHS, communities, families and vulnerable groups during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This includes a direct financial contribution to the NHS and funds to enable clubs to refocus their efforts and develop significant outreach programmes to help communities, including those most in need.

This funding will enable both immediate and longer-term support during the crisis.

Clubs supporting communities

In response to COVID-19,  Premier League clubs have been supporting tens of thousands of people in their communities each and every day through targeted activity including donations to foodbanks, telephone calls to the elderly, food parcels delivered to the vulnerable and a wide range of free resources to support wellbeing and education.

Many Premier League clubs are also working closely with their local NHS Trusts to provide valuable support through the provision of resources, volunteers and facilities.

Now, more than ever, clubs are playing a vital role to support the wellbeing of those in their communities and alleviate pressure on critical health services.

Promoting public health messages

Working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, Public Health England and the NHS,  the wide reach and appeal of the Premier League and our clubs will continue to be used to promote important public health messaging throughout this crisis. 

The Premier League would like to reiterate that the thoughts of all our clubs are with all those directly affected by COVID-19​.

New England Patriots And Fanatics Sign 10-Year E-Commerce Partnership

The New England Patriots and Fanatics, the leader for officially licensed sports merchandise, today announced a 10-year e-commerce partnership that will have Fanatics operate the online and mobile retail merchandise business for the six-time Super Bowl champions. The team will continue to operate their Patriots Pro Shop stores at Gillette Stadium and Patriot Place.

The partnership is highlighted by a new technology-laced e-commerce platform, ProShop.Patriots.com, that can be accessed by fans starting today. This state-of-art destination will provide Patriots fans around the world with a seamless, secure online and mobile shopping experience with access to the widest assortment of high-quality products ever offered for all members of the family.

Fanatics’ industry leading technology and mobile capabilities, powered by its Cloud Commerce Platform, will provide rapid navigation for shoppers across online and mobile sites, including larger, hi-resolution product displays, frictionless checkout and the quickest access to new product offerings.

“Fanatics has established themselves as our industry’s preeminent sports retail company, and their scale across e-commerce and mobile shopping will create an incredible new offering for our passionate fanbase worldwide,” said Jennifer Ferron, Chief Marketing Officer, Kraft Sports and Entertainment. “With their world-class technology platform and commitment to e-commerce innovation, our fans will have around the clock access to a premier shopping destination featuring the widest assortment of merchandise we’ve ever offered.”

An expanded product assortment featuring Nike-branded Patriots NFL gear – which includes all jersey categories, women’s apparel and lifestyle gear – will be manufactured by Fanatics and distributed across all retail channels, including the Patriots online store, beginning with the 2020 season.

“We are proud to partner with the New England Patriots, widely recognized as one of the most innovative and successful teams in all of sports,” said Gary Gertzog, Fanatics President of Business Affairs. “We look forward to working closely with the team and harnessing Fanatics’ comprehensive data and analytics platform to create an elevated, personalized shopping experience of real-time products for fans.”

Dorna Sports Announce Financial Support For Teams And See Esports Event Success

With the agreement of the FIM and the full commitment from shareholders Bridgepoint Capital and CPP Investments, Dorna Sports is proud to be able to assure help for MotoGP™Class Independent Teams through this difficult moment in the history of our sport, as well as teams in the Moto2™ and Moto3™ classes.

Through the International Road-Racing Teams Association, MotoGP™ Independent Teams will each receive considerable advance payments during the months of April, May and June, irrespective of whether activity is restarted or not. This is in order to guarantee the economic well-being of the Independent Teams and their staff, as well as to secure their subsistence for the future.

In addition, IRTA has already made payments to all Moto2™ and Moto3™ teams to support them during this difficult period. Further measures for the intermediate and lightweight class teams will be considered in due course.

Conversely, MotoGP recently held and broadcast a world first: a Virtual Race. With the likes of Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team), Fabio Quartararo (Petronas Yamaha SRT) and Maverick Viñales (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP) lining up against each other and a stellar cast of rivals from the MotoGP™ grid, the event was raced around Mugello and broadcast on Sunday the 29th of March.

Feedback from the MotoGP™ community, fans, partners and more has been unprecedented. 28 broadcast partners showed the event, with giants of sports broadcasting beaming the race to audiences around the world. Across Europe, partners such as Sky Italy, Canal+ in France, DAZN (in Spain, Italy and DACHS), BT Sport in the UK, ServusTV in Austria and Germany and many more showed the event, with the Americas receiving coverage thanks to the likes of NBC in the USA and ESPN in Latin America. Fans further east could enjoy coverage from partners including Motorsport TV Russia, Eurosport India and Fox Asia, with fans Down Under covered by Fox Australia and TEN. SuperSport also broadcast the event in South Africa, meaning the MotoGP™ Virtual Race reached every inhabited continent on Earth!

Reach was also incredible across social media and online. 400 pieces of digital content were created around the event – including the full broadcast – for a total of 60 million impressions and more than 13 million video views, including 3 million views of the race itself. In addition, more than 2.5 million interactions were made with content related to the Virtual Race as fans flocked to weigh in! In total, that all adds up to 7 million minutes of Virtual Race content that were viewed – the equivalent of 13 years non-stop.

Fans won’t have to wait quite that long for more, however. On Sunday the 12th of April Virtual Race 2 will be broadcast, once again going live at 3pm (GMT +2). Some competitors will be returning and some fresh faces are also slated to take part – guaranteeing another rollercoaster showdown as this time, they take on the Red Bull Ring in Austria.

Inter Miami CF Sign TV Deal With CBS Miami

Inter Miami CF has announced a multi-year deal naming CBS Miami as its official local television home for English-language games effective this season.

Through this partnership, a select number of Inter Miami regular season games will air in prime time on MyTV33 (WBFS), with additional matches airing on CBS4 (WFOR), across South Florida. The revised Major League Soccer season schedule will be announced at a later date, at which point the Club will provide full broadcast details for all of its games.

“This is still a historic year for Inter Miami, and we are continuing our efforts to give fans in South Florida as many possible ways to experience our team both live at our stadium or on the broadcast when we, as a community, are ready to return to league play,” said Inter Miami CF COO & Sporting Director Paul McDonough. “CBS Miami is a respected local media organization, and we are happy to bring them on board to reach every fan in our region over the air, on cable and on satellite TV.”

The broadcast team, which was announced in March, will include color commentators Ray Hudson and Fernando Fiore, play-by-play commentator Andres Cordero and sideline reporter and digital host Kaylyn Kyle.

“We’re proud to launch this partnership with Inter Miami CF in their inaugural year,” said Adam Levy, vice president and general manager of CBS Miami. “We’re looking forward to showcasing the excitement when this team returns to the field.”

Through MLS’s national broadcast partnerships, a number of Inter Miami games also air nationally on ESPN, Univision, UniMas, Fox Sports 1, FOX and ABC.

T20 Women’s World Cup Sees Huge Digital Success For The ICC

The International Cricket Council today revealed record digital and broadcast viewing figures for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2020, which has become one of the most watched women’s sporting events in history as the sport continues to set new benchmarks on and off the field.

ICC’s digital channels were in overdrive during the 21 February to 8 March event in Australia, with an astonishing 1.1 billion total video views, making it the most watched ICC women’s event ever and the second most successful ICC event after the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019.

The figure was more than 20 times the video views delivered in the previous edition played in the West Indies in 2018 and 10 times the previous most successful women’s cricket event, which was the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2017.

The record-breaking trend continued via broadcast with the final of the event achieving record viewership in both India and Australia, after their teams played in front of 86,174 fans at Melbourne Cricket Ground on International Women’s Day.

As India made the final of the event for the first time, fans watched 1.78 billion viewing minutes of live match action on TV of that game alone. The figure is 59 times more than the final of the previous edition in 2018 between Australia and England, and comprised 35 per cent of the overall viewership for the tournament.

The live average audience for the final in India was 9.02 million, higher than all matches of the 2018 tournament played in the West Indies. This figure is 154 per cent higher than the second most viewed match in the competition – the tournament opener between Australia and India on 21 February. The overall viewing minutes across the whole event in India was 5.4 billion, almost three times more than the 2018 edition.

The digital streaming figures too were impressive in India, peaking at 3.1 million for concurrent users of Hotstar during the final.

In Australia, the average audience for the final was 1.2 million, making it the most watched women’s cricket match and the sixth-most watched cricket match ever on subscription television in Australian broadcast history.

ICC Chief Executive Manu Sawhney: “These quite outstanding broadcast and digital numbers demonstrate the power of women’s cricket to aggregate a huge global audience and engage fans. This undoubtedly consolidates our position as one of the leading women’s sports in the world and we want to build on the momentum from this event and create a long-term sustainable foundation for the game.

“It reinforces our belief that there is a significant opportunity around the women’s game and collectively we must promote it further so more fans can watch it, more kids are inspired by it and sponsors and broadcasters want to be a part of it.

“We have built on the record-breaking success of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 and continued our focus on deepening engagement with existing fans and bringing new fans to the game with relevant, engaging content that goes beyond match highlights. Cricket fans want competitive cricket with context and the world’s best players did not disappoint in Australia earlier this year.”

ELEVEN SPORTS Secures Rights To DTM Racing In Poland And Belgium

ELEVEN SPORTS has secured the rights to bring fans the DTM racing series in Poland and Belgium.

DTM (Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters) is the most popular touring-car series in Europe, famous for its spectacular races and cutting-edge coupe cars.

ELEVEN SPORTS Poland will show the series LIVE and EXCLUSIVELY for the next two seasons, with Polish race fans able to watch local hero and former F1 driver Robert Kubica in action for the ORLEN Team ART. Belgian fans will also have the chance to enjoy the 2020 calendar on ELEVEN.

The 2020 campaign will consist of ten race days across a series of iconic European tracks, including Norisring, Zolder, Brands Hatch, Hockenheimring and Monza. The season is due to start on 10 July, with race organisers taking a flexible and pragmatic approach to scheduling to ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone involved.

The DTM series is a strong addition to ELEVEN SPORTS’ motor race offering, which in Poland already includes F1 and the PGE Ekstraliga speedway.

Danny Menken, ELEVEN SPORTS Group Managing Director, said:

“DTM is a much-loved racing series and will be a great addition for our motorsports fans in Poland and Belgium. In Poland, our viewers will have the chance to continue to follow a national hero in Robert Kubica while DTM will be something new and a bit different for our subscribers in Belgium. We’re excited to get going.”

StreamAMG Sign Long-Term Partnership Extension With Wolverhapton Wanderers

Wolverhampton Wanderers will continue their partnership with live streaming and OTT specialists StreamAMG after signing a new long-term agreement.

The Premier League club use StreamAMG’s technology and services to deliver live and on demand video on the WolvesTV direct-to-fan service. The club uses the service to reach fans worldwide, offering highlights, behind-the-scenes features and interviews, and alternative ways to follow live matches if they can’t attend games.

Having successfully relaunched WolvesTV with CloudMatrix last season, the club will continue to use the content management system to provide dynamic feeds of on demand video content. By automatically compiling playlists, collections and boxsets based on customisable rulesets, the content team uses the system to offer a premium experience with minimal curation and keep fans engaged.

Wolves employ StreamAMG’s core MediaPlatform online video platform to manage and distribute live streams and on demand content, and handle registration and subscriptions with the CloudPay user management and payments platform.

The club continues to develop the service, adding Spanish-language audio commentary to matches to the service and producing in-depth features.

Russell Jones, Head of Marketing at Wolves said: “Our priority is making engaging content easily accessible for our fans around the world and we feel that StreamAMG offers us the most reliable and innovative platform on the market.

“For the first time this year WolvesTV offered free live audio commentary in Spanish (as well as English). We also streamed live pictures of our Europa League qualification games and our under-21 fixtures across multiple devices with a registration or paywall to capture usage data and monetise.

“We look forward to working with StreamAMG to offer our fans around the world even more options to consume world class content on multiple devices in multiple languages.”

“We’re proud of our work to deliver WolvesTV and help grow the service. The club’s future looks bright on and off the pitch, and we’re delighted that we will be working with them for many years to come.” Matt McKiernan, Chief Operating Officer, StreamAMG

Ironman Virtual Club Launches As Global Go-To-Hub For Athletes

The IRONMAN Group has officially launched the IRONMAN® Virtual Club™ (VC™) web-based platform today for athletes around the world. As the go-to destination for everything IRONMAN, IRONMAN VC provides athletes with a connected experience to train, compete, earn and celebrate their achievements with a global community of fellow athletes from anywhere in the world.
IRONMAN Virtual Club
  • Athlete Dashboard – The athlete’s home base within the IRONMAN Virtual Club. Athletes can log their training, see their upcoming IRONMAN® Virtual Racing Series™ (VR™) events and challenges, and view achievement badges that have been already earned. Athletes will see their point and credit counts rise the more they train and compete within the platform.
  • Events – Consisting of the newly announced IRONMAN Virtual Racing Series events and IRONMAN VC challenges, athletes will be able to view the IRONMAN VR event listing and formats, as well as an overview of IRONMAN U Master Coach Challenges and IRONMAN Global Partner Challenges.
    • IRONMAN VR1 – In celebration of the IRONMAN Virtual Club launch, the inaugural IRONMAN Virtual Race, IRONMAN VR1, will be open to the entire community of athletes for free. IRONMAN VR1 will consist of a 5 km run, 90 km bike and 21 km run. The segments can be completed in any order, but each segment must be completed in its entirety during one session. Athletes can register for IRONMAN VR1 once they sign into their existing IRONMAN account or create a new account in the IRONMAN Virtual Club for free.
    • IRONMAN VR Pro Challenge – Professional athletes will also compete in IRONMAN VR Series races through the IRONMAN VR Pro Challenge, a head-to-head Pro competition. For the IRONMAN VR1 matchup, four Pro Women will race on Saturday and four Pro Men will race Sunday. All athletes will be required to complete the same prescribed race segments as the age-group competition, with the bike portion broadcast live through the IRONMAN Now page on Facebook Watch. Professional athletes will utilize Rouvy to race head-to-head on the virtual IRONMAN® 70.3® Boulder bike course.
    • Challenges – Athletes can compete while also learning from some of the best on how to push their minds and bodies with purpose. With challenges set by IRONMAN U Master Coaches Mark Allen, Matt Dixon, Lance Watson, and Dave Scott, athletes are provided with training tips and overall great workouts that will help them train smart for their next race. Partner challenges from ROKA, HOKA ONE ONE, Ventum, Santini, and Compressport also provide a fun way for athletes to train, compete, earn, and connect with the opportunity to win prizes.
  • IRONMAN+ – The central educational destination for everything athletes need throughout their journey. Including featured video and articles on fitness, nutrition, competition, swim, bike and run, athletes can load their training toolbox with everything they need to get inspired and reach their goals.
  • Coaching – The Coaching section provides content centered around two customized digital product applications developed to provide athletes with the resources they need to be successful along their journey.
    • IRONMAN Coaching by Final Surge brings together the collective expertise of our global community of Certified IRONMAN U Coaches to share their hand-created training plans that will help prepare athletes for a phenomenal race day.
    • The IRONMAN Training Companion Powered by PKRS.AI gives athlete’s access to further expertise in training, nutrition and strength; all with the guidance of an online concierge. This experience brings the training expertise of IRONMAN World Champions Leanda Cave and Jan Frodeno to the palm of your hand.
  • Rewards – The more athletes race and train, the more Points they gain. Points are earned by distance traveled (not time) and accumulate throughout the year and showcase how athletes stack up against each other. Points also convert into Credits, which can be redeemed for rewards that are showcased in this section of the platform.
  • Watch – Features the IRONMAN VR on the IRONMAN Now channel on Facebook Watch including schedule, race recaps, and highlights. Each race weekend will broadcast a preview show on Friday followed by Professional and Age-Group live look-in coverage on Saturday and Sunday.

 

Ahead Of The Curve – Innovation In The Digital Transformation Of Sports Broadcasting

As traditional broadcasters evolve to utilise digital and newcomers like Netflix and Amazon vie for more TV rights to sporting events, keeping pace with the changing landscape in screening and live streaming sports is vital.

Tata Communications, the leading provider of global digital infrastructure services, helps sports broadcasters, federations and rights holders to stay ahead of the competition by embracing digital transformation and adopting cutting-edge technology. Nearly 30 percent of the world’s internet routes travel over its network.

It’s a leader in the increasingly digital, cloud-powered and IP-enabled media and entertainment industry and delivers over 5,000 live sporting events globally including top tier clients across premium sports.

Evolution of consumption patterns and explosion of new content mean that sports broadcasters, content owners and rights holders need a technology partner with a global reach and versatile networks that are not only reliable but also interoperable and future-ready.

As regulatory and commercial factors compel broadcasters to search for alternative distribution channels, the company’s fully managed satellite replacement solution delivers high quality compressed video over a hybrid network.

Tata Communications provides additional benefits to meet the sophisticated demands of sports broadcasters. Its storage and compute services offer a flexible, modular private storage environment for media, so that content owners and broadcasters can create their own business models without disparate cloud tie-ups and capital expenditure.

As OTT goes mainstream in sport, the company is equipped to fulfil requirements with a comprehensive, cloud-based platform that empowers content owners and video streaming companies to perform key backend tasks such as transcoding, analytics, live streaming and publishing and reviews. It also offers a video delivery network for live synchronous OTT output.

“The influx of newcomers investing in sports rights means there is growing pressure on traditional broadcasters and content owners to keep pace.”

Workflow automation allows for slick operations. There’s one web interface that allows content owners to manage their media from ingest to delivery, in an easy-to-use, pay-as-you-go cloud-based service.

Driving efficiencies via remote production

In producing and broadcasting a major sporting event, a major shift in thinking and operations has led to huge changes that are driving down costs.

Media contribution, preparation and distribution are highly capital-intensive for producers of live TV and video content, and their workflows are complex. Migration to IP-based workflows provides new opportunities to content owners to simplify them and achieve substantial cost efficiencies.

Remote production is one option available to live content producers. Enhancing the reach of their content, exploring new monetisation routes and lowering the cost of production can be achieved this way. As content regionalisation and innovation in media formats take a strong hold among business priorities, remote production is expected to become a default choice for live content producers.

The company’s remote production solution ensures a collaborative approach by tying together multiple production hubs with the live event venue and utilising personnel and equipment across more than one facility via an ultra-low latency managed network. This unlocks major opportunities for sports to scale their operations worldwide, and operate multiple events in parallel without needing a full production set-up on-site.

Dhaval Ponda, Global Head of Media and Entertainment Services at Tata Communications, says “The influx of newcomers investing in sports rights means there is growing pressure on traditional broadcasters and content owners to keep pace. To remain competitive, many are looking to expand their global reach by entering new markets and monetising digital platforms in new ways.

“Simultaneously, many broadcasters are taking a hard look at how they operate to boost their profitability by reducing overheads, logistical and engineering expenses. This is where remote production can make a huge difference, becoming an enabler of business transformation for broadcasters.”

Tata Communications is well-positioned to assist. It owns and operates the world’s largest fibre network optimised for media, delivering broadcast-quality video across 300 media hotspots in 125 global cities. This network offers low-latency, reliable connectivity and can be rapidly deployed and dynamically configured on a virtualised platform.

Its global operations centres maintain the network in peak condition through a remote monitoring crew; a dedicated on-site team is fully adaptable to an event’s schedule and turnaround requirements.

“Game-changing” 100G media backbone

Tata Communications has launched a 100G media backbone to meet the industry’s growing bandwidth demands. It underpins the tech giant’s global end-to-end managed Video Connect network.

“eSports enterprises and broadcasters can provide gamers and viewers with exceptional, ultra-immersive 4k viewing experiences without worrying about bandwidth issues”

The new backbone enables broadcasters, sports organisations, OTT companies and eSports businesses to offer their global audiences more immersive viewing and gaming experiences and transform how they operate through full remote production.

Ponda describes it as a “game-changing” development for the sports industry. “Viewers, sports fans and gamers expect immersive, high-quality content – delivered live from the other side of the world or on demand – on different platforms. This 100G backbone and our managed video services will help our customers innovate with agility and become more competitive,” he says.

At major sports events, the new infrastructure will have the capacity to support up to 50 raw video feeds and the delivery of unilateral, localised feeds by different rights holders for their regions.

A 100G media backbone can simplify a content provider’s journey towards deploying UHD 4K videos in real time, which requires 12Gb/s bandwidth when uncompressed – four times more than what is needed for a HD video transmission.

“eSports enterprises and broadcasters can provide gamers and viewers with exceptional, ultra-immersive 4k viewing experiences without worrying about bandwidth issues,” says Ponda.

eSports has become a global industry which is constantly requiring greater tech systems

The opportunities and benefits created by 100 G are not only limited to 4k video transmission. Progressive media and communications companies, for instance, have started testing live 360° video transmission in 8k UHD – the highest resolution available in digital TV.

Ponda adds: “This can usher in endless possibilities when it comes to live video broadcasting and immersive viewing. Such high-performance media infrastructure can, for example, allow sports lovers to use a VR headset and experience a golf tour right from the player’s point-of-view or watch a motorsport race from the circuit.”

A 100G media network can also help content providers streamline the technical aspects of video production. For instance, every event in eSports involves multiple cameras, cutaways, commentary, real-time editing and real-time reactions. A high capacity transmission network can ensure that the data is transmitted in order, on time, and without any redundancies to enable remote production of multiple events in tandem.

Media cloud ecosystem benefits

Further benefits to the sports industry come in the form of the company’s media cloud infrastructure services. It enables content owners, broadcasters and OTT players to create a private, modular media cloud to manage their video on-demand playout and distribution.

Migration to cloud-based workflows enables sports organisations and broadcasters to launch resources faster, achieve better collaboration across remote workforces, deploy in multiple regions at the same time, and, perhaps most importantly, trade capital expenses with a pay-as-you-go model.

Tata Communications’ media cloud infrastructure is seamlessly connected to its media-ready global network and provides the vital link between content acquisition and distribution to audiences. It can achieve a range of transform functions including transcode, digital rights management, review and approve processes, metadata tagging and video analytics.

‘LaLigaSantander Fest’ Raises Over €1 million For Medical Supplies

As part of LaLiga’s efforts to encourage fans to stay at home and to provide entertainment during this time of no football and of quarantine, a unique virtual festival was held on Saturday for more than 50 million people.

‘LaLigaSantander Fest’ was the first global charity festival held to raise funds to support the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic and, under the slogan of “Music and football together against COVID-19”, it brought together top musicians and footballers for the first time ever.

Artists such as Alejandro Sanz, David Bisbal, Luis Fonsi and Lang Lang performed from their respective homes as part of the online event, while players from the clubs of LaLiga Santander also took part. The event was organised by LaLiga and made possible thanks to the collaboration of Banco Santander, Universal Music, management firm GTS, LaLiga players and clubs and a host of the competition’s sponsors.

Aside from Santander, these included: PUMA, EA Sports, Budweiser, Rexona, BKT, LiveScore, El Corte Inglés, Samsung, Panini, Sportium, Deliveroo, Allianz, STIHL, Mazda, Danone, Marqués del Atrio, VITALDENT, Mail Boxes Etc. and RENFE.

Global audience leads to millions of medical supplies

The event was broadcast simultaneously via LaLiga social media channels, and through LaLigaSportsTV, the league’s global OTT platform, while the signal was also made available to LaLiga global broadcast partners. In total 50 international broadcast partners offered coverage of the concert, along with 70 social media accounts and as many media outlets. In total, the event could finally be seen in 182 countries around the world.

As well as providing entertainment to a global audience, ‘LaLiga Santander Fest’ raised €1,003,532. These funds will enable the purchase of 115 respirators, 1.4 million face masks, 12,595 sterile protective suits and 500,000 vonyl protective gloves, with a further donation of 1 million masks from Santander.

These supplies will be directed to those who need it most according to the Spanish government’s health priorities in coordination with the country’s High Sports Council (CSD)……

… To read the full piece and subscribe to the LaLiga Global Fútbol Newsletter, please follow this link: https://newsletter.laliga.es/global-futbol/laligasantander-fest-raises-over-eur1-million/rrss