The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (AELTC), the parent of the Wimbledon tennis event, has announced a series of strategic investments into grass court tournaments to further demonstrate Wimbledon’s commitment to a strong and successful grass court season in the build up to the Grand Slam showpiece.

Further to the expansion of the pre-Wimbledon grass court season by an extra week from 2015, the AELTC has worked on ensuring that players have the best opportunities to compete and practice on grass in the lead up to The Championships.
This strategy has included on-going close cooperation with the LTA on the grass court season in Britain, investment into new grass courts in Stuttgart and Mallorca, support of the existing event in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and the expansion of the junior grass court season to three weeks with the creation of a new event in Nottingham this year in collaboration with the LTA.

The new investments announced on Wednesday effective from 2020 onwards, are a significant progression of this strategy, aiming to ensure that players will continue to have the best opportunities to compete in high quality grass court tournaments at all levels of the professional game, while also focusing on the commercial success of the grass court calendar as a priority. Through a series of collaborations, the AELTC will become owner, rights or licence holder of four new or relocated tournaments, while continuing to work closely in support of the existing tournaments.

Philip Brook, AELTC Chairman, commented: “A strong and successful grass court season is absolutely critical to the future of grass court tennis and thus the future success of The Championships. Having worked to expand the grass court season to be a meaningful gap between Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, we are pleased to be making these significant further investments into ensuring that quality grass court tournaments can be provided at all levels of the professional game for the best interests of the players and the broader tennis family.

“We thank the LTA, WTA and ATP for their support in bringing about these changes. We are pleased to be working closely with the LTA on the grass court season in the UK, with Octagon and e|motion sports on the new WTA event in Berlin, with e|motion sports on the new ATP event in Mallorca, and with Angelique Kerber Management and Perfect Match on a proposed new WTA event in Bad Homburg for which we are in the process of seeking WTA Board approval.”

The proposed changes to the grass court season between Roland-Garros and Wimbledon for 2020 will be as follows:

There will be no change to Week 1 of the grass court season, with the WTA International event in Nottingham, the combined ATP 250 / WTA International in ‘s-Hertogenbosh, and the ATP 250 in Stuttgart. ATP Challenger and ITF events in this week and the preceding week during Roland-Garros remain unchanged.

Week 2 will see a new WTA Premier event in Berlin as the sanction transfers from Birmingham, which instead becomes a flagship International event (transfer from Mallorca). No changes to the ATP 500s in London and Halle.

Week 3 will see a new ATP 250 event in Mallorca (replacing Antalya), a proposed new WTA International event in Bad Homburg (transfers from Istanbul) which is in the process of seeking WTA Board approval, and no change to the WTA Premier / ATP 250 in Eastbourne.

The biggest events in women’s sport should be “listed” to guarantee they are broadcast on British free-to-air television so mass audiences can watch and be inspired, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan said on Wednesday.

Reuters reports:

Over two decades ago, Britain drew up a list of sporting events of national interest, such as the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup Finals and the Grand National horse race, that must be made available to free-to-air broadcasters on a fair and reasonable basis.

The aim was to ensure the “crown jewels” of sport could be watched by viewers who did not want to subscribe to pay-TV services like Sky, which had large budgets to pay for rights.

Morgan (photo below) said she had written to TV rights holders to advocate adding major women’s sporting events to the list, bringing parity with the men’s events already included.

“A record-breaking 28.1 million people tuned into (this year’s) Women’s World Cup. I want to build on this momentum and make sure future generations of female sporting talent can be inspired by who they see on their screens,” she told the RTS television industry conference in Cambridge.

“I have written to the relevant rights holders to seek their views about adding women’s sporting events to the listed events regime.”

She said that where a men’s event was listed, the women’s equivalent would be too.

“This would be an important step in giving female sporting talent the coverage they deserve and putting men’s and women’s sport on an equal footing at last,” said Morgan, who was appointed in July.

The FIFA Women’s World Cup, the Women’s FA and Scottish FA Cup Finals could be added to the main list, while women’s Test Cricket matches could be put on a secondary list for highlights packages.

Morgan also told TV executives in Cambridge that British broadcasters must be more creative to ensure they held their own against subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services like Netflix.

“Those that do not pool their resources and talent will find it difficult to succeed in this new age,” she said.

Britain’s two biggest free-to-air channels, the commercial ITV and the licence-fee funded BBC, have joined forces to launch a British-focused SVOD called Britbox before the end of the year.

It will be priced at £5.99 pounds a month, in line with a basic standard-definition Netflix subscription in Britain but higher than the £4.99 Apple has said it will charge for its new Apple TV+ service.

Meanwhile, England’s footballing women are on track for their biggest-ever attendance on home soil when Germany arrive at Wembley Stadium connected by EE on Saturday 9 November.

More than 50,000 tickets have already been sold for the fixture, raising expectation the attendance will surpass the previous record of 45,619, also for England versus Germany, in November 2014.

Global Sports Week kicked off the build-up to its inaugural convention taking place in Paris in early 2020 with a launch event in London yesterday evening featuring a boost from the new French Ambassador to Britain and sports stars including two FIFA World Cup-winning players.

The first Global Sports Week will be held from February 5-7 at the Louvre Museum under the High Patronage of French President Emmanuel Macron with support from the French Ministry of Sports and the City of Paris.

Ambassador Catherine Colonna hosted the launch reception at the French Residence in London, where France’s Sports Ambassador, Laurence Fischer, took part in an interview conducted by British Olympic gold medal triple jumper Jonathan Edwards (who has held the world record since 1995).

Having a triple jumper on stage was appropriate because Global Sports Week has a stated triple ambition: Shake, Shape ad Share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju9HhGXfxtk

In his introduction to the event, which aims to attract 1,000+ delegates to the Louvre’s Les Salles du Carrousel, Global Sports Week Co-Founder Lucien Boyer, who was formerly Chief Marketing Office of Vivendi and Global President of Havas Sports & Entertainment, put a spotlight on the broader role that sports plays in today’s society and how sports and business, working together, have a unique potential to drive positive change.

He said the event would be putting young people at the heart of the programme with more than 150 of them to be active through presentations bootcamps and disruptive social media coverage.

The programme of Global Sports Week will be built around five global business and societal shifts in the areas of Power, Equality, Climate, Data and Lifestyle.

Global Sports Week Executive Director Noémie Claret explained that the event will feature a main arena, with TV talk show-style content, a ‘village’ hosting additional activations and numerous sidebar events and activities for delegates to enjoy taking place throughout Paris.

Also on hand for the London launch were footballers Olivier Giroud and Robert Pires, members of the world championship teams in 2018 and 1998 respectively, and rugby legend Serge Betsen.

Golf will be the initial focus of a new multi-year partnership between sports betting and content hub IMG ARENA and SG Digital, a division of Scientific Games.

SG Digital’s OpenSports offering will become the first platform partner of IMG ARENA’s Golf Event Centre from January 2020. The IMG ARENA events centre is designed to change how fans interact with the sport from both a viewing and betting perspective.

The Golf Event Centre will deliver fans and sports betting operators fast and comprehensive shot-by-shot data, live streaming and interactive course visualisations from both the PGA TOUR and European Tour. It is designed to revolutionise betting on the sport by opening more markets and truly enabling in-play betting.

SG Digital will also take IMG ARENA’s golf trading feed – its first odds property – as part of a wide-ranging deal that that includes IMG ARENA’s virtual sports portfolio and best-in-class tennis and badminton data services. This deal expands the capabilities of the OpenSports platform, which gives sportsbook operators a streamlined, modular solution for running regulated sports betting.

Keith O’Loughlin, SVP Sportsbook for SG Digital, said: “IMG ARENA has created a betting proposition for golf that befits its position as one of the world’s most popular global sports. The Golf Event Centre brings a new level of immersion and engagement that will positively shake up the live betting experience and the industry as a whole. We are excited to add it to OpenSports and continue building on our sports betting technology to bring bettors a well-rounded and content-packed experience. We’re also thrilled to enable all our customers to be early adopters of this game-changing betting solution and look forward to further collaboration with the IMG ARENA team.”

Freddie Longe, SVP of IMG ARENA, said: “SG Digital has a reputation for innovation, and we are delighted to be working with them to deliver our shared goal of evolving how fans engage with sport.

“Incorporating our official content within the OpenSports ecosystem will provide many of our major UK, European and US sportsbook customers with seamless access to our full suite of products, including the Golf Event Centre. With its unique set of interactive features, we believe it will quickly become an indispensable part of the global sports betting ecosystem.”

SG Digital has also signed up to IMG ARENA’s Alliance programme, which empowers operators to access IMG Arena’s full suite of official data and live streaming services.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) and Infront Italy S.p.A. (Infront) have announced a partnership that will see Infront represent the NBA with respect to the sale of the NBA’s sponsorship rights in Italy.

This marks the NBA’s first agreement where a sports marketing company, together with the NBA, will represent the NBA’s sponsorship business in Italy. Under this deal, with Infront being the only third party authorized to represent the NBA in Italy for sponsorship sales, the NBA and Infront will work together closely to build the NBA’s sponsorship business in Italy.

“Infront is an experienced and reliable international sports marketing company with a proven track record,” said NBA EME Associate Vice President, Global Partnerships, Mark Osikoya. “There has never been a better time to be an NBA fan in Italy. With the anticipation building ahead of the upcoming season that will feature three players from Italy, the first NBA Store in Europe located in Milan and a strong set of existing marketing partners, we look forward to working with Infront to further grow our sponsorship business in Italy.”

“We are very proud of this partnership,” said Alessandro Giacomini, Managing Director of Business at Infront Italy. “Given the growing fan base the NBA is enjoying in Italy, we are convinced we can support and strengthen the NBA to create interesting and valuable business partnerships.”

Infront will work closely with the NBA in Italy, leveraging Infront’s vast Italian network and local expertise to source potential business prospects. In addition with offices in Milan and Rome, Infront represents numerous Serie A and Serie B football clubs, as well as basketball clubs and brands.

Video game industry veterans have raised a massive $17 million seed funding round to launch a new gaming-focused TV network called VENN (Video Game Entertainment and News Network).

VENN wants to mix esports with Twitch-style video game streaming and other gaming-related entertainment content when it launches in 2020.

Co-founders Ariel Horn (right in photo) and Ben Kusin told Reuters that the venture will launch sometime in mid-2020 and is angling to be a “universal network” with programs like first-run esports events, reality shows, documentaries and game shows.

“You have this $150 billion-a-year industry that has no TV network,” said Kusin, former Global Director of New Media at Vivendi Games. “We are a universal network – that means we will be distributed and consumed anywhere our audience is consuming gaming content.”

Popular esports streaming services like Twitch (owned by Amazon) and Mixer (owned by Microsoft) are among the platforms VENN is aiming to be distributed on, according to Horn, along with YouTube, Roku, Hulu and Apple TV.

A representative for the company said it is not announcing any streaming agreements yet.

Investors include Kevin Lin, the co-founder of Twitch, and Mike Morhaime and Marc Merrill, the co-founders of Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games, respectively, among others in the gaming, sports and business industries.

Esports has gained rapid popularity worldwide, drawing top-dollar investments, with global revenue from professional video-game competitions expected to hit $1.1 billion in 2019.

“We can see that gaming is having a moment,” said Horn, “We can tell there’s this incredible groundswell around gaming and awareness is at an all-time high.”

“Esports is a narrow $2 billion industry,” Kusin said during a recent interview with Variety. Gaming as a whole on the other hand is a $150 billion industry,  “And yet, it doesn’t have a dedicated TV network.”

To prepare for the network’s launch, its co-founders plan to build out 2 studios, one in New York and one in Los Angeles. The goal is to produce 55 hours of original programming per week at launch, he said.

Some of that content will come from video game streamers already popular on Twitch and YouTube, which VENN wants to and give additional resources to professionalize their programming.