Real Madrid has renewed its relationship with Codere as official betting partner for the next three seasons.

Codere has been the official betting company of the LaLiga club since 2016.

Codere Apuestas was the first authorised sports betting company in Spain and it is the only sports betting company present in all of the regulated Autonomous Communities.

It currently has 3,500 sport betting machines in almost 1,000 betting shops and 10,000 bars, as well as its online version.

Codere also has operations in Mexico, Panama and Colombia and has plans to expand in other regions around the world.

Raffaele Chiulli, who was elected President of the Global Association of International Sports Federations, during the 17^th edition of SportAccord in Gold Coast, Australia, was also elected President of the SportAccord Convention organisation.

In this exclusive interview with iSportconnect, he shares his vision for the expansion of SportAccord into regional events, starting with the first North American SportAccord in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from December 10-12, 2019.

Chiulli is President of the International Powerboating Union.

The 18th SportAccord takes place in Beijing from April 19-24, 2020.

Ferrari is considering engaging with Netflix on a second Formula One documentary as well as joining the rest of the 10 teams in the esports world championship, according to Mattia Binotto, the Team Principal.

Reuters reports:

Ferrari and champions Mercedes did not cooperate on the successful ‘Drive to Survive’ 10-part fly-on-the-wall series filmed by Netflix last season, arguing that they needed to focus on the title battle.

When their cars or drivers did feature, it was from the official world feed television footage.

“It’s certainly an interesting program. We were not participating last season as Ferrari,” Binotto, Ferrari’s  Managing Director Gestione Sportiva and told reporters at the Spanish Grand Prix, the fifth round of the 21-race championship.

“We are considering it at the moment. We have not taken our final decision, so it’s something we will do in the next few weeks.”

Formula One  Managing Director Sean Bratches said this month that he expected a second series to go ahead, with filming already underway.

Ferrari is also the only team without a presence in the official F1 esports championship, which is in its third season and involves the teams only later in the year. Mercedes won both titles last year, as in the real world.

Binotto said Ferrari’s stance on that could change as well.

“Esports is increasing in terms of interest and certainly as Ferrari we are looking seriously into it,” he said.

“We are not yet fully committed to the program but it’s something where the discussions are ongoing and we will very soon make our own decision.”

As an organisation that grew from 35 to 580 employees in just five years, LaLiga is an example of how investment in education can help sports businesses to expand globally.

To pass on its knowledge to others it has launched the LaLiga Business School project, now active in nine international markets, becoming the first major football league to provide uniquely designed professional sports courses to students around the world.

Working with universities, local federations and clubs, the project brings together expertise from across the business and sporting worlds to share best practices and create an appetite for learning. As well as classes within Spain, the programme has agreed new partnerships with educational and sporting institutions to bring courses to nine countries across the Americas and Africa.

For José Moya, Director of LaLiga Business School, these agreements are key to securing football’s long-term future. “We want to help professionalise the sports industry at all levels by capturing and developing the talent of today and tomorrow’s professionals,” he explained. “The more qualified people we have working in the industry, the better equipped football will be for growth.”

To learn more about this ground-breaking initiative, click here to read the story in Global Fútbol.

An NHL Playoff game drew the biggest audience in Saturday night primetime in the USA.

NBC’s broadcast of the St. Louis versus San Jose game from 8-11 p.m. was the night’s highest-rated programme with 2.28 million viewers, beating a repeat of American Idol on ABC in second place.

Winning the night is obviously a good thing but just think about the size of that audience number.

An audience of 2.28 million would not even have been number one in The Netherlands! It would have placed third in the Dutch ratings on Saturday (number one was the NPO1 evening news with 2.806 million)

And the USA (approx. 330 million population) has 19 times as many people (Netherlands 17.1 million).

Discovery, Inc. announced today it has acquired Golf Digest from Condé Nast. Golf Digest is the world’s leading golf media brand and will extend Discovery’s global golf media business to the U.S. market through Golf Digest’s multiplatform distribution and reach.

The acquisition creates a powerful programming engine by adding Golf Digest to GOLFTV’s offerings that already include exclusive carriage of the PGA TOUR, the European Tour, and the Ladies European Tour, as well as the Masters Tournament, in select territories outside the U.S. and Discovery’s exclusive global content partnerships with Tiger Woods and Francesco Molinari.

The addition of Golf Digest boosts Discovery’s global golf ecosystem with a leading platform in the U.S., which will allow the company to now reach golf fans with everything associated with the game, including instructional videos, equipment advice, course rankings, travel destinations, online bookings and more.

Additionally, Discovery and the PGA TOUR are expanding their 12-year strategic partnership with a new content and sales relationship in the U.S., among other initiatives. The organizations will deepen their partnership and join forces to create the largest digital network in golf with a one-stop activation platform, now including Golf Digest, for advertisers to engage with fans and players.

This includes a full suite of editorial coverage, live and on-demand video streaming, digital, social, print and branded content opportunities. The current Golf Digest sales teams will continue to be responsible for ad sales during a transition period until the Discovery / PGA TOUR sales integration is complete.

David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery, Inc. said: “Golf Digest is a world-class brand that has become the ‘go-to’ authority for millions of golf enthusiasts, professional players and global advertisers. It’s a natural strategic fit with Discovery’s goal to be the leading golf media platform in the world. Through our investments with the PGA TOUR, the European Tour and our partnership with Tiger Woods, we wanted to bolster GOLFTV’s international offerings with Golf Digest’s award-winning journalism, broad consumer reach and deep content library while also creating the largest U.S. digital golf business.

“Jay Monahan and the PGA TOUR have been great partners and we are excited to expand our mutual vision to bring these amazing players and all of their terrific play to more people on more devices in every market in the world.”

Rick Anderson, Chief Media Officer, PGA TOUR, said: “We’re thrilled to deepen our partnership with Discovery, as well as Golf Digest, which has been an official marketing partner of the PGA TOUR since 2006. By combining our assets in the U.S., we’re now able to offer the most robust digital content and product offering for fans, golfers and TOUR partners. The new PGA TOUR / Golf Digest digital network will be the single largest golf network offering unrivalled breadth and depth of content across platforms.”

The English Premier League has the most clubs in the latest list of teams with the most social media interactions from sports sponsorship analytics and evaluation platform Hookit.

But FC Barcelona of LaLiga remains far and away the most followed team in the world with way more interactions than Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea combined.

Those three English cubs along with Manchester United and Liverpool all make the top 10, which includes seven European football clubs.

Two Indian Premier League cricket teams are on the lost, including Mumbai Indians in second place.