Nearing the midpoint of its inaugural season, SailGP has rounded out its management team with the addition of three staff members. Tim Godfrey joins the organization as Chief Marketing Officer, while Harvey Schiller is serving as Strategic Advisor and Christy Cahill was promoted to Chief Communications Officer.

Founded in 2018 by Larry Ellison and Coutts, SailGP is redefining the sport of sailing. Athletes representing teams from the Australia, China, France, Great Britain, Japan and the United States compete in the fastest sail racing in the world.

The season debuted in Sydney in February, then traveled to San Francisco in May. Next up is the New York SailGP (June 21-22), followed by Cowes, England (August 10-11), and the Grand Final in Marseille, France (September 20-22), where the season champion will be determined in a winner-takes-all $1 million match race.

Having most recently served as sports partnerships director at ITN Productions, Godfrey will oversee broadcast, distribution, content, digital, branding and promotion.

Prior to ITN, Godfrey served as Global Head of Media for FIA Formula E, where he was responsible for media strategy across rights, content creation and digital, broadcast, and distribution.

“I am delighted to join the burgeoning SailGP team, and to develop a media and marketing strategy that reflects the innovation of the championship,” said Godfrey. “We are seeing unprecedented changes in the sports media market, which will enable SailGP to maximize its appeal to a broader, more dynamic audience. I look forward to shaping the way this new, exciting league is consumed internationally, and showcasing the extraordinary talents of the athletes and the pioneering technology.”

Schiller has held a wide range of top position in sports, including Chairman/CEO of YankeeNets, President of Turner Sports and the Atlanta Thrashers, Executive Director of the United States Olympic Committee, President of the International Baseball Federation, and Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.

A retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General, he was also the Commercial Commissioner for the 35th America’s Cup.

He currently serves as chairman of Schiller Management Group and Vice Chairman of Diversified Search.

“I’m honored to be part of SailGP as it grows to be shoulder to shoulder with the best in sport,” he said. “Though in its infancy, SailGP is soon to be a major player in the global sports landscape.”

Cahill joined SailGP last year as Communications Director, having served as Communications Director for the United States Olympic Committee.

“It’s remarkable to see the rapid growth and maturation of our global sports league during this inaugural season,” said SailGP CEO Sir Russell Coutts. “Outstanding professionals are required to create a world-class organization, and we’re fortunate to have such an accomplished team to form the building blocks of something that’s never been done in the sport of sailing.”

Birmingham City FC has named betting company BoyleSports as its principal partner in the club’s biggest sponsorship deal in more than a decade.

The BoyleSports logo will adorn the front of the men’s match kit and replica shirts of the team, which plays in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football.

Family-owned BoyleSports is Ireland’s largest independently owned bookmakers with more than 250 stores across the country.

Ian Dutton, Chief Commercial Officer for Birmingham City FC, said: “We are delighted and thrilled to be welcoming BoyleSports as the Club’s new Principal Shirt Partner.”

“Throughout our discussions with them it was clear that they identified the Club as the perfect avenue to support their ambition to conquer the UK market.

“We are also extremely impressed with the way they want to give back to the fans and the local community, so we can look forward to some unique activations that will benefit the Club, fans and our great city.”

Leon Blanche, Head of Communications for BoyleSports said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be on board and proud to be pledging ourselves as Birmingham City’s principal partner.

“It’s an honour to be joining forces with a club steeped in history and tradition and we believe it’s a perfect match between a club and company who are on the same page in terms of our huge ambitions.”

The Spanish league is creating a platform for the future stars of Indian football to be discovered through a new grassroots programme.

After opening permanent offices in the country in 2016, LaLiga has been an active part of the development journey in India and is now focused on developing the playing talent that will define future generations.

Football is now the second most popular sport in India behind cricket.

LaLiga launched its football schools project in 2018, providing over 12,000 students the opportunity to develop their skills in 40 centres across 14 different Indian cities. Now, the league is increasing its efforts with local coaches through a first-of-its-kind initiative.

A cohort of 48 local coaches are delivering training across India, overseen by three LaLiga coaches who travel from location to location.

In a country as vast as India it can be difficult to bring all parties together in a single place. To address this LaLiga arranged a ‘Train the Trainer’ workshop in New Delhi, held across three days to help all coaches to further absorb the LaLiga coaching methodology.

Learn more about this initiative in Global Fútbol.

The victorious English Premier League clubs in last week’s European football championship games have higher brand values and revenues – and also spend more on their first teams than the beaten finalists, also from the EPL, according to figures from CSM Sport & Entertainment.

Liverpool FC, which won the Champions League, has a higher brand value than tournament runner-up Tottenham, while Chelsea, winner of the Europa Cup, likewise outstrips Arsenal, defeated in Baku.

Take a look at how the four clubs compare.

Betting integrity body ESSA (originally the European Sports Security Association) has relaunched as the International Betting Integrity Association with immediate effect.

The move highlights the association’s desire to better reflect the global debate around betting and integrity issues and their leading role in that discussion. The association will continue to represent many of the largest regulated sports betting operators in the world with almost 50 brands feeding into its monitoring and alert platform.

Khalid Ali, Secretary General of the International Betting Integrity Association, said: “The new name communicates who we are, what we do and where we want to be. The association has been active across six continents in recent years, with almost half of our alerts coming from outside of Europe. This activity will only increase as gambling markets around the world continue to open up to regulation.”

He added: “The debate is global and our strategic focus must evolve in line with that.”

Established in 2005, the association has many of the world’s largest regulated betting operators as members. It has longstanding information-sharing partnerships with leading sports bodies including FIFA, UEFA, and the IOC and many gambling regulators.

Jon Russell, Non-Executive Chair of the association’s Board and Head of Global Trading at Betway, said: “Our members represent a sizeable part of the worldwide regulated betting market and their business strategies reflect global ambitions. Integrity has become a key regulatory issue in that market debate, with membership of a monitoring body a licensing requirement in some cases.”

Russell added: “Betting and integrity are now inseparable and I encourage all responsible operators to join us and take advantage of the multifaceted business benefits membership brings.”

Rocco B. Commisso, the owner of Mediacom, one of the biggest cable companies in the U.S., is close to agreeing the purchase of Italian Serie A soccer club ACF Fiorentina from the Della Valle family for around 160 million euros, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

Reuters reports:

The Della Valle family owns luxury goods group Tod’s and, since 2002, the Florence-based club who last season narrowly escaped relegation.

The source said ACF Fiorentina’s owner, Diego Della Valle, and Commisso met today at Tod’s offices in Milan and that a deal could be struck as soon as today or Wednesday.

Commisso, born in Calabria, is Chairman and CEO of Mediacom, the fifth largest U.S. cable company.

He owns the New York Cosmos.

Following the cancellation of the 2018 North American Soccer League season amid legal wrangling, a team branded as New York Cosmos B now plays in the National Premier Soccer League.

Commisso made a failed offer last year to buy a controlling stake in Serie A club AC Milan.

W Series has announced the appointment of Tracey Keenan to the new board director role of Chief Commercial Officer.

Tracey joins W Series with a wealth of commercial experience, most recently with WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), where she was Vice President and General Manager of WWE’s UK and Ireland business (its largest and most successful business outside the USA) and was responsible for the monetisation of broadcast, digital and OTT platforms, live events, sponsorship, licensing and marketing.

Prior to joining WWE, she also worked for BBC and News Corporation and led the commercial partnership programme at Tottenham Hotspur FC.

She said: “I’m thrilled to be joining W Series, which in its first season is already democratising motorsport and adding a compelling new competition to the rapidly growing roster of women’s sports globally.

“I’ve been impressed with what W Series has accomplished so far, and firmly believe that it can build on its early achievements and attract investment and sponsorship on an international scale. Women’s sport is undoubtedly a growth area for fans, investors and sponsors alike, and it’s already clear that W Series is about great racing as well as diversity.”

iSportconnect is collaborating with @SportsContentStrategy, a podcast by @MrRichardClarke exploring sports content, digital and social media by talking to players, executives, coaches, creators and specialists.

In the latest episode of the SportsContentStrategy podcast, Richard Clarke speaks to Simon Chadwick, Professor of Sports Enterprise & Director of Centre for Sports Business, University of Salford, about ‘soft power’ in sport. He argues this has led to disenchantment among sports fans and he is suggesting a solution.

“There is some disengagement when your club is owned by a foreigner but, equally, there’s a danger of disengagement from clubs owned by British investors, because in many cases, they simply cannot compete.

“I am a firm advocate of something like a climate change summit for football because I genuinely believe that we have fundamental issues that we need to address.”

“This should include fans, broadcasters, clubs, players, local communities and social media companies. We all need to reach a consensus about what we want football to be.”

“Right now I sense the game is still an incredibly powerful socio-cultural institution. It’s still compelling, dramatic, it still draws people in, there’s still a lot of excitement and emotion and love. But notwithstanding that, I think there’s an incredible sense of alienation across football from those whose clubs that are owned by people they’ve never even met who are not from the town and those people don’t really care right through to people like me, a local guy whose club is owned by another local guy. He loves the club, but they’re never going to win anything because they just he just simply doesn’t have the resources.

“As we’ve seen with climate change, everybody’s got vested interests. This is just part and parcel of being a human being and everyday life. So when it comes to football, it’s nothing different. But effectively the British government, certainly over the last 25 years since the inception of the Premier League, has done nothing. So effectively, a free market has ruled in football. We’ve done nothing either to stop or moderate or to control it in any meaningful way. But it’s not just us in the UK, it’s France, Spain, Germany and elsewhere. The European Union has done nothing because its sport policy has effectively been focused on participation. It’s not been focused on protecting its industrial assets.”

“I think certainly there’s an opportunity going forward for there to be some kind of ‘football parliament’ for want of a better term whereby the important stakeholders and I’m not just talking about people with money, I’m talking about fans, communities, supporters trusts, grassroots football projects, but equally Sky, Amazon and MasterCard plus and Manchester United and Real Madrid.”

“All of us to have a voice and all of us deserve to be heard. And we need to consensually negotiate a way forward and to establish a vision for OUR football and OUR heritage.”

To list to the complete interview, click here.