London Will Host First FIFA eNations Cup

FIFA has named London as the host city for the very first FIFA eNations Cup from April 13-14, 2019.

The federation also confirmed the 20 competing nations from around the globe taking part in the tournament, which will be streamed live across FIFA’s digital channels and broadcast by the event’s media licensees

Teams in competition, with a prize pool of $100,000, will be host nation England and Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China PR, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Russia and the USA

Christian Volk, Director of eFootball and & Gaming at FIFA, said: “With 20 of the world’s best eFootball nations going head-to-head, this year’s inaugural FIFAeNations Cup will provide another great example of the passion and excitement that eFootball has to offer, as well as providing the chance for players and member associations to compete for national pride and international glory.

“Following unprecedented interest received in the event, the decision to expand the FIFA eNations Cup from 16 to 20 teams will allow more member associations with a chance to compete at on an international stage in eFootball, as well as providing an important stepping stone for FIFA to continue growing and developing eFootball and the FIFA eNations Cup for member associations and the wider eFootball community in the future.”

Players will compete in individual (1v1) and team (2v2) matches on both Xbox and PlayStation during the group stage, with the top two nations in each of the four groups progressing through to the knockout stages.

Eurovision Services and “Sunderland ‘Til I Die” Producer Join Broadcast Masterclass Speakers

iSportconnect is pleased to announce that Michele Gosetti, Head of Global Sales at Eurovision, and Leo Pearlman, Managing Partner at Fulwell 73 Productions, will be speaking at our 2019 Broadcast Masterclass on Thursday 4th April. The event will be held at Fieldfisher in the City of London, and will bring together senior level executives in the industry to focus on new ways for media companies, rights owners and technology partners to prosper, thrive and grow as the digital revolution continues to disrupt the sports broadcasting market.

Michele assumed his current role with Eurovision Services in September 2017 where he oversees the global strategy for sales. Being in the media industry for more than a decade, Michele has a clear understanding of the market and a proven track record maximising revenues.

Michele spent 16 years in executive positions at Globecast where he successfully developed new revenue streams and put in place global sales strategies that helped grow the company’s core business. In 2013, he became Globecast America’s CEO where he raised the company’s profile in the US market and positioned Globecast in the digital arena. In 2015, he became Executive Vice President of the newly created Occasional Use and Media Services Division of Globecast before taking his current role with EMS. Michele’s international experience includes working in Europe, Asia and North America, including: Paris, Rome, Singapore, and New York.He completed his B.A. in Economics and Finance at Science Po in Strasbourg, France.

Following the creation of Fulwell 73 Productions in 2007, Leo has produced multiple hours of television and over 15 theatrically released scripted and documentary feature films. These titles have included the likes of “Hitsville: The Motown Story” (UMG), “Training Days” (Youtube), “I am Bolt” (Universal Pictures), “The Class of 92” (Universal Pictures), “Sunderland Till I Die” (Netflix), “One Direction: This is Us” (Sony/Columbia) and many more. A list of projects that have enjoyed commercial success across the board and critical acclaim that includes Emmys, National Film Awards, Brit Awards, International Film Festival appearances and nominations at a number of other prestigious events.

Alongside this Leo is the Managing Partner of the Fulwell 73 group, heading up and overseeing all commercial matters both in the UK and US. His role is one that encompasses business development and growth targeted strategy, as well as the day to day running of the ever expanding Fulwell team and production slates.​

With a maximum of 150 invite-only delegates, iSportconnect provides a media/agency free opportunity to network with influential senior-level sports business executives. We are famous for our intimate and relaxed environment, encouraging ideas exchange and helping to introduce you to the right new connections.

To register your interest in attending the 2019 Broadcast Masterclass, please contact Chloe McCombie at info@isportconnect.com

Invitation Policy: The Broadcast Masterclass is a complimentary event for iSportconnect members who are from governing bodies, sports teams, brands and broadcasters. There is no fee to become an iSportconnect member. No sports agencies, professional service providers & suppliers are allowed.

For limited partnership opportunities, please contact Hugo Millns at info@isportconnect.com

 

Motorsport UK Adopts Major Changes

In one of the most significant changes to the administration of motorsport in the UK, the governing body has adopted new articles of association, which bring it in line with Sport England’s Code of Governance and best practice.

Motorsport Council Members voted unanimously to approve the new articles during an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) at the Royal Automobile Club in London (12 March).

The new articles see the Motorsport UK Board become the ultimate decision-making body in the governance of UK motorsport. This has historically been the role of the Motorsport Council, who will now become the body that informs and advises the Board on key issues affecting motorsport, helping to shape strategy and promoting the sport in the UK. The Board will be made up of a greater proportion of independent non-executive directors, in addition to the members representing the sport’s direct interests.

The Council will expand significantly to include representatives of a wider range of stakeholders, including motorsport venues, broader motorsport activities such as commercial karting and the motorsport industry in general. This will allow a greater range of views to be considered and ensure the governing body better reflects the whole sport.

A new Rules Committee, drawn from across the disciplines, will be established to review regulation changes proposed by the various specialist committees. Meeting bi-annually, the Rules Committee will review proposed regulation changes and ensure that full consideration is given prior to submission to the Motorsport UK Board.

David Richards CBE, Chairman of Motorsport UK, said: “This is a very significant moment in the history of Motorsport in the UK, as we commit to becoming a modern governing body that is truly representative of our members and motorsport in general. The changes approved this week have come about after lengthy debate and meet the objective of ensuring that we will now provide the highest standards of sports governance.

“This is a journey of modernisation that over 50 sports governing bodies in this country have already taken. As sport has developed from its amateur roots it has become highly complex, commercial and multidisciplinary. Motorsport is no exception and these changes now provide the foundation for the future development and promotion of motorsport in the UK.”

Another important decision taken by the Board was the appointment of Tom Purves as the new Chairman of the reformed Motorsport Council, taking over from Tony Scott Andrews at the end of his nine-year tenure. Purves has previously served as a Director of Motorsport UK and is also a former Chairman of the Royal Automobile Club.

Purves said: “As a stalwart supporter of motorsport for decades, it is an honour to be appointed as the next Chairman of the Motorsport Council, especially at this pivotal moment when its role is being redefined. By including a much wider range of stakeholders and views, the Council will become the ultimate conscience of motorsport governance, advising the Board of the key issues affecting our community’s ability to enjoy fun on four wheels.”

Motorsport UK extends its sincere thanks to Scott Andrews for his many years’ excellent service as Chairman of the Council and as a valued member of the Board.

Join This AFEX Webinar For Valuable Brexit Insights

iSportconnect would like to make members aware of an upcoming webinar featuring economist Trevor Charsley of global risk management and payment solutions company AFEX, whose presentation on decision-making at last week’s Leadership Masterclass was a big hit by delegates.

The event is going to be on March 20 at 10:00 GMT.

Manvir Basi of Russell Group and Trevor will present The Road to Brexit: A Horizon-Scanning Webinar on the possible roads to Brexit, and their implications for the global economy, the geopolitical landscape, and the global currency markets.

The AFEX view is that there are four roads to Brexit. Their probabilities are:

  1. No deal Brexit and the UK leaves the EU on March 29th to trade on WTO rules – 20%
  2. Deal agreed with additional codicil and the UK leaves the EU on March 29th into a transition phase – 35%
  3. Extension to article 50 agreed and the UK leaves the EU later in 2019 into a transition phase – 35%
  4. Referendum #2 and UK stays in the EU – 10%

Whatever the outcome, the geopolitical stakes have rarely been so high, or the implications so broad.

To register for the webinar click here.

Champions League Sets Audience Record For Sky In Germany

The UEFA Champions League match between Bayern Munich and Liverpool yesterday evening gave Sky Deutschland its biggest ever audience.

The pay-tv provider pulled an average audience for Liverpool’s 3-1 away win was 1.41 million viewers.

The game attracted 810,000 viewers in the 18-49 demographic for an audience share of 9.3%.

There were also 370,000 viewers for FC Barcelona and Olympique Lyon on a record evening for Germany’s Sky.

In Italy, where Sky Italia pulled its biggest-ever audience for a club match with the Champions League on Tuesday, public broadcaster RAI 1 topped the ratings with Wednesday’s action as the number one show.

The Bayern-Liverpool match averaged 3.593 million viewers and a share of 14.5%.

In The Netherlands, the same match on Veronica was number three of the day with 1.32 million viewers and a share of 22.8%.

Adidas: “A Sports Company, Not A Fashion Company”

“We want to be the best sports company in the world, not the best fashion company,” Adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted as the German manufacturer announced 2018  results.

Adidas expects supply chain issues to curb sales growth in the first half of the current year, particularly in North America, where it has doubled its business in the last three years to take market share from bigger rival Nike.

Adidas has put a big focus on the U.S. market in recent years, notably teaming up with music celebrities such as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams rather than sports stars, poaching designers from Nike and pushing retro styles that have proved more popular than Nike’s basketball shoes.

Rorsted said its suppliers, mostly in Asia, have not been able to keep up with North American demand, especially as the company has expanded from high-end products into more mid-priced clothing ranges in the U.S. market.

Adidas produces 457 million pieces of apparel a year, sourcing most of them from Cambodia, China and Vietnam.

Rorsted said that Adidas had relied too much in Europe on a short-term trend for fashion shoes, like its retro Stan Smith and Superstar, with global sales of those models down half a billion euros in 2018 from the previous year.

To recover in Europe, he said Adidas is investing heavily in marketing, including with sponsorship deals like the one it struck with Premier League club Arsenal.

Reebok returned to profitability in 2018. “We originally targeted the profitability of Reebok in 2020, so we’re very happy” about that turnaround, Rorsted said.

Vincent Lecrosnier, Adidas Director of Trends and Cultural Insights, will be a featured speaker at THE SPOT sports and innovation conference in Lausanne May-26-27

(Based on reporting by Reuters and CNBC)

Santander Extends LaLiga Partnership

LaLiga and Santander Bank have extended their existing partnership to include the 2020-21 season as the fifth season of the strategic agreement between the two brands.

The project incorporates LaLiga Santander, LaLiga 1I2I3, LaLiga Genuine Santander, LaLiga Promises Santander and LaLiga ProPlayer, an initiative recently unveiled alongside Santander Bank that that sees young Spanish footballers receive scholarships to study and play football at U.S. universities.

Santander has sponsored LaLiga since the 2016-17 season and has now confirmed that it will exercise its option for the 2019-20.

Welcoming the new agreement, Santander Spain CEO Rami Aboukhair said, “We’re proud to give our name to the best league in the world and, through sport, to contribute to the progress of society and promote the brand of Spain.

“We continue to support sport in general – and football in particular – because sport represents values such as the search for success through teamwork, constant innovation and commitment. These are values that we share, and which are the DNA of our organisation.”

LaLiga President Javier Tebas said, “When we joined forces with the world’s best and most innovative bank, we knew that it would really help us with our internationalisation efforts.

“During these first three seasons, we’ve seen how the link-up between LaLiga and Santander has been such a natural fit that we’ve been able to share our experiences, both sporting and in terms of sponsorship, to create two of the greatest brands in the world.”

Santander has been sponsoring football competitions in South America for 12 years, including the 2019 CONMEBOL Libertadores. It has also been a sponsor of the UEFA Champions League since 2018.

ESPN Launching Its Own College Esports Championships

ESPN is launching, and will own, the first U.S. collegiate championship for esports.

The ESPN Collegiate Esports Championship (CEC) has already lined up hundreds of universities from across North America for the qualifiers, shooting for a chance to compete in the live LAN (local area network) semi-final and championship in Houston in May.

Overwatch, Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, Hearthstone, StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm are among the first games to be announced as a part of the LAN Championship event.

Finalists will compete for rewards in the form of scholarships.

Tespa and Collegiate Star League will hold qualifying rounds for Blizzard’s games and Street Fighter V, respectively. The CEC will become Overwatch’s only collegiate championship, previously held at the Fiesta Bowl.

Tespa is the premier college gaming network in North America and has had more than 42,000 students from 1,300 universities compete in its college tournaments.

Collegiate Star League, a division of WorldGaming, has over 52,000 registered players across 1,600 registered schools. Since 2009, it has awarded over $650,000 in scholarship money to student gamers from around the world.

“As universities continue to grow their esports programs at the varsity, non-varsity and club levels, we’re proud to be providing a platform for national exposure and recognition of some of the most talented players in the collegiate space,” said John Lasker, Vice President of Digital Media Programming for ESPN. “Through our collaboration with top publishers in the industry, players will be able to showcase their talent in high-level competition on some of the most prominent esports titles.”

The championship in Houston will take place May 10 -12 at the George R Brown Convention Center during the Comicpalooza Weekend and will be produced and staged by ESPN Events. Individual day tickets and three-day passes start at just $15 and can be purchased online from ESPN.

Portions of the qualifying rounds, as well as the championship, will be streamed globally, with ESPN to announce later which platforms it will use.

The Overwatch matches in particular will also shown on the livestreaming video platform Twitch, owned by Amazon.com Inc

Clint Overby, Vice President of ESPN Events, said, “We are excited to launch this event with an outstanding lineup of games in a world-class city like Houston. The esports landscape is a growing and dynamic space, and will fit nicely into our lineup of ESPN-owned events.”

“ESPN has been a terrific collaborator with Blizzard Esports over the years, having created monumental esports moments together, and we couldn’t be more excited to team up again to provide our collegiate players the opportunity to finish out the spring Tespa season on the big stage,” said Todd Pawlowski, senior vice president, live experiences, Blizzard Entertainment. “It’ll be a first for Blizzard to have four collegiate championship events under one roof, which should make for an awesome show for the fans.”

Wim Stocks, General Manager and CEO of WorldGaming and CSL, said, “We are thrilled to have the elite collegiate teams from our very first Collegiate StarLeague’s Street Fighter League: US-College 2019 series included in the inaugural ESPN CEC event in Houston. We are looking forward to being part of the great spotlight ESPN will shine on the burgeoning collegiate esports scene as a result of their CEC event.”

Newspaper Websites Will Live Stream PGA Tour Event

Digital sports video distribution platform SendtoNews (STN) will distribute PGA TOUR LIVE coverage of this week’s THE PLAYERS Championship across websites of major newspapers in the Tribune Publishing group.

Golf fans can visit the sites of the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Baltimore Sun and others to watch live golf from the 12th and 17th holes on the event at TPC Sawgrass in Florida.

“One of our priorities is finding innovative ways to connect with golf fans across the country at their convenience,” said Chris Wandell VP, Media Business Development for the PGA TOUR.  “SendtoNews distributing PGA TOUR LIVE Featured Holes coverage from our flagship event across Tribune Publishing sites is an amazing initiative that makes sure more golf fans have convenient access to this content.”

“Our goal is to give our readers the best possible journalism and user experience we can,” said Colin McMahon, SVP/Chief Content Officer at Tribune Publishing. “Distributing live sports news through SendtoNews is a natural for us. In this case, we’re providing golf fans a first-rate viewing experience while exposing them to a broad array of our own sports journalism

“We are thrilled to use our video distribution platform to live stream this iconic event to PGA TOUR fans on Tribune Publishing sites,” said SendtoNews CEO Matthew Watson. “Tribune is home to some of the leading properties in digital news and when combined with this amazing content from the PGA TOUR we know this will be a one-of-a-kind experience for golf fans across the country.”

SendtoNews owns and operates North America’s largest sports video distribution platform, supplying more than 1600 digital sports news properties with content from rights owners including the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and NASCAR.

Fox Sports Channels In Mexico Are Up For Sale

Mexico’s antitrust regulator has given a green light to Walt Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of large parts of 21st Century Fox, subject to the sale of the Fox Sports channels in the country.

The asset sale must be concluded within six months, Mexico’s Federal Telecommunications Institute ruled.

In a concession to regulators, Disney has agreed to sell Fox Sports and the broadcast rights owned by the network, in an agreement similar to one recently made with regulators in Brazil.

Together, Disney’s ESPN and Fox Sports would have controlled 80% of Mexico’s pay TV sports market, according to the FTI.

Disney won a bidding war last year against cable company Comcast Corp to acquire Fox’s assets.

The U.S. Justice Department has said Disney, which owns ESPN, must divest Fox’s 22 networks that provide sports programming for regional and local markets.