The official closing date for entries into the Sports Business Awards has just passed but submissions are still being accepted in some categories so if you wish to enter then please contact jonathan@r3events.co.uk to discuss an extension.

iSportconnect are pleased to be supporting this event. These awards celebrate, recognise and reward the achievements of all the businesses dedicated to delivering great sport. The 2019 Sports Business Awards judging panel is made up of CEOs across all sports alongside individuals whose knowledge, expertise and experience gives them special insight into the challenges and demands of sports business success. The ceremony will be at the Brewery at lunchtime on Friday 31st May 2019.

For more information on the awards click here

(In photo above from left to right: former Manchester United players Mark James, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville with Winston Zahra of GG Hospitality)

The former Manchester United stars behind Hotel Football near Old Trafford stadium have announced a partnership with international hotel chain Marriott. The 133-room hotel will remain majority owned by Singaporean business man Peter Lim and former players Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and Philip Neville. GG Hospitality, the management company owned by the same group, will continue to manage and operate the property. Winston Zahra, CEO of GG Hospitality said: “This new association with Marriott International helps us reach new travellers looking for remarkable accommodation, characterful design and vibrant social spaces.”

The International Esports Federation (IESF) announced that its 11th Esports World Championships will be held in Seoul, South Korea in the fourth quarter of this year.

The Rolex Grand Slam released a 60-second-long commercial designed to promote the dedication and passion required to win the show jumping’s pinnacle event. A 30-second version racked up most impressive numbers on social media, including a reach of 12 million on Facebook and over 3.6 million views on YouTube. It also featured on international lifestyle online publications, including GQ, The New York Times, and Bloomberg. The first big show jumping event of the year takes place at the Dutch Masters in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, where the world’s best riders will compete for victory in the prestigious Rolex Grand Prix on March 17.

SPORTELAsia in Macau next week will be hosting a panel discussion on the football business in China on March 5. Participants will include Benjamin WAHL, Head of China for Borussia Dortmund; Robbie Yang, Marketing Director of AC Milan China, and David Belenguer, CEO of Hope Football Group, with Oceans Sports & Entertainment CEO Shoto Zhu moderating.

(In photo above from left to right: former Manchester United players Mark James, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville with Winston Zahra of GG Hospitality)

The former Manchester United stars behind Hotel Football near Old Trafford stadium have announced a partnership with international hotel chain Marriott. The 133-room hotel will remain majority owned by Singaporean business man Peter Lim and former players Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and Philip Neville. GG Hospitality, the management company owned by the same group, will continue to manage and operate the property. Winston Zahra, CEO of GG Hospitality said: “This new association with Marriott International helps us reach new travellers looking for remarkable accommodation, characterful design and vibrant social spaces.”

The International Esports Federation (IESF) announced that its 11th Esports World Championships will be held in Seoul, South Korea in the fourth quarter of this year.

The Rolex Grand Slam released a 60-second-long commercial designed to promote the dedication and passion required to win the show jumping’s pinnacle event. A 30-second version racked up most impressive numbers on social media, including a reach of 12 million on Facebook and over 3.6 million views on YouTube. It also featured on international lifestyle online publications, including GQ, The New York Times, and Bloomberg. The first big show jumping event of the year takes place at the Dutch Masters in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, where the world’s best riders will compete for victory in the prestigious Rolex Grand Prix on March 17.

SPORTELAsia in Macau next week will be hosting a panel discussion on the football business in China on March 5. Participants will include Benjamin WAHL, Head of China for Borussia Dortmund; Robbie Yang, Marketing Director of AC Milan China, and David Belenguer, CEO of Hope Football Group, with Oceans Sports & Entertainment CEO Shoto Zhu moderating.

SportAccord has announced the first confirmed speakers for its Summit conference on The Future of Big Data and Analytics, taking place from May 8-9, 2019, at the Gold Coast Conference & Exhibition Centre, Queensland, Australia.

“We have a strong line-up of speakers for this year’s SportAccord Summit sharing their views and expertise on why big data and analytics matter to sport, with sessions covering key touchpoints such as teams, athletes, brands, manufacturers and of course – fans,” said Nis Hatt, Managing Director of SportAccord.

“This year’s Summit places fan engagement and experiences at the heart of the matter and looks at the ways technology, content, media and entertainment interconnect. As technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, blockchain and others start to go mainstream, fans will be able to take a much more active role and feel richer for the experience.”

Global leaders from across the sporting industry are among the first speakers (in session order) confirmed for this year’s SportAccord Summit, including:

• Deon Newman (Keynote), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Vice President of Strategy, IBM Asia Pacific
• Darren Birch, General Manager – Growth, Digital and Audiences, Australian Football League (AFL)
• Nick Hockley, Chief Executive Officer, ICC T20 World Cup Australia 2020
• Chris Nunn, Managing Director APAC, Futures Sport & Entertainment
• Luke Bould, CCO & CMO, Football Federation Australia
• Sally Hancock, Managing Partner, Y Sport
• Matt Kamienski, Vice President and Executive Director – Presidents Cup, PGA TOUR
• Andrew Reid, General Manager, TEG Analytics and TEG Insights
• Barbara Kendall, Vice President, International Surfing Association (ISA), Non-Executive Director of ARRIA
• Heinrich Zetlmayer, General Partner, Blockchain Valley Ventures (BVV)
• Stephen Smith, CEO & Founder, Kitman Labs
• Ian K. Partilla, Vice President – Head of Global Revenue, GumGum Sports
• Natalie Cook, 5 x Olympian and Gold Medallist – Australia, Beach Volleyball

Delegates will also have the opportunity to discuss the Summit topics further with speakers and panellists on Day 2 during the five Summit Hub Breakout track sessions:

• Big Data and Fan Engagement
• Marketing and Customer Behaviour
• Athlete/Player Performance via Wearable Technology, Big Data
• Application of AI for International Federation (IF), Event, & Sponsor Performance
• Blockchain Technology in Sport

In addition to the SportAccord Summit, the full conference programme includes 4 other conference streams taking place across the week: LawAccord, CityAccord, MediaAccord and HealthAccord.

Delegates can register for SportAccord and attend conference sessions and the many networking opportunities offered within the Official Schedule.

To become an Exhibitor or Partner contact the sales team: sales@sportaccord.com or phone +41 21 612 3070.

To register as a delegate and watch past SportAccord footage visit www.sportaccord.sport.

Baseball Australia has pledged to ban alcohol advertising from its competitions, including national team games. becoming the first national sports body in Australia to outlaw alcohol ads.

Baseball Australia CEO Cam Vale saying alcohol branding “just doesn’t make sense for us as a position moving forward,” reported ABC.

He added, “It’s a big issue I think for all sports to be considering. We’re all promoting to families, and particularly to junior participants, and we all largely live in a very high-performance environment. Alcohol branding, for our industry, doesn’t make sense and isn’t a natural fit.”

However, while the new ruling applies to the national governing body, which oversees grassroots competition and the national team, it doesn’t apply to the eight clubs that make up the domestic professional league.

Six of these eight teams have alcohol sponsors, and alcohol is sold at domestic games.

ABC reported that Melbourne Aces CEO Justin Huber said he was supportive of the move at the national level but noted that alcohol accounted for a significant portion of income.

“You only have four revenue streams available to clubs: sponsorship, tickets, merchandise and concessions,” he said. “If the decision was made to eliminate alcohol, you would have to address that.”

Baseball Australia is the first sports body to partner with the End Alcohol Advertising in Sport campaign launched in October 2018 to get the government to ban alcohol ads during Australian sport.

LaLiga has made new agreements with the Chinese Super League (CSL) and PT Liga Indonesia Baru, furthering its commitment to developing the sport of football in Asia and across the world and sharing knowledge that will help all leagues grow.

The agreements were finalised in the past month and will see the leagues collaborate on a range of projects from youth development to financial management and technology. This extends the many years of partnership that LaLiga has held in the Asian countries where the popularity of football continues to explode.

LaLiga President Javier Tebas met with Dang Zheng, General Manager of CSL (see photo above), in Madrid to finalise the agreement with the Chinese competition. As part of the project, LaLiga will implement training programmes in China for both academy players and coaches, along with organising and promoting youth tournaments and friendly fixtures between top flight teams in both nations.

Commenting on the agreement, Zheng said: “We are convinced that the close relationship with LaLiga will benefit Chinese football from youth level right up to the professional game. It will help to create a stable framework for collaborations between the two organisations which will allow us to successfully carry out projects together.”

The agreement with PT Liga Indonesia Baru was signed in Jakarta in mid-January 2019 by Ivan Codina, LaLiga’s Managing Director for South East Asia, Japan, Korea and Australasia, and Risha Adi Widjaya, CEO PT Liga Indonesia Baru (see photo below). Financial management is one of the biggest aspects of this deal, with both sides sharing their best practices for ensuring economic transparency in the Indonesian game.

The leagues will also work together to promote both Spanish and Indonesian football in new markets. Experts from both countries will speak at conferences in which they share their knowledge on various aspects of the game from marketing, administration, stadium security, fighting match-fixing and brand internationalisation.

In both agreements, the use of technology has been cited as an important development point. In China, there is an agreement to share guides for implementing new technology across all aspects of the game while in Indonesia, LaLiga will advise on how technology can be used to help referees to make the best possible decisions.

Off the pitch, LaLiga will also be sharing best practice from its Foundation. It will advise PT Liga Indonesia Baru on the best way to create their own and develop various social outreach projects. The agreement with CSL also covers social responsibility of clubs in their community, the women’s game and marketing of these efforts.

Maintaining strong communications and relations with global leagues is central to LaLiga’s strategy for growing football around the world. Its relationship with PT Liga Indonesia Baru dates back to 2013, while representatives from CSL recently visited Madrid to take part in different workshops with a variety of LaLiga departments, giving them a stronger understanding of how Spanish football is run behind the scenes.

LaLiga’s opportunities for further growth in China were recently boosted by the arrival of Wu Lei to RCD Espanyol de Barcelona, which has given Chinese fans a powerful new reason to discover Spanish football.

Having a club (or two) finishing in the top three of the English Premier League championship race can have a significant economic impact on the home city, with the success of a team linked to an increase in general consumer spending in the communities, according to a new report.

While fans all over the world support the leading Premiership teams, many are clustered within or near the home city, and success leads to a concentration of celebratory consumer behaviour, and increased spending, said the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).

With Liverpool and Manchester City at the top of the table, these cities could enjoy the economic boost which comes from performing well in the Premier League in 2019.

CEBR estimates that the added 1.1 percentage points to growth would be worth £220 million for the Manchester economy or £133 million for the Liverpool economy.

Manchester City has a bigger impact given that there are more fans than for Liverpool measured by match attendance

There are different ways that a strong performance in the Premier League promotes local expenditure:

• If more people want to watch a team because it is performing well, then there is an increase in direct spending on ticket sales, merchandise and the hospitality sector in the city due to people visiting to attend games.
• Even if not watching in the stadium, when teams are playing people often spend money locally while watching, for example by viewing in pubs and bars.
• Sporting success is linked to an increase in general consumer spending by those who support the team.

In order to capture these spending effects, London-based CEBR used regression analysis to study the local economies of the teams ranked in the top three positions of the Premier League since 1999 to see if they experience higher economic growth in the years they perform well.

Overall, the analysis showed that in the year that they come within the top three positions in the Premier League, a city experiences GVA growth 1.1 percentage points higher than if they finish outside the top three positions.

Other studies support the findings. Following Leicester City’s Premier League win in 2016, analysis found that direct impacts on expenditure in the city included an additional £224,000 as a result of attendance at football fixtures increasing to full capacity in the second half of the 2015-16 football season.

Also, there was a further £22.6 million added spending in the hospitality sector, with sales increasing by as much as 300 per cent in some parts of the city centre over 5 key matches, according to Leicester Castle Business School.

There is strong evidence linking sporting success to increased consumer spending. Research by Lloyds Bank suggests that between 1990 and 2014, the four countries which managed to reach the semi-finals in the Football World Cup on average saw growth in consumer spending of 4.5% in the year following the World Cup, compared to an average of 3.3% before the tournament.

Furthermore, psychological research suggests that sporting fans associate the successes and failures of their team with their own successes and failures, which can have strong behavioural effects on people’s confidence and even their dopamine levels.

The increased confidence from the team you support winning frequently manifests itself in the form of higher spending on social outings and retail goods.