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.

Premiership Rugby: “Listen To The Players And The Clubs”

The stakeholders of professional rugby union in England have worked hard to develop a calendar and structure for competition that taking into account the physical demands of the sport on its players.

Phil Winstanley, Rugby Director of Premiership Rugby and a former pro player himself (Sale Sharks), is in the middle of the continuing debates on balancing the interests of players and commercial interests as the money coming into rugby grows.

With the Rugby Football Union and the Rugby Union Players Association, the Premiership has worked out a structure that guarantees rest weeks and minimum off-seasons for the players as well as limiting the number of games.

Looking at the idea of a World League in rugby, he said that world rugby “can’t be fixed” by the international governing body and the national unions alone. The players and the clubs need to be engaged too.

The new investment by private equity firm CVC in the Premiership opens up great opportunities, he said. Rugby union is only 20 years old as a professional sport. Over that time there has been significant private investment. The investment by CVC will make it possible to take the sport to the next level.

Juventus Win Sets Sky Italia Viewing Record

The UEFA Champions League match between Juventus and Atlético Madrid on Tuesday evening set an all-time viewing record for a club football match for Sky Italia.

The Italian team’s 3-0 win pulled 1.872 million viewers on Sky Sports 1 with a 7.1% viewing share. The match was also simulcast on other Sky channels and overall had 2.938 million viewers with an 11.1% share.

The total viewers for the match on Sky actually made it the second most watched programme on Italian TV on Tuesday, terrestrial free-to-air channels included. It was the third biggest audience ever for Sky, behind two Italian national team matches.

In The Netherlands, the same match on Veronica was number six of the day, with 1.150 million viewers and a 21.4 % share.

WWE Tops One Billion (!) Fans On Social Media

WWE today announced it has surpassed one billion fans through its global social media platforms, further confirming its position as one of the most-followed brands in the world.

Check out the video below for more details on that amazing number.

The wrestling brand’s flagship Facebook page has more fans than the NFL, NBA, Marvel, Nike and UFC, and WWE Superstar John Cena is the most followed active American athlete on Facebook with more than 44 million likes.

On Instagram, WWE’s fastest-growing platform, @WWE has more followers than FIFA World Cup, ESPN, HBO and NHL.

On Twitter, @WWE has more followers than MLB, Disney, Amazon and Pepsi.

WWE is the top sports channel on YouTube, ahead of the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, ESPN and NASCAR with more than 40 million subscribers and 30 billion views.

WWE’s YouTube channel is also the second most-viewed channel in the world behind only T-Series, India’s largest music label and movie studio.

WWE’s 15 social media platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Qzone, Toutiao, WeChat, V+, Weibo, YouKu, Periscope, Pinterest, Foursquare and Tumblr.

Nike Showcases Women’s Football Push

Nike has launched the team uniforms for 14 national squads ahead of this year’s Women’s World Cup in France and signed a three-year promotion deal with UEFA Women’s Football, part of its growing focus on women’s sport.

The United States, Canada, France, England and Australia were among the teams whose kits were released at an event in Paris, attended by 28 of the world’s top female footballers.

The Women’s World Cup will be held from June 7 to July 7.

Reuters reported:

In the second quarter of the 2019 financial year, women’s footwear and apparel alone counted for nearly a quarter of Nike’s total revenue and it has said the women’s footwear and apparel market is now 1.5 times bigger than that for men.

Wall Street brokerage Bernstein calculates women’s sporting gear pulled in $7 billion for Nike last year.

Nike’s announcement of a partnership with UEFA comes three months after Visa signed a seven-year deal with European soccer’s governing body to sponsor the women’s game at all levels.

In a related development, Adidas announced that the players it sponsors on the team that wins the Women’s World Cup this year will receive the same performance bonus payments as their male counterparts.

The announcement followed news that the U.S. women’s national soccer team is suing their federation with allegations of gender discrimination, where all 28 members of the squad were named as plaintiffs in federal court.

Eric Liedtke, Head of Global Brands at Adidas, said in statement:  “Today we are announcing that all Adidas athletes on the winning 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup team will receive the same performance bonus payout as their male peers.”

“We believe in inspiring and enabling the next generation of female athletes, creators and leaders through breaking barriers.”

 

IAAF Will Trim Diamond League Format

The IAAF will cut back the Diamond League circuit in 2020 as the one-day competitions aim for a more consistent, fast moving format.

Meetings in the Diamond League, which begins its 10th season in May, will be reduced from 14 to 12 competitions, plus a final under concepts approved by the IAAF Council in Doha yesterday.

The number of disciplines will also be cut from 32 to 24 with 12 each for men and women and the longest event will be 3,000 meters.

There will also be a new focus on events held outside stadiums, where fans can be closer to the action.

Reuters reported that there was no indication which meeting would be dropped or what disciplines would be eliminated.

An examination at the end of this season will assess the quality of each meeting with the aim of focusing on the best 12 meetings plus a final with all 24 disciplines, the IAAF said.

The Diamond League currently features nine races for men and women and seven field events: high jump, pole vault, long jump, triple jump, shot put, discus throw and javelin throw.

Not all events are held at each meeting.

The circuit, the IAAF’s top competition outside the Olympics and World Championships, currently has two end-of-season finals, with Zurich hosting one-half of the disciplines and Brussels the other.

“The market very much told us at the moment the current two finals should be replaced by one thrilling night of athletics,” said IAAF CEO Jon Ridgeon, who co-chaired a year-long review of the circuit.