Santander have been announced as the new title sponsor of LaLiga, forming a long-term strategic partnership between two Spanish organisations.

The partnership, which runs until at least 2019 – with the option of an additional season, will see the league branded LaLiga Santander,while the Segunda Division will be now known as LaLiga 1l2l3, in a reference to Santander’s current account of the same name.

LaLiga and Santander will work together to focus in strategic markets on brand creation, digital development and innovation.

The deal has been reported at €20 million a season. (US$22.02 million).

The contract gives advertising presence for Santander in televised matches from LaLiga Santander and LaLiga 1l2l3, as well as field of play branding, joint digital development, ticketing and experiences. Santander will also benefit from image and partnership rights to LaLiga.

Javier Tebas, President of LaLiga said: “Santander is the perfect partner to help us grow LaLiga internationally. Whilst Santander’s financial investment is significant, this deal is about more than money. Banco Santander can help us grow and keep being the best league in the world.”

Rami Aboukhair, General Manager, Banco Santander Spain, highlighted in the presentation the importance of joining “the best football league in the world: the league of our country”, and spoke of the momentum it will bring the bank’s commercial network in Spain. He highlighted the permanent support of Banco Santander to the sport, with which it shares values such as “passion, closeness, effort, talent and teamwork.”

ESPN has agreed a five-year extension of its rights deal with ATP Media to events in Spanish-speaking Latin America and the Caribbean.

By Christian Radnedge

Interpol has suspended its partnership with FIFA because of the ongoing US and Swiss Justice investigations into corruption in world football.

The agreement was launched in 2011 with FIFA paying Interpol €20m to finance an ‘integrity in sport’ programme focusing on matchfixing, which was meant to last ten years.

But following the recent arrests and scandal in world football’s governing body, Interpol general secretary Jurgen Stock took the decision this week at an executive committee meeting to suspend the deal.

Stock said in Lyon: “In the light of the current context surrounding FIFA, while Interpol is still committed to developing our integrity in sport programme, I have decided to suspend the agreement.

“All external partners, whether public or private, must share the fundamental values and principles of the organisation, as well as those of the wider law enforcement community.”

Interpol, who had last week released their most wanted list which included former FIFA officials Jack Warner and Nicolas Leoz, added in a statement: “The integrity in sport programme has helped international efforts across its 190 member countries to prevent the manipulation of sporting events and illegal gambling by criminal groups. Their ongoing criminal activities require a global response.

“Interpol continues to closely monitor developments involving FIFA.”

The decision came as a shock to FIFA as it expressed its disappointment in a statement of its own.

FIFA said: “We are disappointed to learn of the decision… The success and importance of this programme cannot be understated. Our cooperation over the past four years has been a key part of addressing the transnational problem of match fixing.

“This successful programme is unrelated to the current issues surrounding FIFA and we believe that this unilateral decision will negatively impact the fight against criminal activity, a goal of which no supporter of the sport can be in favour.

“FIFA remains committed to this important and successful collaboration and will work for its resumption at the earliest opportunity. We are currently reaching out to INTERPOL to further discuss this matter.”

The news pours further scrutiny on the future of FIFA in its current form, with president Sepp Blatter standing down and documents in its Zurich headquarters being seized for the investigation.

This week it was announced that FIFA Director of Communications Walter De Gregorio is to leave his post with immediate effect. It’s unclear the reasoning behind his departure, though reports suggest it was due to a joke made about the crisis on Swiss TV.

WATCH: Steve Parish’s views on the FIFA issue on iSportconnect TV now.

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iSportconnect, the world’s largest global private network of sports business executives, has announced today an exclusive partnership with Fluendo to exclusively promote its video analysis software product, LongoMatch.

Under the terms of the new agreement, LongoMatch is the official Sports Video Analysis Partner of iSportconnect.

LongoMatch will be an exclusive partner at a wide range of iSportconnect events throughout the year, including invitation only Directors’ Club events in cities such as London, Paris, Moscow, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

LongoMatch will also present a number of Digital Media and Technology Masterclass events in London, Lausanne and New York and will create a bespoke Sports Performance Masterclass event with iSportconnect, bringing together many of the top sports performance directors and coaches.

The partnership also provides LongoMatch extensive coverage across iSportconnect’s multichannel platforms, including custom content on iSportconnect TV.

The partnership will launch at iSportconnect’s Directors Club event in London on March 17, which includes an exclusive line up of panelists from the sports world including Brett Gosper (Chief Executive of World Rugby) Steve Parish (Chairman of Crystal Palace FC) and Alistair Kirkwood (Managing Director of NFL in the UK)

Sree Varma, Founder and CEO of iSportconnect expressed his delight at the partnership and said: “LongoMatch is a highly innovative product and a leader in its field. We are thrilled to have entered into an exclusive partnership with LongoMatch and to promote it via our multiple channels to the global sports business.”

Muriel Moscardini, CEO of Fluendo echoed the positive sentiments. “Our new partnership with iSportconnect gives us ’one stop’ access to key decision makers across the global sports industry. We are excited about this new relationship and look forward to working together with the iSportconnect team.”

About Fluendo / LongoMatch

Founded in 2004 in Barcelona, Fluendo (www.fluendo.com) is an international company that enables multimedia and video on a wide variety of devices and operating systems. The company recently acquired LongoMatch (www.longomatch.org), a cross-platform software tool that lets users perform real-time analysis on sports game video feeds.

LongoMatch software lets users tag plays, review portions of a live game in slow motion and create post-match analysis, all adaptable to a variety of video formats.

The software also lets users review tagged events in-game and lets them export the clips while still analyzing the game live. It is currently available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

LongoMatch was nominated as one of the 10 best sports analysis systems in the world in the 2013 Performance Video Analysis Software Guide and is currently used all over the world by amateur and professional sports teams including the Belgium national World Cup football team and the Spanish national handball federation.

For further information:

David Mascioni

Marketing & Communication Manager

Fluendo S.A & USA

New York, USA & Barcelona, SPAIN

United States

Office :+1 212.601.2894 Ext. 2892

Cell: +1 646.787.5003

www.fluendo.com

Tariq Saleh

PR & Communications Executive

iSportconnect

T  +44 (0)  2032 395 400

E  tariq@isportconnect.com

iSportconnect

Pennine House, 28 Leman Street, London, E1 8ER

dev.isportconnect.com

Media and PR

Stephen Pearson
CEO

Sports Media Gaming Ltd

+44 7770 577 361

spearson@sportsmediagaming.com

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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed that the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi generated a profit of RUB 3.25 billion (approximately $50 million).

As part of the deal, pills the IOC already decided to put a 20% share of this total to the Russian Olympic Committee for the development of sport in the country.

Read more HERE. 

Omnigon the digital consulting firm to leaders across the sports, cough media and entertainment industries, order continues to expand its geographic footprint and to meet the needs of its global client base with the opening of an office in Los Angeles and the acquisition of Touch Instinct, medicine a mobile development company based in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Omnigon now has six offices worldwide, including its New York headquarters, London, Toronto and Kiev.

The acquisition of Touch Instinct enables Omnigon to centralize all of its mobile development in one location, St. Petersburg, providing an additional layer of offshore project management accountability.

With the addition of 25 mobile experts, Omnigon can quickly scale support for clients requiring more robust mobile development.

Touch Instinct CEO, Andrey Baskov, will relocate to New York to serve as Omnigon’s new Mobile Chief Technology Officer.

Manish Dayal, Director of the Project Management Office, has been promoted to Managing Director, Omnigon Los Angeles and has relocated to head up Omnigon’s operations there.

The new office will oversee Omnigon’s West Coast-based clients and its continued business growth and presence throughout the entertainment industry.

“We are thrilled with Omnigon’s continued double-digit year over year growth and welcome Andrey and his outstanding team of mobile experts to the Omnigon family,” said Igor Ulis, CEO, Omnigon.

“With the opening the Los Angeles and St. Petersburg offices, Omnigon will be able to more rapidly meet the demands and requirements of our growing client roster as we continue to broaden our offerings in North America and abroad.”

Since its founding in 2008, Omnigon has grown to 150 employees and has won numerous industry awards for its groundbreaking work. Omnigon counts some of the world’s largest companies, including NASCAR, PGA TOUR, WWE, NFL, Miami Heat, USGA, Manchester City F.C., MLB, IMG, CONCACAF, FOX Sports and FOX Broadcasting, as clients.

The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games have earned a revenue figure in excess of $1.3bn for their Marketing Program, case 1.5 times greater than the earnings of the Vancouver Games Organising Committee throughout its entire existence.

As such, therapy the Sochi 2014 Organising Committee is the most successful Winter Games Organising Committee in the history of the Olympic movement.

That figure is three times more revenue generated from the Bid Book obligations and highlights impressive support the Games have received from marketing partners and licensees.

Licensees for the Games issued about 5, prostate 000 souvenir items with Sochi 2014 symbols, while sales of official Sochi 2014 products are expected to reach $500m.

The retail program has become the largest in the history of the Winter Games, with 4,500 official retail outlets across Russia.

In addition, the sale of Sochi 2014 plush souvenirs has broken records with over 3.6 million items sold.

Sochi 2014 starts with the Opening Ceremony Thurday 6 February.

The Cleveland Browns of the National Football League’s (NFL) have announced a proposed $120m upgrade to the FirstEnergy Stadium.

Amongst the improvements are two large video boards that will be built behind each end zone, denture which will be three times larger than then present board.

The new boards will be so large that they will take 3, sales 000 seats out of the stadium.

Those seats will be taken from the upper deck of the Dawg Pound but fears the traditional, lower-level seating would be affected, were put to rest by CEO Joe Banner.

Banner refused to say if the Browns would ask the city of Cleveland to pay for any improvements but did say the NFL had approved up to $62.5m in loans to cover half the price.

Capacity

The stadium will also see an increase in capacity, up to 68,000, with more added to the lower-level seating area.

The work is set to take place over two phases, with new video boards and escalators added by the end of the 2014 season.