Prince Harry, for sale Patron of the Invictus Games Foundation, tadalafil has announced that the second Invictus Games have been awarded to Orlando, Florida. The 2016 Games will take place from 8 – 12 May at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.
Making the announcement via video message, Prince Harry says that following the success of the inaugural Invictus Games in 2014 he always hoped that they would be just the beginning of the Invictus story.
Full story HERE.
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Around 100, medstore 000 tickets will go on sale next week, seek in addition to the 30,000 tickets currently on general sale, with matches available across all 13 venues and for all 20 teams. A range of price categories will be available, with a significant quantity of tickets at categories C and D, providing fans with another opportunity to watch their team in action.
Ten thousand tickets for England v Uruguay in Manchester City Stadium, 8,000 tickets across all five matches at the Olympic Stadium including the Bronze Final, France v Ireland and the two quarter-finals at Millennium Stadium will be available on 28 May.
The additional tickets are a mixture of handbacks from the Rugby World Cup Limited commercial programme, further seats following venue configuration and tickets that have been registered through the Official Rugby World Cup 2015 resale programme.
Full story HERE.
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Sandown Park Racecourse has today announced that the bet365 Jump Finale on Saturday 25th April is now SOLD OUT.
Both Grandstand and Premier enclosures and all hospitality areas are sold out. There will be no walk up tickets available on the day.
Racegoers with Premier tickets are reminded to bring both their valid premier ticket and premier badge to gain entry on the day.
Children under 18 accompanied by a paying adult get in for free. For those who have not managed to secure tickets for this event they will be able to view the racing on Channel 4 Racing from 1pm.
Sandown Park is pleased to be able to offer a complimentary direct train service from Waterloo to Esher at 11.02am from platform 6.
Racegoers will be able to claim free travel to the racecourse on a first come first served service and travel is valid by showing your bet365 Jumps Finale ticket.
Parking will be very busy on this day therefore it is advised that racegoers use public transport where possible.
Rupert Trevelyan, viagra London Regional Director, generic The Jockey Club, erectile said: “We are thrilled to have such a bumper crowd at Sandown Park on Saturday to not only celebrate the end of a fantastic jump season but also the phenomenal career of 20 times Champion Jockey, AP McCoy, who will be honoured during the End of Season Awards and throughout the afternoon.
“It is a real privilege for Sandown Park to be a part of this historic day”.
South Korean tire manufacturer Nexen Tire has extended its partnership with four Major League Baseball (MLB) teams.
The deals renew the tire maker’s sports marketing efforts in North America with the Los Angeles Dodgers, remedy Texas Rangers, ampoule Detroit Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels for the 2015 baseball season and, according to Nexen are expected to elevate the company’s visibility and brand awareness in North America.
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Hello and welcome to the iSportconnect Digital Café Blog. In this week’s edition we take a look at the argeuments over social media in sport, why new camera technology is both blessing and curse for sport and how one player’s taking his inspiration from his texting technique.
Drone Invasion: The 21st Century Pitch Invasion
We were going to feature here a piece about the use of drone cameras in sport. How the spectacle had been vastly enhanced by the use of remote-controlled digital cameras, and how they were improving the vantage point of everyone who was following either golf or other sports such as winter events, skiing and snowboarding.
But then this week, the whole drone scene changed with the football game in Serbia. The images of the pitch battles after a flag-bearing drone entered the stadium. We’ll leave the political commentary and write-up to those with more insight, but suffice it to say it’s not a use of technology which can be condoned and one wonders where it will lead to. Drone cameras are cheap, and while this kind of digital gadget is a boon for fans when used correctly, let’s hope it’s not the start of pitch invasions 21st century style.
Social Media in F1: Getting Behind the Scenes
Formula One thrives on good conflict. Whether it be on the track between drivers, in the Paddock between teams or in the factories between engine manufacturers, there’s nothing like a difference of opinion and a bit of rivalry. The latest one is over the use of social media in the sport. Whereas Bernie Ecclestone, the sports’ head and the man who decides where races are held and who gets to see them believes nothing should be given away for free, deputy team principal Claire Williams believes that to ensure the sport’s continued popularity more social media should be employed.
The example she used at a recent conference was that more life-behind-the-cameras content should be available. It’s not difficult to see how these two polar opposites of opinion come to pass. In very simple terms, for Ecclestone, the more people who have to pay to see the better, for Williams, the bigger the audience and the happier the sponsors. And, with respect to Williams, F1 has been doing social for some years now. All that behind the scenes content has been made available by Red Bull Racing with its F1 Spy and McLaren’s Fifth Driver since 2009. But it is always tempered by the strict regulations heavily enforced by Formula One Management and the simple fact that F1, as it’s as much about the race in terms of technical innovation as cars on a track thrives on secrecy – a picture of a motorhome in the Paddock hardly constitutes great behind the scenes content. Fans want a lot more, but teams and Ecclestone would never allow it. Social is all about giving content away for free and that’s not going to happen in F1’s current state. A state of conflict. F1’s default state.
Making A Mark: Tattoos’ Text Appeal
Emojis are a curious thing. The childlike cartoon symbols used in texts, social posts are either considered the lowest form of communication or a great shortcut to letting people know you’re being sarcastic. They divide opinion like little else.
But for one NBA player they have become a brand trait. Albeit a permanent one tattooed over his whole body. For Atlanta Hawks star Mike Scott has decided to make his mark on the game by getting himself covered in angry faces, mean faces, pairs of dancing girls, and more smiley and not so smiley faces – it’s all because Scott uses emojis a lot when I text and has done for some time. He claims he started the trend. It’s one way to stand out in sport, and demonstrate an understanding of the language of the digital age. But it’s not going to look cool when he’s 64. And yes, he’s having more done.
Having spent eight seasons in Formula One managing the digital channels for world champions Red Bull Racing, David Granger now runs Fact 51, a social and digital content agency.
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Football’s transfer window, like the post-Christmas sales, sees buyers frantically rushing around flush with cash and sellers rubbing their hands with glee. Except that, unlike goods in Selfridges on Boxing Day, player transfer fees and salaries only ever seem to go up.
The latest transfer window is no different: £835m spent in the Premier League, £149m of it spent by Manchester United alone. The total figure is almost double what was spent in Spain’s La Liga (£425m), and is more than triple what was spent in Italy’s Serie A (£260m) and Germany’s Bundesliga (£250m). Consider this as an illustration of what has just happened: Hull is hardly Madrid or Milan, yet the Premier League club spent more than the Italian mega-clubs AC, Inter and Napoli put together.
A bullish league
Inevitably, many people are pointing to television revenues generated by the Premier League as the reason behind clubs’ willingness to flash their cash on players. As I have pointed out before, the Premier League is still ahead of the game in selling television rights – domestically, internationally and globally. So powerful has Premier League football become as a televised commodity and so keen is the league to take advantage of this, that rumours are currently circulating it will bring forward the tendering process for the next round of domestic rights sales.
The Premier League is feeling bullish right now and the clubs which form part of it are benefiting from this. Clubs can spend on players with confidence in the future, assured of the massive benefits league membership will bring. Equally, though, clubs are also afraid of the massive costs that failure can bring.
For instance, even though Cardiff City were relegated in possession of more than £60 million allocated to them by the Premier League, the pressure is now on the club to bounce right back so as not to miss the cash bonanza that English football’s top division has become. Clubs do not want to be in this position and are prepared to spend big on players to try and avoid it in the first place.
But there has been something more besides during this transfer window. Alongside England’s TV money this has been a World Cup year, which always injects some fervour into the transfer market. We might see it as a great sporting event, but for managers the World Cup is akin to the industry’s biggest trade show or its largest employment bureau.
We should also not forget UEFA’s Financial Fair Play initiative. For several years, Europe’s clubs have been carefully monitoring both their own finances and the posturing of European football’s governing body, mindful of the potential sanctions that might be taken against them for non-compliance.
But so far UEFA has not been as draconian as clubs might have imagined and there have been no mass expulsions of clubs from European competition. As such, it is entirely plausible that many clubs felt rather more relaxed and a little more gung-ho than they have in the recent past.
Multiplier effects
Yet the distinctiveness of this year’s window has particularly come from two of the world’s mega-clubs – Manchester United and FC Barcelona. In relative terms, both clubs have fallen on hard times in recent years: United, now on their third manager in just over a year, are having problems with succession planning and have failed to qualify for Europe. Barcelona are in the midst of a change from the old to the new, having lost players to age and retirement, and managers to other clubs and illness.
In seeking to reconstruct, Barca have spent £140m on several players, most notably Luis Suarez from Liverpool (for £75m). While the Uruguayan might be known more for his off-the-ball antics, it is players of his calibre that have profoundly changed the English domestic game. Barca’s aggressive spending spree has had a trickle-down effect, introducing liquidity into the player transfer market that has rippled out across the world.
Follow the line: Suarez from Liverpool to Catalonia; Liverpool in for the three L’s of Southampton – Lovren, Lallana and Lambert; Southampton then pay Hull City £12 million for Shane Long – and so the multiplier effect goes on, ad infinitum.
United are in even more of a transition phase than Barcelona; struggling to replace Alex Ferguson, recovering from David Moyes, installing a new and demanding manager, yet bereft of both internally developed talent (such as Beckham, Scholes and Giggs) and externally acquired players (such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Roy Keane).
The need to ensure success
Everyone knows these are desperate times at United: selling clubs knew it and so added in a premium to the prices they charged United for their players. Louis Van Gaal and his employers knew it and so they spent what was necessary in an attempt to reassert the club’s preeminent position. Again, this injected liquidity into a rapidly overheating domestic transfer market and, once more, there was a trickle-down effect.
The significance of United’s transfer activity is particularly acute, however. At stake is the club’s business model which is, in essence, premised on the assumption of annual success and its accompanying revenues.
Without success, the club potentially begins to struggle with its debt repayments, its shareholders get agitated, revenue streams suffer, and the club’s league position comes under threat. And not just the club’s position in the Premier League, but also in the Deloitte, Forbes and various other rankings in which United appears.
Furthermore, Chevrolet agreed to pay more than £50m per season for a shirt sponsorship deal with them, while Adidas has just signed a £750m kit deal with the Manchester club as both corporations wanted to be associated with success.
As such, United is expected by its multitude of other partners to win, prosper and deliver a tangible return to them. Moreover, if United is to preserve its position as one of the most valuable global brands and continue to build its rapidly proliferating portfolio of commercial contracts, then the best way to do this is by signing top (albeit high-cost) players such as Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao in order to win games.
Some older readers will remember the bygone days when we used to blame Manchester United for everything. The club’s spending this summer may well herald a return to those times, particularly if Van Gaal can get his eclectic mix of international stars to play as a team and win the Premier League. In the meantime though, as the frenzy of this summer’s transfer window subsides, many of us may wish to revert to our old ways of thinking and contemplate the profound effect that United (and a small number of other global clubs) may have had on our own teams.
Professor Simon Chadwick holds the position of Chair in Sport Business Strategy and Marketing at Coventry University Business School, where he is also the founder and Director of CIBS (Centre for the International Business of Sport). Simon is the founding Editor of ‘Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal’, is a former Editor of the ‘International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship’ (he continues to serve as an editorial board member for several other sport journals), and has authored and published more than 600 articles, conference papers and books on sport. His academic research has appeared in journals including Sloan Management Review, the Journal of Advertising Research, Thunderbird International Business Review, Management Decision, Marketing Review and Sport Marketing Quarterly. Simon has co-edited the books ‘The Business of Sport Management’ and ‘The Marketing of Sport’ (both Financial Times Prentice Hall), ‘Managing Football: An International Perspective’ (Elsevier), ‘Sport Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice’ (F.I.T.), and ‘International Cases in the Business of Sport’ (Routledge). Alongside his books, Chadwick has created a Sport Marketing talk series for Henry Stewart Publishing, is Editor of a Sport Marketing book series for Routledge (Taylor and Francis), and is a visiting academic at IESE and Instituto de Empresa in Spain; the University of Paris, France; the Russian International Olympic University in Sochi, and the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
Follow Simon on Twitter @Prof_Chadwick
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The International Cycling Union (UCI) has today launched a new website in an attempt to connect with new audiences around the world and grow the profile of cycling globally.
The website, viagra developed in partnership with deltatre, provides exclusive news, broadcast footage and a comprehensive results service from events across all cycling disciplines.
The site also features dedicated sections on Advocacy (Cycling for All), Women’s Cycling and Global Development. The UCI are hoping that it will become the go to platform for anybody interested in cycling.
The new website is part of the UCI’s new digital strategy that has also resulted in the creation of a new Facebook page that will act as an interactive hub where cycling fans worldwide can share stories, images and videos.
The UCI’s new Facebook page will go alongside the existing YouTube and Twitter channels which have had significant growth in recent months with over 250,000 subscribers and followers.
Speaking about the launch of the new website, UCI President Brian Cookson, said: “This is a very exciting time for the UCI and we’re delighted to launch a new online platform that will help us to inspire and interact with audiences all over the world.
“The new website will provide a better user experience for existing fans and we believe it will help us attract new supporters from non-traditional cycling markets.
“Our digital advancements are part of the new global strategy for growth that is now being embedded across the UCI and we’re looking forward to building on the momentum as we continue to take the organisation forward.
“There is still a lot of work for us to do, but I am pleased with the progress we are making and the direction in which we are heading.”
It’s fair to say that professional cycling has had its fair share of challenges over the years. Although most sports have had a brush with drugs issues at some point in time, cycling is the sport which has consistently suffered from allegations and insinuations and worse still admissions of widespread drug abuse. However despite all the setbacks over the years such is the underlying strength of the sport that it has almost reinvented itself, become even more popular and accelerated into a new sporting era.
In recent years there has been nothing short of an explosion in the popularity of cycling. The sport has evolved and has now spread from professional level through cycling enthusiasts, clubs and organisations down to those who just want to enjoy the sport recreationally, use it as a mode of transport and their preferred fitness programme. In London, Mayor Boris Johnson has led the charge for cycling introducing Barclays Bikes, more protection and better routes for cyclists in the capital and many other cities are now following this lead.
The huge success of British cycling athletes in recent Olympics, coupled with the increase of Major events on home soil, along with successes in the Tour de France, the popularity of Team Sky and individual riders such as Victoria Pendleton CBE, Laura Trott OBE, Sir Chris Hoy, Chris Froome, and Sir Bradley Wiggins has all provided the perfect springboard for the sport to rediscover itself and start to reach out to new mass audiences. In May the Giro d’Italia started in the UK for the first time and the first 3 stages passed through various parts of Ireland before heading back to mainland Europe. This week the Tour de France starts in Yorkshire and apart from the tourism benefits will provide a further boost to a sport that has defied all the sceptics and is enjoying a real boost in popularity.
There are now over 3.5 million regular cyclists in Britain (ie cycle 3 times a week or more). As the numbers continue to grow there is a much greater need to meet the needs of these cyclists in the form of better more affordable bikes and equipment, safer roads and cycling routes as well as a much greater need for more and better organised mass participation events for cyclists.
The increased willingness- indeed keenness – for local authorities to promote and encourage new cycling events has also opened up some significant new commercial opportunities. Companies and brands are increasingly seeing the attraction of a sport which is now reaching huge numbers of participants and even larger groups of friends and family through social networks while at the same time delivering in spades with regard to both the environment and the overall fitness of the nation.
The Tour de France is steeped in history but the challenge now for cycling is to see the Lance Armstrong issue as the end of one era and take full advantage of the recent developments and outstanding successes within the sport. Capitalising on the tremendous growth in mass participation cycling in particular is key to this and the increased involvement of the commercial sector in the form of new sponsors will undoubtedly take the sport to even greater heights.
Leyanne Jenkins has been the Cycling Account Director at Limelight Sports since 2013 and has a wealth experience in cycling.
For over two years Leyanne was the Major Events and Projects Officer for British Cycling, before becoming the BMX Technical Operations Manager at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Follow Leyanne on Twitter – @LimelightLey
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So who is the person sitting at the top of Major events such as the Olympic Games and Rugby World Cup and Cricket World Cup, prostate Commonwealth Games et al who thinks these events need staffs of hundreds or thousands?
How can it be that just a few years ago these events were run by small dedicated teams and contractors on minimal budgets – and run very well – and now they have casts of hundreds and thousands? Why is that necessary? How has it come to be?
The proliferation of journeymen freelancers and jobbing event ‘experts’ is what has swelled the workforce but they are not to blame. These Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. Of course you need an HR department Sir . . . just to handle all of us!
No they are not to blame, discount they don’t see the full picture sitting in their silos. They also don’t see the budget. They don’t care about the overall cost, there is a taxpayer to foot the bill. The total waste of money due to the ridiculous staffing levels is not the only factor. The organisations are actually less efficient. They may have glitzier (temporary) offices (in themselves a total waste of money) but they are not as streamlined, not as motivated, not as vital not as accountable and just not manageable. It is a transient existence hopping from event to event and swelling along the way. Like a rolling stone gathering moss these people pick up more ‘essential’ people along the road.
The people to blame are those in charge of Strategy and Planning. So who are these people, Event Management Experts? No, they may call themselves that, but they are actually accountants and consultants, dressed up as such. Almost to a man/woman/company they have experience of one event (usually an Olympics – the biggest culprit of them all). So their experience of ‘events’ is the enormously over engineered and over staffed and over expensive ‘insert major event here’.
So what has changed? What can possibly be the justification for this ridiculous new ‘industry’. The answer to the former is, ‘Not a lot’ to the later, ‘Nothing’.
What has changed?
There is more TV revenue. There are less Media (due to consolidation). Proliferation of Technology.
Sponsorship has increased. Sometimes there is more sports.
Numbers of Spectators have in some instances increased but a stadium still has a capacity.
There are hundreds more people organising the event bumping into each other and doing their best to look like stressed senior executives burning out on the stress of it all, when in reality they have so long to do their work they are likely to reorganise everything two or three times.
There is no change here that needs more people.
Justification for the increase in Staffing Levels?
Well I can’t answer this and I look forward to the streams of justification from the accountants, estate agents, and consultants turned ‘Event Experts’ after their one stint on an overblown event such as London 2012.
They are just working with the freelance ‘Event Junkies’ to create more work for themselves and more expense and confusion for everyone else.
This view will be enormously unpopular in the industry – of course it will. But if people really think it through, anyone with half an ounce of experience gained over more than fifteen years in the event business will know that this is fact.
The organisation of major events is hugely over engineered, over staffed, and cost far too much. All totally unnecessary and extremely old hat and inefficient. I know of no other business that would tolerate such ridiculous and unsustainable staffing levels.The Governing Bodies of World Sport would do well to put a brake on this before they are unable to find hosts for these bloated and ridiculously expensive spectacles. The returns (whatever ridiculous ‘Economic Impact Study’ is invented to justify it) will just not be worth the investment. The investors – The Public in most instances, may just start asking questions . . .
You can join in the debate on this issue in the Sports Events Professionals Groups. We want to hear what you think
Nigel Rushman has developed and implemented innovative programmes for over 500 events in 30 countries including three Rugby World Cups and three Cricket World Cups. A founding partner of industry journal Sport Business, Nigel prides himself on his ‘hands-on’ experience of successful event delivery.
Nigel has presented to the IOC, FIFA & SportAccord (amongst others) his thoughts on world-class events.
In addition to his role as Founder of Rushmans, Nigel was contracted as Event Director of the ICC CWC West Indies 2007 Inc with the responsibility of implementing the Event Management, Security, Media Management, Accreditation and Volunteer Programmes for the Cricket World Cup across the nine participating countries in the Caribbean region.
Most recently Nigel had the pleasure and privilege to be Strategic Adviser to the innovative and highly professional team, which made history by winning Qatar the opportunity to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022, and has since presented for the Josoor Institute in Doha on what it takes to run a successful Major Sporting Event.
The Rushmans group specialises in various specific areas of event delivery – from Venue Bidding Assessment & Preparation, Event Management, Security Consultancy, Accreditation & Media Management to Rights Brokerage, Temporary Facilities, Scalability and Knowledge & Experience Transfer.
Follow Nigels Blog: www.nigelrushman.com
Twitter: @nrushman
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Declan Hill, whose matchfixing expose briefly put the frighteners on football, believes its gambling and internet-powered explosion can be beaten . . . but only by concerted action right up to World Cup level.
Hill has no illusions about corruption in sport. He acknowledged in London last night that the fix stretched as far back as the original Olympics in ancient Greece.
But professional sport’s own exponential advance had also rendered it vulnerable to the malicious dark arts and ‘artists’ armed to exploit the new-age concoction of technological, cultural and economic evolution.
“It’s injected sport with a bizarre form of steroids. It’s happening now, in our generation, on our watch. Unless we fight it, it will destroy sport,” Hill told a seminar on the subject at Birkbeck College.
Many in sport, and football in particular, believe Hill is a bogeyman who appears only at night and will be gone, along with his spectres of doom, by the light of kickoff. But the evidence he has compiled suggests otherwise.
At least he believes the war for the soul of sport can be won, though he fears football may be peering for solutions in the wrong direction.
Hill does not speculate about the size of the international gambling industry though others have assessed it as the equal of the world’s eighth greatest national economy.
But he told his audience of experts and explorers into the nether world that 60 or 70pc of the international betting market was based in Asia where “it has destroyed most sports.”
Sumo, motorboat racing, basketball and, most of all, the world’s most popular game had all been reduced to “utter shambles” by the malign influence of the sports gambling market and its protectors in high places.
As an example, Hill quoted an exception which proved his rule. He said: “The president of the Indonesia Football Association was arrested for corruption. This is really rare in Indonesia. He was put on trial which is really rare in Indonesia.
“Not only that but he was convicted and sentenced to two years’ jail which he actually – which is really rare in Indonesia. Yet he ever gave up being president of the Indonesian football association and continued it to run it from a jail cell in Jakarta.”
Asian sport fans, recognising the local lack of credibility, switched their attention to European and North American sports with results evidenced by waves of arrests in Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Turkey and too many others.
These others, said Hill, had included Australia most recently as well as South Africa which, before the 2010 World Cup under a previous administration, was “an open house for the fixers.”
The context and possible solutions are outlined in Hill’s new book: The Insider’s Guide to Matchfixing in Football.
Just like FIFPro’s ‘black book’ survey, Hill believes that a crucial weakness – which the fixers exploit – is the failure of too many clubs to pay their players on time.
Not only clubs either. Hill, with a prescient warning seven months ahead of the extravaganza in Brazil, warned: “You can be a player for an African team in the World Cup, watched by billions around the world, and not receiving your due salary. Some are being paid. You’re not.”
No World Cup is complete without its player/pay row. Next June, Hill appeared to be suggesting, keep an eye on the matches being played by a squad which has been squabbling with its federation over pay.
Meanwhile, in Croatia “football is dying,” Italy and Turkey were “dead men walking” and matchfixing was “creeping into western Europe.”
That included Britain.
Hill said: “Many people are sleep walking here in the UK. I don’t think we have a massive problem but there are certain signs. One is the culture of gambling among the players . . . that’s a gateway to criminality and fixing.
“Look at the recent Australian matchfixing: they didn’t bring players from Malaysia but from England. What is that saying about the lower leagues? Is there something there now? Absolutely.”
Football’s governing bodies talked insistently about education, considering young players most at risk. But this is where Hill considered them fatally mistaken. His research indicated that the most corruptible are those players coming towards the end of their careers and with family dependents.
He said: “If we want to beat this new wave of matchfixing then we have to take care of our older players . . . make sure they get paid. Sport is under threat but we can beat the matchfixers. We should beat them. We must beat them.”
Keir Radnedge has been covering football worldwide for more than 40 years, writing 33 books, from tournament guides to comprehensive encyclopedias, aimed at all ages.
His journalism career included The Daily Mail for 20 years as well as The Guardian and other national newspapers and magazines in the UK and around the world. He is a former editor, and remains a lead columnist, with World Soccer, generally recognised as the premier English language magazine on global football.
In addition to his writing, Keir has been a regular analyst for BBC radio and television, Sky Sports, Sky News, Aljazeera and CNN.
Keir Radnedge’s Twitter: @KeirRadnedge
Keir Radnedge’s
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