Bundesliga International Agrees Pan-Regional Broadcast Collaboration With United Media

Bundesliga International, a subsidiary of DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga, has agreed on three new deals with United Media to show Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 action in the Balkans, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus for the next four years.

The partnership starts from August 2021, and will run until the conclusion of the 2024-25 Bundesliga season. United Media will have the broadcast rights to show Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2, as well as action from the German Supercup and the all-important promotion/relegation play-off matches at the end of each season.

The Balkan region includes six territories (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia), with the Bundesliga being featured on United Media’s flagship sports channel, Sport Klub. Bundesliga International also concluded deals with United Media to show German football in Bulgaria, as well as Greece and Cyprus. Further details regarding the broadcast strategy will be announced at a later stage.


Bundesliga International CEO Robert Klein said: “The Bundesliga has been a key platform in the development of talent from South-East Europe for decades, and even this season Andrej Kramaric (Croatia) is in the leading pack for the top goal scorer while Filip Kostic has established himself as a cornerstone of the Eintracht Frankfurt side. United Media’s expansion into new territories will help to deliver the highest quality Bundesliga coverage to more fans and we are excited to work together in the coming years.”

Corporate Affairs Director of United Media Ralf Mathney said: “The Bundesliga is not only one of the strongest football leagues in the world, it also has a large number of players from the region, which makes it very popular in countries where United Media channels are broadcast.”

He added: “This agreement is special for our sports channel, Sport Klub. The Bundesliga was one of the first competitions we broadcast more than 15 years ago. Having the opportunity now to offer our viewers broadcasts of Bundesliga matches means we can say with certainty that we have top sports content. It also confirms Sport Klub’s position as the market’s leading sports channel.”

ECB And Vitality Extend Naming Rights Partnership

The ECB and Vitality have announced an extension of their existing partnership, which sees the innovative health and life insurance and investment company cement its role as Official Wellness and Official Health Insurance Partner across the game.

As part of the newly extended multi-year partnership, Vitality will remain Official Title Partner of men’s and women’s Vitality IT20 cricket and the Vitality Blast competition. In addition to this, Vitality will also continue as Official Title Partner for key men’s and women’s grassroots T20 tournaments – supporting the game from the grassroots to international level.

Through this partnership, Vitality resumes its role as Official Wellness Partner for The Hundred and Title Partner for the Vitality Wildcard – the pick to decide the final spots in each of the eight men’s Hundred squads, ahead of the competition launching in 2021.

Vitality will also remain an Official Wellness Partner for men’s and women’s Test cricket.

The ECB and Vitality have enjoyed a long-standing relationship since 2013, and through the extension of this partnership, Vitality is signalling its continued commitment to the game and further bringing to life its core purpose – to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives – by inspiring fans and the wider community to get active and live healthy lifestyles.

Tony Singh, ECB Chief Commercial Officer, said, “Vitality has become synonymous with T20 cricket and we are thrilled to jointly commit to a long-term extension of our partnership.

“They have been a long-standing supporter of both men’s and women’s cricket, championing the grassroots, domestic and elite game. That commitment now goes even further with their support of The Hundred and together we can introduce more people to our great sport and help them lead active, healthy lives.”

Neville Koopowitz, CEO of Vitality, said, “We are delighted to announce the extension of our partnership with the ECB today, reflecting our continued commitment to the sport from grassroots level right through to the elite game.

“Working together with the ECB, we hope to inspire many more people to take up and get involved in cricket, and to get more active, which all supports our core purpose to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives.”

The extended partnership includes full competition naming rights for IT20, domestic and grassroots T20 competitions, in-ground advertising and hospitality rights, digital branding and activation as well as access to England, Vitality Blast and Hundred players to create cricket related content to appeal to existing and new cricket fans.

Aurora Media Worldwide Appoints Barry Flanigan As Chief Strategy Officer

Award-winning content agency Aurora Media Worldwide has appointed Barry Flanigan to the newly-created role of Chief Strategy Officer.

Barry will lead the business development and strategy function at Aurora, focusing on driving new business as well as working with existing clients, while further enhancing and building out the company’s digital service offering. He starts immediately, reporting to MD and founder Lawrence Duffy.

Barry brings over 20 years of digital media experience to Aurora having worked in senior roles at several leading media companies. He joins Aurora from COPA90 where he was Chief Product Officer overseeing all product, audience, data, and content operations. He helped to build the business into a global football media powerhouse reaching millions of fans, working with top tier sponsors and managing major events, including the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Prior to this he was Vice President, and part of the founding management team, at Brave Bison, scaling it to become the largest video network outside of the US, generating more than 3 billion views per month. He has also held executive roles at Telegraph Media Group, News Corp and AOL.

The appointment further enhances Aurora’s offering to sports federations, rights holders, brands and broadcasters looking to develop engaging multi-platform content for fans. Aurora has a strong track record in the development and production of live, premium global sports and entertainment events, helping clients develop original and compelling programming. Aurora’s client list includes rights owners such as Formula E, Extreme E, Goodwood, Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, Six Day Cycling; broadcasters such as ITV, BBC, Fox, Eurosport, CNN, and brands such as Jaguar, Audi, JP Morgan, Nissan, Tag Heuer and Red Bull.

Digital expertise and strategy form an increasingly fundamental part of Aurora’s offering, driven by the changing nature of how fans consume sport and entertainment content, combined with technology disruption.

Lawrence Duffy said: “Barry brings a real wealth of digital expertise to the Aurora team. He has an extensive track record working with some of the biggest and most innovative rights owners, broadcasters and brands in the world to grow engaged fan communities. His skills are an excellent fit with Aurora’s mission to create brilliant content for fans at the intersection between live sport, digital, data and brand. We’re delighted to welcome him to the team”

Flanigan said: “Aurora has an incredibly strong reputation for creating compelling sports and entertainment content experiences and I’m excited to build on these strong foundations to further enhance Aurora’s service offering for partners and clients around the world.”

Nevin Truesdale Appointed As CEO Of The Jockey Club

The Jockey Club has announced the promotion of Nevin Truesdale, 46, to the position of Group Chief Executive from 1st January 2021.

Nevin has led the company in an ‘acting’ capacity since the end of August. In that time The Jockey Club has delivered its largest internal reorganisation in a decade as part of introducing a new strategy for the future and in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It has also successfully staged hundreds of racedays around the country behind closed doors and is now welcoming up to 2,000 spectators in Tier 2 locations in England, under stringent health and safety protocols.

The Jockey Club, whose Patron is Her Majesty The Queen, welcomes around four million people to its venues nationwide in a normal year and stages several of the nation’s most attended events, including the Randox Health Grand National, The Cheltenham Festival and The Derby Festival. It is also one of the UK’s leading music promoters, runs The National Stud and operates racehorse training centres in Newmarket, Lambourn and Epsom Downs.

A senior executive at The Jockey Club for the last seven years Nevin joined as Group Finance Director in 2013 from Centrica plc, where he was Finance Director for British Gas’s £9 billion Residential Energy division. He previously worked at The AA and Ernst & Young and is a graduate of the University of Cambridge.

A racing fan and racehorse owner, Nevin is also a Board Director of Jockey Club Racecourses, The National Stud, Jockey Club Catering, The Racecourse Association and Racecourse Media Group.

Sandy Dudgeon, Senior Steward of The Jockey Club, said: “The Board are delighted to appoint Nevin as our Group Chief Executive. He has demonstrated excellent leadership of the whole business over the last few months and first-class performance as a senior executive over several years. He and his senior team have now completed a significant reorganisation programme designed to set The Jockey Club onto a firm footing for innovation, growth and sustainability for the future, and I wish him every success in the role.”

Nevin Truesdale said: “The Jockey Club is full of talented and hardworking women and men who are passionate about the future of British Racing, whether they have come into the industry from a whole range of different sectors or had a career within the sport to date. I’d like to pay tribute to how our teams have handled the challenges of the pandemic and its impacts so far and I’m confident we will navigate this crisis and on to a very exciting future.

“Over the past few months I’ve enjoyed strengthening working relationships and making significant progress for the industry with our diverse range of stakeholders and commercial partners. Collaboration and strong relationships are so important to delivering success, as is listening to your customers, providing fantastic experiences for all and constantly embracing change and innovation. We’ll be working hard to continue our success in these areas in the years to come.”

LTA To Keep Time With TAG Heuer

The LTA announces new partnership with the Swiss luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer ahead of the new season. The three-year partnership, beginning on 1 January 2021, will see TAG Heuer become an Official Partner and the Official Timekeeper at the LTA’s program of summer major events.

TAG Heuer’s presence at these high-profile ATP and WTA sanctioned tournaments will include a clock tower on the main concourse at each venue, as well as a ‘TAG Heuer Match Clock’, whilst the tournament umpires will ensure the matches are kept on TAG Heuer time.

“TAG Heuer has an unrivalled sports timekeeping pedigree going back more than 160 years,” said TAG Heuer’s UK Managing Director, Rob Diver. “The partnership between TAG Heuer and the LTA becomes another significant moment in the company’s history in the UK.

“We recognize in tennis our own brand values of high precision, high performance and mental strength” he continued. “We’re hugely motivated by this partnership and look forward to working closely with the LTA and its world-class tournaments.”

Scott Lloyd, LTA Chief Executive, said: “TAG Heuer is a highly respected and prestigious brand so we’re excited to partner with them to help us grow tennis in Great Britain. Our commercial strategy is a key part of how we support tennis across the country, and I’m very pleased to add TAG Heuer to the growing list of high-profile partners we will be working with in 2021 and beyond.”

Tech Mahindra Agrees Fan Engagement Partnership With Fanisko

Tech Mahindra , a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting and business reengineering services and Fanisko, a unique one-stop fan engagement platform that helps sports and entertainment brands increase mobile fan retention and digital engagement, partner to revolutionize match viewing experience for sports fan.

Through this partnership, Tech Mahindra and Fanisko will leverage new-age technologies to enhance fan engagement and present innovative business models of monetization for sports organisations globally.

As part of the partnership, Tech Mahindra and Fanisko will jointly work towards fast tracking digital strategy to convert ordinary fan interactions into strategic business opportunities by enhancing fan engagement through hyper personalization. Both the companies will leverage social media platforms, data analytics, gamification and interactive Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities to drive new monetization opportunities through mobile applications and social commerce among others.

Jagdish Mitra, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Growth, Tech Mahindra, said, “Technology will be the key enabler in accelerating digital disruptions and innovation across sectors in a post-COVID world. As part of the TechMNxt charter, we have partnered with Fanisko to enable a complete sports experience for our fans by leveraging next-generation technology. Further, we have jointly worked on bringing this experience to the fans of the India Premier League and Indian Super League teams”

Tech Mahindra will also support Fanisko to reach wider markets and audiences through comprehensive fan engagement platforms and digital campaigns.

Sathish Chittibabu, Co-founder and CEO, Fanisko said, “Digital fan engagement is the future of sports and sports organizations are eager to understand their digital fan base and are prioritizing their efforts to keep them engaged and retained. This presents a great opportunity for us, as our platform not only supports identifying high value digital fans but also engaging them wherever they are and retaining them through personalized immersive and interactive experiences. Our emphasis on brand activations has proven to add new monetization opportunities for sports organizations. We are thrilled to partner with Tech Mahindra and collectively deliver digital fan experiences & brand activations to sports organizations globally.”

Manish Upadhyay, Head – Global Business Development, Sports Vertical, Tech Mahindra, said, “We are currently working with Fanisko to build sports ecosystem through various use cases, which can help us to identify, engage and monetise from wider fan base. This involves co-creating various digital assets based on our core strength in 5G, analytics and digital. Our vision is to provide hyper personalised and augmented experience to global sports fan and drive brand activations, that can help sports properties to transform into digital properties and monetise on new revenue streams.”

BLAST Extends Broadcast Partnership With TV2

Esports tournament organiser BLAST has agreed an extension with major Danish broadcaster TV2 to show the BLAST Premier 2021 season

The renewal means TV2 will obtain exclusive BLAST Premier broadcast rights in Denmark for a third consecutive year. As part of the deal, TV2 Denmark will broadcast all seven BLAST Premier events in 2021 on TV2 ZULU and online platform TV2 PLAY.

TV2’s renewal adds to the BBC in recently becoming the latest broadcast partner to join BLAST’s global portfolio of TV and online partners that have a joint reach of over 151m TV households, spanning 105 territories and shown in 18 languages.

In an extension of this year’s deal, 2021’s partnership will see BLAST work closely with TV2 to create bespoke Counter-Strike content outside of BLAST Premier events, which will sit on their online and linear channels.

Alexander Lewin, VP, Programming and Distribution for BLAST, said: “We are delighted to extend and expand our long-term partnership with TV2. TV2 continues to provide the perfect home for BLAST Premier’s Danish audience and we are excited to continue to push the boundaries and explore ways to produce premium and exclusive Counter-Strike content.”

Sune Roland Jensen, Content Manager for TV2 ZULU and TV2 PLAY, said: “ZULU and Counter-Strike have for several years proved to be a perfect match and a wonderful and playful partnership. We are excited to renew our agreement with BLAST, which represents many of the highlights of the esports calendar, and we strongly hope that during 2021 we can move from our own rooms and back to the arenas where the amazing and fast-growing e-sport also belongs.

“That said, it has been top-notch to note that the limitations of the pandemic have not stopped the unique commitment that embraces Counter-Strike across rooms and studios in the fast-growing ZULU CS:GO community, which is built on social media.”

The Hundred Agrees Official Partnership With Unilever

Unilever has agreed an official partnership with The Hundred ahead of the launch of the innovative and exciting new cricket competition in summer 2021.

The three-year deal will see cricket’s newest competition team up with the company’s Sure and Lifebuoy brands, who will support a campaign based around The Hundred’s key mission of opening cricket up to the whole family. Sure and Lifebuoy branding will feature on LEDs at stadiums during The Hundred matches, while also obtaining a rights package of Sky TV advertising, player access and digital rights.

The partnership will help ensure all venues are safe and hygienic, through the supply of Lifebuoy products. The world’s number one hygiene soap brand* will also provide hand hygiene guidance for players, staff and supporters attending matches during The Hundred, as part of their commitment to improve the habits of communities around the world, that has already reached over 1 billion people.

Sure, who have delivered long lasting protection against sweat and odour for over 50 years**, will be utilising the partnership to continue inspiring people to move more at a time when physical and mental wellbeing plays a vital part in daily life.

The Hundred is set to provide sports fans with an exciting new 100-ball format featuring world-class domestic and international players in men’s and women’s competitions.

The competition will be played at the height of summer and feature eight city-based teams from Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham, Cardiff, Southampton and two in London. It will be screened live by Sky and the BBC.

Rob Calder, Commercial Director for The Hundred, said: “This partnership brings together three brands driven by purpose – getting people to move more with Sure, improving the habits of people around the world through Lifebuoy, and bringing communities together to grow the game of cricket through The Hundred. We can’t wait to work together as we launch the competition in 2021 and bring the excitement of 100-ball cricket to fans new and old.”

Chris Barron, Vice President of Beauty & Personal Care at Unilever UK & Ireland, said: “With this partnership we are supporting the desire to open up the game to a more diverse audience and to inspire new audiences to participate in the excitement and thrill of cricket.

“Through our Lifebuoy brand we are able to help bring back the magic of live sport by providing effective sanitising and hygiene products to both players and supporters, and with our Sure brand we can continue to inspire people to move more at a time when physical activity continues to play such a huge role in our wellbeing. 2021 looks set to be an exciting year of cricket with the launch of this new competition and we’re delighted to be part of it.”

FIH To Leverage Horizm’s AI Platform To Drive Digital Revenues

Horizm, the award-winning provider of digital inventory management in sport, and the International Hockey Federation (FIH) have confirmed an agreement that will see FIH using Horizm’s Artificial Intelligence powered platform to help hockey’s world governing body unlock new digital revenues.

The collaboration highlights the FIH’s growing commitment to digital as a key component of its commercial strategy and, through Horizm’s real-time solution, will enable FIH to establish accurate market valuations for its different digital assets. It will also provide FIH with the intelligence and the tools to create new digital content franchises that can be monetised directly, or in partnership with Horizm.

Commenting on the announcement and the challenges sports organisations face when trying to understand the value of their digital channels, FIH CEO Thierry Weil said: “We’re very happy to have engaged on this partnership with Horizm. They can deliver clear measurement as well as a valuation and evaluation of our digital assets. And then quantify this for us.  This is much needed data which we will use for our current and potential future commercial partners”.

FIH Sponsorship Sales Director Ricky Thussu added: “We’ve been on the journey with digital where data, content, social media, OTT have played an integral part and Horizm is just the right layer to wrap around them so we can quantify the value delivered through these engagement and touchpoints we have created”.

Horizm, CEO, Pedro Mestriner said: “It is a pleasure to be working with such a progressive and forward-thinking sports federation whose commitment to unlocking digital value is an example to others in the industry”.  

Trevor Birch Replaces David Baldwin As EFL CEO

The EFL has announced that Trevor Birch is to become the League’s new Chief Executive as of 1 January 2021.

The appointment has been confirmed by the EFL Board, with Trevor joining the EFL from his latest position as Director of Football Operations at Tottenham Hotspur, having secured a wealth of industry experience throughout his career to date. In addition, Trevor has also held several prominent roles within football, including Chief Executive of Chelsea, Everton, Leeds United, Sheffield United and Derby County, as well as Chair of Swansea City.

Commenting on the appointment, EFL Chair, Rick Parry said: “I am delighted to be able to welcome Trevor Birch to the EFL. Trevor’s vast experience has impressed me throughout our discussions in regards to the role, and having been a strong candidate in 2019 before withdrawing from the process, I am delighted that he has opted to take up the position and is able to join the League so promptly. I thank Daniel Levy for his understanding in this respect.

“I have known Trevor for many years and value the knowledge and expertise he has accumulated working with notable Clubs at all levels of the game including a number of Clubs in financial distress.

“I have no doubt that his acumen and experience will prove valuable for the EFL as we look to navigate our way out of the unprecedented set of circumstances presented to us by Covid-19 alongside considering the challenges of future reform to the pyramid as we look to develop long-term sustainability in the EFL.”

Trevor Birch said: “I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of Spurs, however the opportunity to play a role in the EFL at such a crucial time is one I couldn’t turn down. There is a big job to be done dealing with the effect of the pandemic, together with participating in discussions on the future structure of football and I hope I can make a meaningful contribution to that process.”