By Samindra Kunti
February 2 – The TV rights crisis in French football is deepening after a new tender for Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 looks to have flopped with bids below what the league and clubs had expected.
February 2 – Burnley are the latest Premier League club to face problems with a betting partner. Shirt sponsor LoveBet have reportedly hit financial difficulty mirroring issues SportPesa ran into, forcing it to pull out of Everton’s sponsorship before the start of the season.
February 1 – Portugal’s Primeira Liga is to centralise its domestic broadcast rights from 2027/28, forming a company with the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) to sell media rights.
January 29 – Barcelona, Cristiano Ronaldo and the Premier League are the most popular football brands in China’s digital media, but a newly launched David Beckham platform shows there is still power in the old warhorse’s name.
January 29 – Manchester City, who returned to top of the Premier League this week, are firing on all cylinders off the pitch as well with another sponsorship announcement indicating the leverage the club’s owner City Football Group brings in terms of opening up sponsorship budgets to its club assets.
January 27 – Premier League broadcast rights partner NBC, is shutting its Sports Network in the US and is expected to close operations by the end of 2021.
January 27 – Premier League Manchester City have gone ownership local with a new partnership with life insurer Zurich International Life, who will become the Club’s Official Insurance Partner in the United Arab Emirates, the country of the club’s owner.
January 25 – The AFC has renewed and expanded its deal with video game maker Konami Digital Entertainment across national team and club competitions for the 2021-2024 rights cycle.
January 25 – Manchester City has signed a global partnership with Chinese LED displays solution provider Unilumin Sports, focussed on its pitchside LED solutions.
January 22 – Digital sports consultancy Seven League has released the third annual edition of its ‘seven key trends’ report that focuses on key areas of impact it expects to see in the digital sports landscape in 2021.
January 21 – With hopes for an end to lockdown seemingly high in the north-west of England, Premier League Everton have agreed a multi-year deal with Clarity Sports to become the club’s new Official Team & Business Travel Partner and Match Break partner.
January 20 – Canada’s MLS franchise based in Montreal will start the 2021 season with a new name, changing its 28-year moniker from Montreal Impact Club de Foot Montréal (CF Montréal).
January 20 – In an escalation of a Covid-19 dispute, Chinese broadcaster PPLive Sports International has countersued the English Premier League for failing to live up to the terms of its contract.
January 19 – Serie A’s AC Milan has become the latest club commit to blockchain driven cryptocurrency fan tokens, saying that it will launch the $ACM Fan Token on Socios.com in the coming weeks.
By Paul Nicholson
January 15 – Serie A, who are in the final stages of hiving off their commercial rights to venture capitalist CVC for $1.7 billion, will have an early test of that value with the league having issued a tender for the broadcast rights for the Middle East and Africa.