Exclusive by Osasu Obayiuwana
September 30 – The 12-year billion-dollar contract between Lagardere Sport (LS) and the Confederation of African Football (CAF) is at risk of being a casualty of the ongoing CAF governance reforms being spearheaded by FIFA.
September 26 – Manchester City owners City Football Group has beefed up its club partnership with video game maker EA Sports, tuning it into a global deal across all seven of its owned clubs.
September 26 – The sales processes for UEFA’s club competitions for the 2021-24 commercial cycle has been launched following approval of the sponsorship ‘concepts’ by UEFA’s executive committee.
September 25 – Germany’s Bundesliga has tested the first applications of its 5G mobile stadia plan with Vodafone at Vfl Wolfsburg’s Volkswagen Arena as part of a live demonstration for their home game against TSG 1899 Hoffenheim.
September 24 – New Balance are battling to hold on to their kit deal with Liverpool and have filed a High Court to do that, though has said that it hopes a resolution to the dispute can be found outside of court.
September 23 – Qatar Airways have expanded their portfolio in football, becoming the shirt sponsor of Belgian club KAS Eupen, despite a $639 million loss in the 2018-19 cycle for the airlines.
September 23 – Premier League Arsenal have signed Global Kapital Group as the club’s Official Forex Trading partner.
September 20 – The rapid rise of the women’s game and the profile of the Women’s World Cup has prompted the UK government to call for a number of top tier women’s events to be added to the country’s ‘listed’ sports events that must be broadcast in free-to-air television.
September 20 – On Tuesday the UEFA Champions League kicked off in a fluorescent blaze of orange and yellows with a new adidas ball. Last night it was the turn of Japanese manufacturer Molten to launch its 2019/20 ball into the Europe League competition.
September 19: Italian giants Juventus have announced 10bet as the club’s official gaming and betting partner in a three-year deal.
September 18 – Major League Soccer has signed a multi-year partnership with BodyArmor making the brand the league’s official sports drink partner in the US, starting with the 2020 season.
September 18 – Monster Energy is making inroads into the Premier League having signed on both Everton and Leicester City as their Official Energy Drink partners.
By Paul Nicholson
September 17 – Football rights owners have issued another demand to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, satellite distributor Arabsat and IPTV platforms to stop the broadcast of pirate TV channel beoutQ that has been stealing their rights and rebroadcasting across the region.
September 17 – Galatasaray have become the latest club to partner with Socios.com for a step into the brave new world of cryptocurrency fan tokens. They are the first Turkish club to do so.
September 16 – With the Champions League group stages kicking off this week, UEFA has released a 1 billion interaction social media stat that makes shows the European club showpiece outperformed all other major events in 2019 by more than 30%.