March 7 – Having complained about the ever-inflating cost of broadcast rights to football, BT Sport has stumped up a huge £1.18 billion for UEFA Champions League rights that will see the world’s leading club competition exclusively on the pay broadcaster in the UK for the three seasons from 2018-19 to 2020-21.
March 3 – MLS has a new snack partner with Cheez-It and Pringles named the official snacks of Major League Soccer. The Kellogg brands take over from Mondelez, which manufactures Oreo, Trident and Ritz. No figure was announced for the sponsorship.
March 2 – Spanish giants FC Barcelona are reportedly in the final stages of contract negotiation with Qatar Airways for a new four-year sponsorship that will see the club earn €50 million from the airline.
March 1 – Mexican beer brand Modelo has signed a four-year sponsorship deal with CONCACAF that will make it the Official Beer of the CONCACAF Gold Cup, as well as the Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League.
March 1 – Manchester United has signed a global partnership deal with Malaysian-based e-commerce group Aladdin Group. The online trader will use the club as part of the global launch marketing of its aladdinstreet.com marketplace.
March 1 – Germany’s Bundesliga has partnered with Chinese internet giant Baidu to become the web company’s first European league to have an official web presence on its platform.
February 28 – After a busy week that saw Manchester United qualify for the last 16 of the Europa League and then lift the EFL Cup at Wembley on Sunday, the club not surprisingly topped (yet again) the growth in new followers table. The club also topped the tweets table.
February 22 – Chelsea have passed the 8 million mark in twitter followers, third only to Arsenal with 9.2 million and Manchester United with 10.2 million. Looking at the weekly figures Chelsea’s gain was still almost 16,000 behind Arsenal’s 67,400 new followers for the week.
February 22 – Everton have teed off a media partnership with The Open Championship which will play its 146th Championship at Royal Birkdale in July.
February 20 – French Football Federation President Noël Le Graët has revealed that the Nike kit deal for the French federation is worth €50.5 million a year for the next 10 years.
February 17 – Adidas’ recent signing of the world’s second best player Lionel Messi (according to recent awards events) to a lifetime deal may be a reflection of their overall brand positioning when it comes to winning. An analysis of Europe’s big club competition winners over the past 10 seasons finds that 51.4% of teams wore Nike kit, while Adidas were in second place with 28.5% of teams wearing their kit.
February 16 – AS Roma from Italy’s Serie A is the latest to join the esports action, partnering with Fnatic to create the club’s first competitive gaming team. Aman Seddiqi, Sam Carmody and Nicolo Mirra will play as AS Roma at tournaments and events.
February 15 – Chelsea are maintaining their Twitter surge and are now closing in on 8 million followers. This week they were again fourth in the growth chart with 51,500 new followers, just 3,800 behind Liverpool who they are more than 1.1 million ahead of in terms of overall followers.
February 15 – Mexico’s Liga MX will hit the Facebook Live platform with Univision this weekend at the start of a new broadcast deal that will see 46 matches, including playoff games, streamed live.
February 14 – Lionel Messi has been handed a ‘lifetime contract’ by Adidas that will tie him to the company until the end of his career. No figure was announced for the deal.