By Andrew Warshaw
September 21 – The head of Iceland’s football association (KSI) has denounced the makers of FIFA 17 for showing them no respect by freezing the country out of the long-awaited video game.
September 21 – Online bookmaker Betway has added two more sponsorships to its football portfolio, expanding into the Belgian market with deals with top club RSC Anderlecht as well as the Belgian FA and Pro League for the Croky Cup.
September 20 – Serie A club Internazionale have named Hong Kong luxury car maker Infiniti as its Official Car for the 2016/17 season.
September 20 – Women’s football in Scotland has been given a boost with the addition of energy provider SSE as the first major sponsor of Scottish Women’s Football (SWF) in the country.
September 19 – Real Madrid vs Sporting was the most exciting match of last week’s Champions League fixtures, almost twice as exciting as the second placed match – Legia Warsaw vs Dortmund – where the fans perhaps became a little overheated as Dortmund (with a strong Polish support in Germany), hammered the Polish champions 6-0.
September 16 – Gillette has upgraded its regional sponsorship of FC Barcelona to become a global partner in a new three-year deal.
September 16 – German pay-TV sports network Sky Deutschland has announced it will add a new web channel that will focus on video content, skysport.de.
September 14 – This is real but the concept is a little surreal. Chinese firm UBTECH have become the first Official Robot Partner of Manchester City.
September 15 – Gaming console manufacturer PlayStation has launched its fourth season of sponsorship of the English Schools’ FA and the PlayStation®Schools’ Cup, the biggest grassroots football competition in England.
September 14 – Manchester United again dominated the Twitter weekly ranking gaining with Arsenal in second place and passing the 8 million total follower mark.
September 14 – Manchester United has announced that its #ILOVEUNITED fan events will be staged in 10 locations over the 2016/17 season with a focus on Asia, but with new locations in the US in Los Angeles and in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
September 13 – UEFA Champions League sponsor Nissan have released their second annual Nissan Excitement Index for the start of group matches this week. The research finds that in Britain, Leicester City’s debut tomorrow in Brugges is the most anticipated ahead of this season’s group stage start (58%).
September 8 – Manchester United have upgraded regional partner Apollo Tyres into their ‘Global Tyre Partner’ in a new three-year deal.
September 8 – Premier League Stoke City has signed sports digital agency Rippleffect to rework its digital platform including the club’s main website (stokecityfc.com) and online retail store (scfcdirect.com).
August 7 – With the international break it might be reasonable to assume a drop-off in Twitter activity, and in terms of tweets across the Premier League that was the case with the total number dropping to 2,412 against 6,214 the previous week. But the number of new Twitter followers across the league was up.