Football Partnerships

Football Partnerships podcast

Football Partnerships welcomes Meredith McClure, Marketing & Communications Coordinator at the USSF.

Listen here on Football Partnerships, or subscribe to the show via iTunes by searching the podcast directory for ‘Football Partnerships’. Please note that the recording is best heard via iTunes, as some browsers disrupt audio transmission.

 

 Episode 65 [20:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (110)

By Alex Kotler

Staying at the table

Despite postponement and building tension, the Major League Soccer Players Union and the league, Major League Soccer, continue negotiations.

Jimmy Conrad, MLSPU executive board member and Kansas City Wizards defender, intimated that a work stoppage is possible: “We feel like we’ve made a huge effort to be reasonable, to propose things that are within the confines of the single-entity structure. At this point they’re not even humoring us with something tangible.”

The president of MLS, Mark Abbott, released a statement Saturday, saying: “To characterize the league as not taking the players’ concerns seriously is just factually incorrect. What we have not made a proposal on and what the league is not prepared to do is to have free agency within the league. The league created its structure after really studying other efforts to launch professional soccer leagues in the United States, which unfortunately failed.”

Is the conflict rooted more in money or control? Or something else?

Have your say and read more in David Falk’s compilation in the Examiner

That’ll fix you!

Two Chinese football teams, Guangzhou GPC and Chengdu Blades, have been relegated to the second division from the top flight after club officials were found guilty of match-fixing and gambling.

Readers will recall CCTV 5’s recent blackout of the East Asia Cup match between China and Japan, said to be in part due to this scandal. Over 20 officials have been either arrested or detained, including the Chinese FA’s former chief, Nan Yong.

As noted by SportBusiness, Chengdu is owned by English Championship side Sheffield United.

Read slightly more about it in SportBusiness

Lowering ticket prices to raise attendances

According to Australia’s Herald Sun, FIFA is slashing World Cup ticket prices for South Africans as a means of ensuring full stadia during matches.

Up to 900,000 tickets, priced at approximately US$100, were reduced to less than US$20 and made available for purchase by local residents. Sources say that FIFA is concerned, particularly on the heels of the episode with the Togolese team at the African Cup of Nations, that attendences will be low.

What do you think? Should FIFA be concerned? Does the price reduction impact foreign ticket sales?

Read the original report (in Australian)

Seeking a Silva lining

MP & Silva, rights holders of the Italian Serie A and Serie B leagues, have retained IMG Media to cover rights distribution in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Turkey, Russia and the countries that were part of former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.

The agreement will last through the 2012 season.

Who controls the rights where you live? How does this affect you?

Read about it in euFootball.BIZ

“__________” Stamford Bridge

Soccerex Business Daily reports that English Premier League side Chelsea FC has offered naming rights to Stamford Bridge stadium to Petrobras, Brazil’s public oil company.

It is understood that the firm has previously been approached by Manchester United and flirted with Real Madrid, however - as in the case of Chelsea - it has declined the offer.

How it may have all been different if the Robinho deal had gone through…

Football Partnerships podcast

Football Partnerships welcomes Dr. Keith Still, Founder & CTO of Crowd Dynamics

Listen here on Football Partnerships, or subscribe to the show via iTunes by searching the podcast directory for ‘Football Partnerships’. Please note that the recording is best heard via iTunes, as some browsers disrupt audio transmission.

 

 Episode 63: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (110)

By Alex Kotler

Football’s Gamble

Theo Leggett, a business reporter for BBC News has published a fair survey of English football’s winners and losers, accounting for the sports main revenue streams and how clubs fall off the ‘financial tightrope’.

A point of interest is that, despite the recession, deals made in early 2009 reflected no signs of the faltering economy. Another is the gamble made by ambitious teams striving for promotion or tournament places within the league table, that may catapult a side upwards or, catatrophically, downwards.

Learn from Coventry City’s ‘community approach’ and read about Dr. Simon Chadwick’s suggestion that regulation may be a necessary evil to ‘protect [the clubs].

Read Theo Leggett’s article on Football’s Winners & Losers

It Takes Balls

Congratulations to four Baldwin-Wallace College men’s soccer student-athletes, Nate Smith, Russ Mika, Jamie Shipley and Zac Gaydosh, who have launched an initiative charged to provide soccer balls to the children in Haiti.

Their program, known as Soccer Balls 4 Haiti, set a goal of collecting a 250 new or gently-used soccer balls to send to the children affected by the devastating earthquake.

What are some of the soccer-related charitable programs that you are involved in?

Learn more about Soccer Balls 4 Haiti

Bartender, Another Round of “_______”!

According to research by Dr. Fiona Davies at Cardiff Business School, there is no significant statistical correlation between sports sponsorship awareness and attitudes to alcohol use.

In summary, boys with interests in sport are driven to drink by traditional machismo rather than by the presence of alcohol sponsorship. Girls’ attitudes are also unaffected.

The study will certainly be embraced by the football industry, which counts alcohol brands as a major source of sponsorship revenue. The pertinent questions on the flip side are (1) whether the absence of alcohol sponsorship would coincide with a decrease in alcohol consumption and (2) how would a decrease in sponsorship revenues from alcohol brands impact English football.

What do you think?

Have another pint and read more in SportBusiness

Togo appeals CAF ban

According to SoccerexBusiness Daily, “the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) has confirmed Togo’s appeal against the banning of its national team from the next two editions of the African Cup of Nations.”

The appeal will allow the Togolese national team to be included in this Saturday’s draw for the 2012 Cup of Nations qualifying. The formal request has been lodged by Football Federation of Togo (FTF), which will submit a written report to the court for consideration.

The Togolese team withdrew from the 2010 competition following a gun attack on the bus carrying the players and staff. Three people died in the assalut.

While the ban is purportedly a response against government and political intervention in football affairs, the question undoubtedly remains - is this necessary?

Be certain to wear your goggles…

Sports broadcast ESPN has announced that Sony will serve as an official sponsor of its new 3D network. Coverage will begin on June 11 when South Africa faces Mexico in the first match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The significance is that ESPN will enjoy rights to utilize Sony’s professional HD cameras to present programming to its subscribers.

But what will the googles look like?

Read the original source (with or without special glasses)

Football Partnerships podcast

Football Partnerships welcomes Paul Barber, Executive Director of Tottenham Hotspur.

Listen here on Football Partnerships, or subscribe to the show via iTunes by searching the podcast directory for ‘Football Partnerships’. Please note that the recording is best heard via iTunes, as some browsers disrupt audio transmission.

 

 Episode 62 [21:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (149)