Football Partnerships

By Ridge Mahoney

There’s big news from the world of football, as in American indoor, as well as football played across the pond, as in the English Premier League.

All of it affects American soccer and MLS, as does just about everything else in the modern maelstrom of programming and content and platforms and rights and upgrades and tiers and sub-licensing. At some point in recent history the crossover left the realm of an athlete’s footwork and entered the terminology of content production across multiple platforms, along with cross-promotion of crossover programming, which of course requires cross-indexing by numerous cross-eyed chroniclers to see which and how many demographics it crosses.

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By Erik Larson

Google Inc. and its YouTube video- sharing site won dismissal of some claims for money damages in a proposed class-action copyright infringement lawsuit by England’s Football Association Premier League Ltd.

In a July 3 ruling by U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan, the group’s claim for punitive damages under U.S. copyright law was dismissed, and a claim for statutory damages was mostly dismissed, with an exception for live broadcasts.

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West Ham have been taken over by asset management company CB Holding.

Chairman Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson and vice-chairman Asgeir Fridgeirsson have resigned from the club’s board.

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Scottish champions Celtic could join the English Premier League within a decade, according to club shareholder Dermot Desmond.

The Irish billionaire financier said that the idea of inviting Old Firm rivals Celtic and Rangers into the English top-tier would help generate more broadcasting revenue for the Premier League and that it was ‘inevitable’ that the Scottish Premier League leaders would eventually compete against the bigger English clubs.

“They will open up some time to us but I would think it could be in the next 10 years,” Dermot Desmond said in an interview with local radio station Newstalk.

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Soccer is at least one business that hasn’t been sidelined by the recession.

A new report by Forbes magazine finds that the world’s top 25 soccer clubs are now worth an average of $597 million, or 8 percent more than a year ago, before the financial crisis fully took hold. Five clubs are worth at least $1 billion.

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