October 11 – Bundlesliga’s VfB Stuttgart is the latest German club to open up links in China, signing a five-year contract with the Chinese Super League club Guangzhou R&F to develop youth players and train coaches.
October 11 – Digital fan engagement and data capture specialists FanCompass has launched Check In, an engagement product specifically designed to digitally capture offline fan data.
October 11 – New sports technology businesss Fanbox has launched a behavioral marketing platform for clubs that it says will change the way they interact with fans for good.
October 10 – Brazil’s top league, the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, has agreed a $150 million international streaming deal with sports tech startup Fanfoot which will launch its OTT platform in 2019.
October 10 – Germany’s Bundesliga has joined forces with official licensee EA Sports to launch a new ‘Player of the Month’ award. Fans will vote for their player of the month on the EA Sports FIFA 19 website (bundesligapotm.easports.com).
October 9 – Arsenal have confirmed they are switching from Puma to Adidas for their kit deal from the 2019/20 season in a five-year ageement.
By Paul Nicholson
October 8 – Growing fears within the UK betting business of a hardline approach to regulating how bookmakers market themselves has prompted one leading bookmaker to put in a pre-emptive strike and call for an industry-imposed ban on TV ads before the 9pm watershed.
October 8 – Premier League clubs make up six of the top 20 most commercially valuable sports rights-holders worldwide, but are behind Real Madrid and Barcelona globally, according to the newly launched POWA Index, a real-time sponsorship evaluation engine.
October 8 – Facebook has expanded its live football output picking up rights to South America’s Copa Libertadores matches in a four-year package from 2019-2022 for its Watch platform.
October 5 – Glasgow will welcome a galaxy of football legends and three days of world-class six-a-side Football as the Star Sixes come to town in January.
October 4 – Premier League Liverpool have added insurer AXA as the club’s first Global Insurance Partner in what it describes as a multi-year deal. No value was given for the sponsorship.
October 3 – OTT streaming service Eleven Sports has challenged the English FA’s ban on the broadcast of live football matches on Saturdays between 2.45pm and 5.15pm by showing live coverage of Barcelona’s match against Athletic Bilbao last weekend.
October 2 – The Canadian Premier League (CPL), which is scheduled to kick off its inaugural season in 2019, has signed a long-term deal with Italian apparel company Macron.
October 2 – German Bundesliga gaints FC Bayern Munich has signed a new regional partner for China.
October 1 – LaLiga and Unilever have reached a worldwide sponsorship agreement for Unilever’s Clear Men and Rexona brands in a deal that covers the remainder of this season and the 2019/20 and 2020/21 campaigns.