By Paul Nicholson
March 22 – Betting brands and football club sponsorship are tightly linked but while the clubs have an appetite for the betting company money, the brands question how much clubs really want to engage with them.
21 March – LaLiga has expanded its regional sponsorship coverage with telecoms giant MTN Group into Africa. MTN Ivory Coast joins the company’s Iranian subsidiary MTN Irancell as a regional sponsor of the Spanish league.
March 22 – NFL club San Francisco 49ers have announced an education partnership aimed at young people with Premier League Chelsea, working through their teaching focussed affiliates – the EDU Academy for the 49ers and The Chelsea Foundation.
March 21 – Italian Serie A giant Internazionale have launched another academy set up in another country. Following hard on the heels of new Inter Academy openings in Lebanon and Indonesia over the past four week, comes Inter’s foray into in Budapest, Hungary.
March 19 – China’s rapidly growing interest in football has seen a new twist to its sponsorship involvement with Hangzhou Wahaha Group becoming an official sponsor of the Portuguese national team and Sichuan Changhong Electric Co. becoming a sponsor of the Belgian team.
March 15 – The use of match stats in broadcast and turning the betting experience into a more immersed entertainment activity will be discussed at the Betting on Football conference, March 20-23, at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium.
March 15 – France’s leading club, Paris Saint-Germain has signed an exclusive sponsorhip and licensing rights representation deal in both China and Hong Kong with Desports, one of Asia’s leading sports marketing agencies.
March 14 – New Balance has extended its kit supply deal with FC Porto through to the end of the 2024/25, a deal that will see it supply the current Portuguese league leaders for 10 years.
March 14 – The Bundesliga is to introduce virtual advertising over its international broadcast feeds from the start of next season.
March 8 – Championing equality in all forms of life, workperson’s tools and security brand Stanley Black & Decker have announced they have extended their sponsorship of FC Barcelona, adding the club’s Women’s team to its sponsorship portfolio.
March 8 – The Europa League is widely regarded as the poorer sister of the Champions League but UEFA is taking every opportunity to promote its partnerships in the competition.
March 7 – Manchester City have signed former Premier League naming rights partner Barclays as the Club’s Official Banking & Credit Card Tour Partner in a regional deal. The Barclays logo will feature on the back of the team’s shirt during pre-season matches in the US this summer.
March 5 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) now has 28 of its member associations using its streaming platform that debuted in July 2016 in Bhutan.
March 2 – English Championship club Nottingham Forest, anxious and ambitious for a return to the Premier League, have announced the “biggest sponsorship agreement in the club’s history” with Italy-based sportswear company Macron.
March 2 – Manchester United have signed sports nutrition experts Science in Sport as their Official Sports Nutrition Partner in the UK and Europe.