June 4 – Mastercard and FIFA just don’t seem to get along. No longer the official credit card of the World Cup – that right belongs to Visa – a hijack marketing campaign by Mastercard fell flat on its face at the weekend.
June 3 – Championship club Aston Villa that lost in the £160 million play-off game for the Premier League against Fulham, has become first club in EFL to launch its own esports league – AVFC Gaming.
June 3 – FIFA will return to London for the third edition of their Best Awards in September. Nominations will be released July 23, after the World Cup final in Russia, with public voting open until August 10.
By Paul Nicholson
June 1 – Outgoing Liberian FA (LFA) president Musa Bility is clearly not as outgoing as people had expected, with FIFA having again recognised the controversial CAF committee member as leader of football in the country, for the time being.
June 1 – Timed just two weeks before the FIFA Congress in Moscow, FIFA has lifted its suspension imposed on Guatemala 18 months ago over its failure to comply with anti-corruption rules.
June 1 – The French Football Federation and Coca-Cola have agreed a five-year extension of their long-standing partnership taking them through to June 2023.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 31 – None of the players are household names and there are no millionaire superstars or over-inflated egos. But there is no doubting the passion and patriotism of everyone involved.
May 31 – Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema has slammed French Football Federation chief Noel Le Graet, who has claimed that the French national team has moved on from the striker.
May 31 – The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has hailed the decision to award the final of the 2020 Champions League Final to Istanbul as a positive move in the build-up to the September ballot to choose the 2024 Euro hosts.
May 31 – The UEFA Europa League is getting a new look for next season that UEFA says will emphasise the “scale and dynamic nature of the competition.”
May 30 – He may still be suspended over that infamous CHF 2 million “disloyal payment” to Michel Platini but that hasn’t stopped former FIFA president Sepp Blatter from speaking his mind when it comes to the injustices he feels he has suffered.
May 30 – Spain’s Mediapro has gatecrashed the TV rights party in France by snapping up key broadcast packages for Ligue 1 as total fees for the rights sale hit €1.15 billion. Canal Plus ended up with no rights in this round of bidding, in what is a major setback for the broadcaster.
May 30 – The Qatar-based beIN Media Group, the biggest sports broadcaster in the region, has urged FIFA to take legal action against what it called pirate broadcasters in Saudi Arabia ahead of the World Cup.
May 30 – West Ham United have been catapulted straight into the top division of the restructured Women’s Super League in England, while Manchester United have been awarded a license for the second tier Women’s Championship for their newly formed team.
May 30 – Maltese-based bookmaker ManBetX has become LaLiga’s official betting partner for Asia in a multi-million Euro three-year deal that will begin with the new season this September.