Qatar Airways board Barça shirt in $45m per season deal

barca flag

By Andrew Warshaw
March 6 – After more than a century without a commercial sponsor, Barcelona will break new ground next season by sporting the logo of Qatar Airways on its shirts – the starkest illustration yet of the club needing to embrace commercial reality as Qatar continues its drive to make inroads into European football. 

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AFC presidency race heats up as candidates declared and Al Serkal calls for withdrawals

al serkal

By Paul Nicholson and Andrew Warshaw
March 4 – One of the three west Asian candidates seeking to replace Mohamed bin Hammam and run football in the entire Continent until 2015 has urged his two rivals to step aside to avoid a potentially damaging split.

As the Asian Football Confederation announced a four-man race for the presidency on May 2, Yousuf al Serkel (pictured), of United Arab Emirates, said he is to ask the two other regional candidates bidding against him to stand down. Read more …

Benfica TV picks up Premier League rights

benfica

March 1 – In a world first, a club TV channel has bought the broadcast rights to an international football league. Benfica TV has been awarded exclusive audio visual broadcast rights for all Barclays Premier League matches per season for from 2013/14 – 2015/16 in Portugal.

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