Expecting football to make Twitter and Facebook stop social media abuse is like asking your six-year-old to tackle Cristiano Ronaldo February 23, 2021 The English football community has finally had enough of the rampant racial abuse and bullying its players suffer on social media. Police are investigating and thePremeir League and other bodies have made an unprecedented direct plea to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey. Of course, these issues on social media don’t just impact football players or [...]
England cricket chiefs to launch The Hundred with women’s match between Oval Invincibles and Manchester Originals February 23, 2021 The Hundred, English cricket’s new short-form competition, will begin with a women’s match between the Oval Invincibles and the Manchester Originals. The fixture at the Kia Oval on Wednesday 21 July will be followed by the first men’s match, featuring the same franchises at the same venue, the following day. Tickets for The Hundred are [...]
Exclusive: beIN Sports takes legal action against Fenerbahce over Turkish club’s ‘beFAIR’ campaign February 22, 2021 Broadcaster beIN Sports is taking legal action against Fenerbahce over the Turkish club’s high-profile campaign against the network. beIN is suing Fenerbahce for breach of intellectual property after they displayed “beFAIR” branding on the team’s apparel and pitchside advertising displays. Fenerbahce and their president Ali Koc have adopted “beFAIR” as the slogan for a public [...]
West Ham and David Moyes have gone from laughing stock to Happy Hammers – at an ideal time for their owners David Sullivan and David Gold February 22, 2021 Hands up who didn’t afford themselves a wry chuckle when David Moyes, on his return as West Ham manager in December 2019, declared: “That’s what I do, I win.” It was a bold claim from a man whose stints at Sunderland, Real Sociedad and Manchester United might generously be described as chequered. Coming as West [...]
England Netball chief Fran Connolly on the sport’s huge growth, plans to professionalise, and interest from private investors February 20, 2021 Few sports can have had their momentum checked by the pandemic quite like netball in the UK. A decade of extraordinary growth in which participation doubled and exposure at elite level reached unseen heights was jeopardised when Covid-19 hit, forcing a premature end to the Superleague season and halting grassroots netball. Almost a year on, [...]
The changing face of match-fixing and why integrity mustn’t be allowed to suffer as Covid-19 squeezes budgets February 19, 2021 As sports events continue to take place in unfamiliar surroundings, the integrity of competitions has been thrust into the spotlight as match-fixing grows and evolves. The global pandemic has created many new challenges to the sporting world, none more significant than the way in which criminals have been able to intensify their operations and become [...]
Week in Sportbiz: England Netball weighing up approaches from private investors; plus Manchester City’s humble new partner club and ‘super spikes’ February 18, 2021 Netball’s prodigious growth has not gone unnoticed by the private investors who have embarked on a trolley dash of sporting properties. England Netball successfully launched its Covid-adapted 2021 Superleague season last weekend – another feather in the cap of an organisation that has doubled participation in a decade. The governing has renewed its broadcast deal [...]
Japan calms sexism storm by naming Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto as Tokyo 2020 Games president February 18, 2021 Japan’s Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto has been appointed to succeed Yoshiro Mori as president of the Tokyo 2020 Games. The replacement of Mori, an 83-year-old man who resigned over sexist comments, with Hashimoto, a 56-year-old woman, is a significant one for a country criticised for its overwhelmingly male boardrooms. Hashimoto is a former Olympic athlete [...]
All Premier League games to be televised until fans return to stadiums February 17, 2021 The Premier League has committed to televising every match until clubs are allowed to reopen stadiums to supporters. All games have been available on Sky Sports, BT Sport, the BBC or Amazon Prime Video for most of the pandemic – save for short-lived experiment with pay-per-view. That arrangement has now been extended indefinitely, with a [...]
Too much of a good thing: Are round-the-clock matches giving you football fatigue? February 16, 2021 As I’m sure most readers of this publication will be aware, one of the characteristics of money is that there is a limited supply of it. Scarcity equals value, and that’s something which the football world might soon need to take into account. The pandemic’s impact has condensed the football season and, for many of [...]