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The man in the middle at the World Cup final tomorrow, Howard Webb, is very much a down-to-earth Englishman. The 38-year old comes from Rotherham in Yorkshire, which for all its merits is hardly the most glamorous location. He is an officer with South Yorkshire Police but has taken a five year sabbatical to focus on his work as a referee. The town’s football club is having to play at an athletics stadium in nearby Sheffield.
Tottenham Hotspur are taking a novel approach to shirt sponsorship for the coming season. They have landed a £20m deal with software infrastructure company Autonomy for their league matches. They are seeking a separate sponsor for cup matches and are already in discussion with a number of brands. Spurs are, of course, in the Champions League and have a good chance of progressing again in cup competitions, so it could be a good bet for a sponsor. It migh
Talks between the Football Association and Nationwide on the renewal of the sponsorship deal which has lasted 11 years have broken down. Following England;s exit from the World Cup, it is more of a buyer’s than a saller’s market.
BT Vision are going for broke in an effort to move up from their current third place in the UK televised sports market. They are discounting their offer to customers even though Sky have increased their charges for wholesaling their top sports channels.
For me the World Cup is coming alive. I have got over the disappointment over the manner of England’s exit and the early disappearance of my second teams: the United States (where I have lived and worked) and Chile (which I have visited twice recently and met the then President). Germany’s demolition of a talented Argentinian team showed just how good their young team is, particularly with the skill and creativity of Schweinstiger (and gives me another team to support on the ‘lived and worked’ criterion). Perhaps Englands’s 4-1 [4-2] defeat doe
South Africa will get a bigger tourism boost from the knock out phase of the World Cup if the best-supported teams win. That was a difficult choice in yesterday’s two matches. Uruguay ranks 132nd in the world in terms of population (3.5m), although the small population of Uruguay is probably offset by the dedication to football in a country that won the inagural competition and were surprise victors over Brazil in 1950. South Korea was a better bet in terms of population (48.6 million, 26th in the world), but the proportion of the po
There may be tensions and open dissent within the England camp at the World Cup, but the French team has imploded in a way that has triggered a wave of public criticism in France. It is felt that the country’s reputation has been besmirched and President Nicolas Sarkozy has demanded that representatives of the players and the football federation meet with sports minister Roselyne Bachelot to restore calm.
In commercial life decisions to re-brand an established product are taken only rarely. Some have been disasters which have wasted money, e.g., re-branding the Post Office as Consiignia. In fact there has been a recent fashion for reviving retro brand names.
Love them or hate, the angry bee drone of the vuvuzelas has become the distinctive sound of the 2010 World Cup. But will they just be a one-month wonder or can South African firms cash in big time? The biggest horn maker is Cape Town’s Masincedane Sports. Half the company’s R7m (£680,000) revenues in the last decade have been earned in the past 12 months. The company has already exported horns elsewhere in Africa.
