In the footballing world, there are advertisements everywhere; soccer advertising is as ubiquitous as it is loud.
Soccer was one of the first sports to embrace ads on uniforms. Pitches are rimmed with advertising boards in stadiums named after sponsors. Pre- and postgame interviews are littered with logos. Many leagues now allow ads on jersey sleeves. One club even turned its bench into a giant beer advertisement.
Manchester United keeps deteriorating on the pitch but the club’s value has never been higher.
Jose Mourinho’s Red Devils are off to a miserable start to the new Premier League campaign, with an embarrassing loss to Brighton and a 3-0 humiliation at the hands of Tottenham. But no one ever said you had to be good to be rich (just look at a few notable politicians).
Right now, Austin does not have an MLS team. It doesn’t yet have a stadium, any players, a coach or anything you might associate with a soccer club. It does, however, have a shield, a color scheme and a name. An Austin MLS logo was unveiled at a gathering of about 300 fans on Wednesday evening in Austin, an event attended by Columbus Crew owner Anthony Precourt.
Jose Maria Marin, the former president of Brazil’s soccer federation, was sentenced to four years in prison by a federal court on Wednesday in New York, marking the first sentencing of a soccer official in relation to the United States’ FIFA corruption investigation.
It seems everyone wants to leave Ohio these days. Whether it’s LeBron James leaving for Los Angeles or Urban Meyer facing trouble at Ohio State, sports in the Buckeye State are having a rough go of it recently. So Wednesday’s vote down in Austin, Texas, just piles on the bad news for fans of the Columbus Crew.
The cost of watching soccer in the U.S. keeps rising. ESPN announced it would make ESPN+ the exclusive home of the FA Cup in the U.S. on Wednesday, adding to the growing list of soccer subscription services fans must pay for in order to watch soccer, most of which used to come with a basic cable subscription.
Is there a Mark Wahlberg Columbus Crew takeover deal in the works? According to the actor, it’s a possibility.
In a saga that’s been going on for nearly a year, Crew owner Anthony Precourt is trying to move one of Major League Soccer’s original franchises to Austin, Texas. He claims the club is unsustainable in Columbus, with no potential investors having come forward.
FIFA has finally taken corruption out of the beautiful game.
According to an Associated Press report, the word “corruption” doesn’t appear anywhere in FIFA’s new code of ethics governing officials and players. And that’s not the only shady new practice the AP revealed.
For the price of $5 per month or $50 per year, ESPN+ was already a no-brainer for those who watch MLS, the USL, the UEFA Nations League and lower league English football. However, the broadcast package has significantly upped its offerings with this bit of news: ESPN+ will now stream 340 Italian Serie A matches over the course of the season as part of an exclusive, multi-year agreement in the United States.
Since Barcelona unveiled its plans to renovate the Camp Nou (including expanding capacity from 99,354 to 105,000 and adding a roof to cover seats around the entirety of the stadium) back in 2016, the club has always maintained that a large portion of the cost (rumored to be around $700 million) would be footed by selling partial naming rights for the new ground.