Airlines have taken to sponsoring teams in England’s Premier League recently. Etihad Airlines signed on with Manchester City in July. Emirates Airlines has its name on Arsenal’s stadium. And Turkish Airlines has a deal with Manchester United.

Great promotion for the airlines, right? Well, there are a few that get turned off when a brand sign on with a team: the fans of that team’s rivals.Continue reading...

English Premier League club Newcastle United caused a stir by announcing it sold the naming rights for its historic stadium, St. James' Park, to British retailer Sports Direct. In England, a country where soccer stadiums could be mistaken for places of worship, this is scandalous.

However, rising player wages and billionaire owners like Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour are making money more important than ever in the British game, as the New York Times notes.

Sponsorships, of course, generate significant revenue for sports teams, yet American sports teams have generally avoided covering their jerseys in corporate logos, even though rival soccer teams around the world (including American ones) don't seem to mind. Manchester United even has two shirt sponsors: Aon (game jerseys) and DHL (training kit). Spend enough time around a Premier League stadium and you might mistake it for a NASCAR race.Continue reading...

When Qatar was awarded the first World Cup to ever take place in the Middle East, some eyebrows were raised because, well, it’s going to be 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade when the games take place during the summer months and the country only has one stadium that was deemed worthy enough to use.

Still, the country has until 2022 to work out these problems. Part of its bid promised that it would build nine of the most gorgeous stadia you’ve ever seen. They will be air-conditioned to ensure the good feeling and health of the players and fans alike. Also, some are promised to be modular so that they can be taken apart after the Cup and sent along to developing countries so they can enjoy them along with their Texas Rangers 2011 World Series champs T-shirts.

So who is going to build these lovely places? The BBC reports that “over 90% of Qatar's workforce is made up of foreign migrant workers, many of them from South and East Asia,” and several labor unions argue that the workers are not being treated humanely and that, in fact, it's a modern-day form of slavery.Continue reading...

Blacktop 360 Party Hub Grill Fryer is a UFO-like portable tailgating machine that retails for $250. Billed as a "next-level man machine," the grill is "specifically designed for social cooking," better known as tailgating.

The grill is "a deep fryer, infrared grill and griddle all in one. Cook up all your favorite tailgating grub with ease—everything from fries to your favorite exotic big game." One of the neatest little details of the Blacktop 360 is that, in Spinal Tap fashion, the dials "go to 11."Continue reading...

FIFA, the organizing body of world soccer, dug itself a massive PR hole this past spring when a cash-for-votes scandal was unearthed. It left Asia’s former soccer head Mohamed bin Hammam banned for life “after being accused of bribery during his failed attempt to become FIFA president,” according to Reuters.

Though bin Hammam has always denied the allegations, it doesn’t change that FIFA sponsor Emirates Airlines felt “overlooked” during the whole scandal and now is considering leaving when its contract runs out in 2014, Reuters reports.

"We are seriously thinking about not renewing our partnership with FIFA beyond 2014," said Boutros Boutros, the divisional senior vice president of corporate communications for Emirates, told Australia’s B&T Media. The comment took FIFA by surprise, according to Bloomberg.Continue reading...

Last Sunday was a bad day for the Glazer family. Both its soccer club, Manchester United, and its American football team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, lost home games in London over the weekend. That's right, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were the designated home team when they played the Chicago Bears at Wembley Stadium, England's national stadium. It was the Bucs' second trip to London in three years to play a regular season game on foreign soil.

NFL games in Europe are not a new phenomenon. This year's installment at Wembley was the fifth annual “International Series” game played by the NFL across the pond. The International Series began in 2007, the same year that NFL's Europa League ceased operations. The NFL's initial European experiment began in 1995 but failed to generate a profit despite generating strong attendance numbers. Maybe it was a case of too much, too soon.

The NFL's current strategy for exporting American football falls in line with that of Europe's most popular soccer clubs, including Barcelona and Manchester United, both of which toured the United States this past summer to prepare for their upcoming regular seasons in Spain and England, respectively. Many European soccer clubs have also taken their talents to Asia as they scramble to sell replica jerseys and other branded merchandise in Asia's growing economies.Continue reading...

What better way is there to get people excited about a sport then by using beer? Especially a premium beer for a championship league? The NFL has Bud Light, and in Europe, the UEFA has Heineken.

On September 9th, Heineken International launched a new campaign, entitled "Legendary Football," for the 2011/2012 UEFA season.

The series stars five highly-respected footballers; Gianluigi Buffon, Rene Adler, Patrick Vieira, Clarence Seedorf and Ruud Van Nistelrooy, who between them possess almost 350 UEFA Champions League match appearances. Heineken aims to highlight the ‘stage’ of magical moments that UEFA Champions League and football legends create.Continue reading...

Soccer’s quadrennial World Cup – like the Super Bowl and Olympics – is one of the big tamales in the world of sports marketing. Advertisers reach a highly engaged audience of billions. Soccer’s European championship, the Euro Cup, may be second fiddle to the World Cup in this department but it’s still a major feather in the cap for marketers.

That’s why, when the 16-team Euro Finals run from June 8 to July 1, 2012, in Poland and the Ukraine, Adidas hopes to strengthen its position in those Eastern European nations.Continue reading...