Water bottles have gotten a lot of bad press in recent years. Plenty of those plastics don’t get sent on for recycling and instead take up room at landfills. And there’s some debate about just how healthy it is to be drinking your water from plastic, anyway.

So enterprising folks have been finding plenty of good uses for old water bottles, and one of them has apparently been hired by Nike. The footwear giant has created new home and away uniforms for FC Barcelona that use recycled water bottles for the material. Each set of shirt and shorts uses up to 13 recycled plastic water bottles, according to a press release from Nike.Continue reading...

For some, soccer makes the world go round. For Danish brewer Carlsberg, soccer makes their accountants go around the bend. 

The 165-year-old brewer, the world’s fourth biggest, is making a major investment by sponsoring football’s UEFA Euro 2012 European Championships this summer and that financial commitment to woo sports fans has hurt Carlsberg’s first-quarter numbers. Also hurting its numbers in the quarter: a sales slump in Russia, where Carlsberg owns 40% of the beer market. 

"Our bottom line fell as a result of two factors: one being stock building in Russia in the fourth quarter, which led to significant destocking in the first quarter; the other was an increase in marketing efforts in Russia and connected to the European Championship," said CEO Joergen Buhl Rasmussen, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The stock buildup of beer in Russia occurred before Jan. 1 when a duty increase went into effect there. The company still expects to hit all of its targets this year, the Journal notes, but now will have to make up for the first quarter, which found the company having a net loss of 76 million Danish kroner ($13.3 million). Sales and distribution expenses went up 347 million kroner as well to 4.35 billion kroner on the quarter.

UK retailer Marks and Spencer is an old hand at creating snazzy outfits, such as the official suit that Team England is sporting at the European soccer championships.

But it's also committed to doing so sustainability while helping those in need, which is why M&S has been working with Oxfam for the past four years. That effort has brought in more than 10 million pieces of clothing for Oxfam's "op shops" throughout Great Britain, and now the company is taking its good work to another level.

M&S is expanding the collaboration with the launch of London’s first Sustainable Fashion Lab, a pop-up concept that will open on Thursday April 26 and close on May 9. The idea is to get designers and stylists together with sustainability thought leaders to spark a conversation about how the fashion industry can be more sustainable, while also giving the retailer a platform to highlight its Plan A commitment to become "the world's most sustainable major retailer."Continue reading...

To many, soccer makes the world go round and, if this is true, the country of Qatar is poised to take advantage of the situation. In 2022, Qatar will be the first Arab country to host the World Cup, the world’s most-watched sporting event, and it is building innovative, air-conditioned stadia that will be partially disassembled after the event and sent to less wealthy countries.

Meanwhile, the television-news network owned by Qatar, Al-Jazeera, is using soccer in a different way.

Reuters reports that Al-Jazeera, the most-watched channel in the Arab world, is “racing to launch a new French channel in early June in time for the European Football championships, offering a service for about 11 euros per month.” To get ready, the network has trademarked the channel’s name, beIN Sport, across the globe.Continue reading...

Plenty of sports teams invite fans to come watch them train, travel with them to away games, or come play ball with some of the players who were second-stringers way back when, but the Real Madrid soccer team in Spain is going way further than that.

The team has announced that it is constructing a $1 billion amusement-filled vacation resort and theme park on a manmade island in the United Arab Emirates that will be shaped like the team’s emblem and is slated to open in January 2015.

The club's management team told the press that they're confident it's "an emotional place for an emotional brand" — and a smart business extension that will satisfy hardcore fans and prove to be a 'real' money-maker. Critics aren't so convinced.Continue reading...

It's been a big year for Nike, between the release of the FuelBand and Linsanity (yes, Nike is giving Jeremy Lin his own shoe already, the Nike Hyperfuse 2011 Linsanity PE). The brand continues to impress with a slew of announcements this week, unveiling innovations for basketball and summer sports.Continue reading...

English football isn’t always known for its family friendliness but the West Ham United Football Club (known as the Hammers) in East London took a step in that direction Saturday by adding another mascot to sports pantheon of cute and fuzzy mascots.

The Hammers' new mascot, Hammerhead (at right), isn’t a shark but, yes, it is a hammer. A dancing, showboating hammer. Hammerhead had something to strut about Saturday as his team topped Barnsley F.C. Tykes 1-0. (And it’s not really nice to pick on tykes, is it?)

The team’s fans, though, weren’t sure what to make of Hammerhead, according to Metro.co.uk. On one fan forum, the site notes, one commenter stated, “Rarely have I been so embarrassed at Upton Park” while another wrote, “I personally thought it was much more entertaining than the game.”Continue reading...

Over in the English Premier League, they are everywhere: American team owners that is. Arsenal has Stan Kroenke, owner of the St. Louis Rams and Denver Nuggets, among other teams. Aston Villa has Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner at the helm. Liverpool has the Fenway Sports Group of Boston Red Sox fame and LeBron James at the wheel. Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer runs Manchester United. And Queens Park Rangers and Sunderland have American blood running the show there as well. 

That fact doesn’t always enthuse British fans, but most of those teams have big brands that the American owners have spread further globally.

Now A.S. Roma of Italy’s Serie A with its new American owners, headed up by Joseph Tacopina, a New York criminal-defense lawyer, will try to do the same thing. Tacopina’s fellow team owners include George Soros, one of Forbes’ top-50 wealthiest people on the planet; Thomas DiBenedetto, a partner in Fenway Sports Group; and James J. Pallotta, one of Boston’s top 50 wealthiest folks.

Those kinds of big-money players aren’t just doing this so they can sit in the owners box in Rome. They want results.Continue reading...