SPONSORSHIP & PROMOTION
MedStar Health and Monumental Sports & Entertainment locked in an expanded medical partnership deeming MedStar as the naming rights partner for the Washington Capitals, Capital City Go-Go, Washington Mystics, Washington Wizards, and Washington Wizards District Gaming training facilities. Specifically, the Capitals training facility will immediately become MedStar Capitals Iceplex. The new practice facility, opening this fall at the St. Elizabeths campus in southeast Washington, D.C., for the Wizards, Mystics and Go-Go, will be named MedStar Wizards Performance Center. The Wizards District Gaming training facility immediately becomes the MedStar Wizards District Gaming Studio. Additionally, MedStar continues to serve as the Official Medical Provider of the Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards, Washington Mystics, Capital City Go-Go, Washington Valor, Baltimore Brigade, and Wizards DG.
Rogue Fitness and Professional Bull Riders entered a multi-year partnership for Rogue Fitness to become the “Official Strength Partner of the PBR.” The partnership will connect the Rogue Fitness brand to PBR athletes through branded-content story telling on RidePass, the PBR’s western sports digital network where Rogue will highlight the training and preparation “needed to survive and thrive in the world’s most dangerous organized sport.”
DIGITAL & STREAMING
The NFL and Snap Inc. struck a multi-year partnership extension ahead of the 2018 NFL season to distribute NFL content to Snapchat's more than 190 million daily active users. As part of the partnership, the NFL will add a new Sunday Publisher Story to the daily content it produces and Snapchat distributes throughout the NFL season and on a weekly basis in the offseason. These new Sunday Publisher Stories will be updated every hour with highlights and news uniquely packaged for the Snapchat audience. NFL content will be available on the Discover page and past editions of the Publisher Stories will be available using Snapchat's Search feature. Additionally, Snapchat will continue to produce and distribute NFL-partnered Our Stories throughout the season.
Speaking of Snapchat, NBC Sports Group partnered with the platform for Premier League: Extra Time, a new Premier League-focused weekly original Show that will debut exclusively on Snapchat’s Discover page at the start of the 2018-19 Premier League season. Each Monday throughout the season, the Show will bring Snapchatters in the US a recap of the weekend’s top action and standout storylines, while also spotlighting the super fans that make the league, starting Aug. 9 and hosted by Francis Maxwell.
Twitter and MLS launched special hashtag-triggered emojis for both the MLS Homegrown Game presented by Energizer and All-Star Game presented by Target. Fans can trigger the All-Star Game emoji by Tweeting with #MLSHomegrown and #MLSAllStar in the lead up to and during the event. The #MLSHomegrown hashtag will be sewn onto the players’ jerseys and the emoji will be spray-painted onto the field during the Homegrown Game!
MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming Corporation unveiled a new partnership to offer online and mobile gaming platforms – including sports betting, casino gaming and poker – in jurisdictions where either Boyd Gaming or MGM Resorts operate physical casino resorts and online licenses are available. Under this market access agreement, each company will have a path to expand their online and mobile gaming presence across 15 states.
ESPORTS
Twin Galaxies is expanding its offerings with the debut of the TGFC (Twin Galaxies Fight Club), a new esport event series that blends top-ranked fighting game stars for tournaments. The inaugural event, TGFC 1, is slated to take place during EVO at the Esports Arena Las Vegas in Las Vegas on Aug. 4 with 17 competitors squaring off in eight matchups across popular fighting games, including the Street Fighter franchise, Tekken 7, Dragon Ball FighterZ and Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes. The main event showcases rivals Goichi "GO1" Kishida and Dominique "SonicFox" McLean in Dragon Ball FighterZ in a first-to-five exhibition match. The co-main event, meanwhile, will be a battle of dominance between Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi and Lee “Infiltration” Seon-woo.
With EVO 2018 on deck this week out of Las Vegas, tournament organizers revealed their streaming and talent lineup for the event, with eight main state games ready to rumble. A lineup of championships will begin on Saturday at noon local time with Injustice 2, followed by BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle at 4p and Super Smash Bros. for WiiU at 8p. Sunday then brings a full day lineup of finals that include Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 at 8a, Super Smash Bros. Melee at 10:30a, Tekken 7 at 1:30a, Dragonball FighterZ at 4p and Street Fighter V at 7:30p.
Reality Gaming Group locked in a major sponsorship for its upcoming mobile AR combat game Reality Clash with Denmark-based esports community, Sørby. The deal will see the Reality Clash logo on Sørby team shirts, throughout the Sørby Academy and during Sørby’s participation in the upcoming Supreme Masters Counter-Strike tournament in Switzerland, marking the first move into eSports for the Reality Clash brand, which will launch tournaments of its own when the game is released later this year.
After laying claim to the crown at ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2018, Astralis followed up with a new partnership in tow. The team announced a partnership with the makers of fitness drink NOCCO, which will now incorporate Astralis into its group of NOCCO Ambassadors, which now include the Swedish national ice hockey team, NFL pro Andreas Knappe and the two Olympic swimmers Michelle Coleman and gold medalist Pernille Blume.
ROSTER MOVES
Twitter named TJ Adeshola as Head of US Sports where he will now lead all of the country’s sports partnerships for the platform. He previously managed Twitter’s partnerships with major US sports leagues, including the NFL and the NBA. He will report into Laura Froelich, who was recently named the new Head of US Content Partnerships.
The Pac-12 appointed Teresa Gould as Senior Associate Commissioner, Sports Management and Institutional Services, effective Aug. 6. In her new role, Gould will manage sports administration and championships for Pac-12 women’s basketball and all Olympic sports, oversee governance and compliance and serve as the conference’s senior women’s administrator.
THE MAIN EVENT
Phillies/Red Sox on ESPN at 7p.
