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| Wednesday, September 18, 2019 |
| Major League Soccer entered a multi-year partnership with BODYARMOR that makes the brand the league’s official sports drink partner in the US. As part of the agreement, BODYARMOR sports drinks will hydrate MLS players and the company’s logo and branding will be featured on coolers, cups, squirt bottles and towels on MLS sidelines within the US starting in 2020. BODYARMOR and MLS will also collaborate on exclusive custom content featuring top MLS players and BODYARMOR athlete partners. PROGRAMMING Fenway Sports Management, ESPN Events and the City of Boston are opening the door to “The Fenway Bowl,” a new, annual college football bowl game at Fenway Park featuring a matchup between teams from the American Athletic Conference (AAC) and Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) beginning in 2020. Part of a multi-year partnership between ESPN Events and FSM, the sales, marketing and special events arm for Fenway Sports Group’s elite portfolio of sports properties, “The Fenway Bowl” will mark the first time that a college football bowl game will be played in front of the “Green Monster.” Team selections for the bowl will take into account a number of factors, including regular season win-loss record and geographic proximity, as well as previous appearances and matchups. The game will be jointly produced by FSM and ESPN Events, and will be televised by ESPN. DIRECTV will begin broadcasting select TNF games in 4K HDR for the first time ever, starting Sept. 26. DIRECTV customers with 4K compatible equipment will have access to 11 of the FOX Thursday Night Football games in 4K HDR, including Eagles/Packers, Rams/Seahawks and Cowboys/Bears. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and Rural Media Group inked a multi-year agreement to bring the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo to The Cowboy Channel (TCC) and RFD-TV beginning in 2020, along with a slate of other PRCA programming, including expanded live coverage of the PRORODEO TOUR and the PRCA’s Xtreme Bulls Tour events. The deal will begin early in 2020 and will be preceded with the launch of the weekly PRORODEO Tonight show on The Cowboy Channel. WarnerMedia is partnering with the newly created Xtreme Polo League, the first professional polo league, to build the franchise. According to the announcement, WarnerMedia will “leverage its unique capabilities and platforms to propel the sport of polo on an international scale, partnering on the production, content distribution and global marketing rights representation for all XPL competitions.” During the course of this multi-year agreement, WarnerMedia will provide exclusive access for fans to watch all the matches live on B/R Live in the U.S. and Canada; TNT Sports in Argentina; CDF in Chile; and on the Esporte Interativo digital platforms in Brazil. DIRECTV Latin America will also broadcast all matches live in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. Turner Sports’ U.S. sales division will manage all global sponsorship sales for the XPL and associated linear and digital ad inventory. In ratings news, ESPN saw its Monday Night Football game this week draw an 8.8 overnight Nielsen rating for the Browns’ victory, based on the metered markets. That marks a ruse of 7% over wek 2 a year ago for the network with all three Monday Night Football games in 2019 now up vs. comparable games in 2018. CBS Sports’ second singleheader week of the 2019 NFL season on Sunday was up 27% in viewership averaging 15.244 million viewers versus its comparable second singleheader week last year with a ratings increase of 27% to a 8.9/22 average national household rating/share to rank as the most-watched and highest-rated second singleheader week of the season since 2016. The two singleheaders-to-date on CBS in 2019 are averaging 15.311 million viewers, up 4% versus last year’s 14.683 million. FOX’s America’s Game of the Week reeled in an average of 23,336,000 viewers, up 11% over last year’s window, with the NFL on FOX off to its best start since 2016 with an average of 19,081,000 viewers season-to-date. Speaking of FOX, the network is prepping for the network debut of Friday Night Smackdown on Oct 4 with a road tour to promote the new home of the WWE show. The FOX Sports’ WWE moving truck is decorated with images of WWE Superstars and will see WWE Superstars make appearances at each stop including Seth Rollins, Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Booker T and more. The tour kicked off on Sunday at WWE Clash of Champions in Charlotte and makes 15 additional stops en route to its final destination of Los Angeles on Oct. 4. Stops include MLB on FOX’s Cardinals/Cubs matchup on Thursday, college football’s Big Noon Saturday contest between Michigan/Wisconsin on Saturday and a pair of NFL on FOX matchups, Raiders/Vikings on Sept. 22 and Panthers/Texans on Sept. 29. In local news, KSHB-TV and KMCI-TV announced an agreement with the Kansas City Chiefs to become the team’s official broadcast television partner. Beginning Sept. 21, KSHB and KMCI will become the exclusive local broadcast home for Hy-Vee Chiefs Insider and starting in 2020, the stations also will air Chiefs preseason games, in addition to all regular and postseason Chiefs games that are broadcast on NBC. |
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| SPONSORSHIP & PROMOTION Pepsi is celebrating the return of NBC Sunday Night Football to Cleveland with a limited edition “Believeland” Pepsi, a custom orange-colored cola on Sept. 22. Pepsi will only be producing 1,100 bottles of “Believeland” Pepsi (100 for every year Cleveland has had to wait for Sunday Night Football to return), and it will be available at the tailgate party, which will be free for all fans. Procter & Gamble’s Secret deodorant brand will reportedly snatch up 9,000 seats to National Women’s Soccer League games this season. In July, Secret donated $529,000 to members of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team, which comes out to $23,000 for each of the World Cup-winning players. That donation was intended to highlight the gaping pay difference between what women get paid compared to what the men’s club members receive. In each city, the P&G-bought tickets will be offered to women’s organizations and sports teams and leagues to encourage support of women’s sports. As Oklahoma football celebrates its 125th year in program history, longtime OU partner Coca-Cola will pay tribute to the program by serving as “OU 125” presenting sponsor and introducing an integrated fan campaign for 2019-20. Fans can purchase commemorative 8-oz. glass Coca-Cola bottles customized with the OU 125 logo available while OU-branded 20-oz. Coke or Coke Zero Sugar bottles will offer an exclusive augmented reality feature showcasing milestone Sooner football moments with a cell phone and OU app. Coca-Cola also is developing an OU 125 photo mosaic built over the season through pre-game fan festivities during home games and online. Land Rover North America and U.S. Ski & Snowboard named Land Rover as the new Official Vehicle Partner of the NGB. The multi-year partnership also designates Land Rover as the title sponsor of the Land Rover U.S. Alpine Ski Team, the Land Rover U.S. Grand Prix series, and presenting sponsor of the “Visa Big Air Presented by Land Rover” events. Monumental Sports & Entertainment launched a new brand campaign themed, ‘Raise the game. Be Monumental,” to raise awareness of the Monumental brand amongst local fans and the broader D.C. business community. The campaign explores the ways in which the company is raising the game in sports and entertainment with creative featured in a series of print ads. Monumental also announced today the launch of a new social impact strategy that seeks to make “true, measurable impact in the community.” DIGITAL, DATA & TECH NBCUniversal announced that its Peacock streaming service will roll out in April of 2020 with over 15,000 hours of content. In addition, the platform will take “center stage” at the end of July during the 2020 Summer Olympics. As previously announced, Peacock will be both advertising and subscription supported. Whistle is partnering up with OTRO to collaborate on the development and monetization of content and IP formats globally. OTRO’s talent roster boasts David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane, Neymar Jr. and Eric Cantona, among other football talent from the women’s and men’s top leagues and its partnership with Whistle will see the two companies combine forces to launch OTRO’s new YouTube channel and other cross-platform social channels as well as co-developing and distributing new premium content formats. The New York Yankees announced that Postmates will serve as their exclusive On-Demand Delivery and Pickup Partner and will integrate Postmates Live offering into concession stands at Yankee Stadium. By using Postmates Live, fans will be able to place their stadium concessions order from their seats and pick it up when ready at designated Postmates Pickup locations, with no added fees or time spent in line. The roll-out of the service to additional Yankee Stadium stands will be completed for the 2020 season. ESPORTS A roster of gaming industry veterans are teaming up to launch VENN, described as a new network launching in 2020 that will feature live studios in New York and Los Angeles, aimed at the core gaming, esports and entertainment audiences. Ariel Horn, the four-time Emmy winning producer that pioneered esports broadcast production at Riot Games and Blizzard Entertainment, and Ben Kusin, former Global Director of New Media at Vivendi Games, unveiled the company, which already landed $17 million in seed round funding from investors spanning multiple industries. The investment round is co-led by BITKRAFT, with other investors that include: Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games; Mike Morhaime, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment; Amy Morhaime, former head of global esports, Blizzard Entertainment; Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch; aXiomatic Gaming; BDMI; YuChiang Cheng, co-founder of World Golf Tour and President of Topgolf Media; Lifeline Financial Group, and Reimagined Ventures, the private capital group of Alec Litowitz. 2K is shoring up the competitive opportunities for NBA 2K20, announcing – in partnership with the NBA, the National Basketball Players Association and ESL - the NBA 2K20 Global Championship. Dangling than $100,000 in prizes, the event is designed for aspiring NBA 2K20 players worldwide and will feature head-to-head competition in a series of online and offline events that will take place from October 2019 to February 2020. The slate ends with a final event in the United States to crown the first-ever NBA 2K20 global champion. The Global Finals will take place on February 22, 2020 at the ESL studio in Los Angeles, where eight finalists will compete to determine who will be crowned the first-ever global champion. SailGP entered the esports arena with the launch of eSailGP – in partnership with Virtual Regatta and World Sailing – allowing fans to experience the world’s fastest sail racing in a virtual environment. Virtually, the eF50s will match the look and performance of the real vessel, capable of breakneck speeds in the 50-knot range (60 mph/100 kph) on courses mirroring those used in SailGP. Subsequently, eSailGP will become part of the eSailing World Championship, jointly organized by World Sailing and Virtual Regatta. The United State Golf Association’s upcoming virtual U.S. Amateur Championship esports event will take place this Saturday as part of the WGT at the TCL Lounge at Topgolf in Las Vegas. The event takes place on Saturday at 3p and will be live streamed on Periscope, YouTube and Twitch. The season saw 103,076 players enter the competition, with over 460,000 rounds started with the four remaining players traveling from the USA, Canada, Germany and Brazil (UK citizen) to compete live in the event. INDUSTRY & ROSTER MOVES Miles Arnone and a group of investors have reportedly purchased the Boston Pride from the National Women's Hockey League, making it the only club with a private owner, per ESPN. The NWHL hired a firm to help find owners for all five of its teams, which had been league-owned and managed. The fifth NWHL season begins in October. THE MAIN EVENT PSG/Real Madrid battle in the Champions League on TNT at 3p. |
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| ON THIS DAY in 1977 Courageous, captained by Ted Turner, sweeps the yacht Australia in the America's Cup. In the Know Who portrayed Coach Gary Gaines in the movie version of Friday Night Lights? (Email cpursell@cynopsis.com with your answer and be sure to include your company and city). Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question Which Vikings player holds the team record for most touchdowns in a season? Answer: Dante Culpepper (Chuck Foreman was top non-QB). Kudos: Michael Ritz-Northwestern Mutual/NY; Randy Ingram-WISH/WNDY-TV/Indianapolis; Andy Pittman-TAMU/College Station; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA; David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Credit Union/Burbank; Allison Stevens-Comcast Spotlight/San Francisco |
Cynopsis Team
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