Ahead of the Game: Leicester City decide to stick with embattled sponsor
Leicester City will not exercise their right to seek a new shirt sponsor after their existing partner BC.Game was declared bankrupt last week.
The crypto gaming firm’s two parent companies, Blockdance BV and Small House BV, were hit with the bankruptcy order by a court on the Caribbean island of Curacao following a legal dispute triggered by their alleged failure to pay two customers winnings of more than £1.5m.
Under Premier League rules Leicester could seek to terminate their contract with BC.Game and secure a replacement sponsorship deal as bankruptcy is deemed an exceptional event, but the club have no plans to do so.
BC.Game insists it has no liquidity issues and that it is able to honour its £30m, two-year sponsorship deal with Leicester, almost half of which has already been paid.
Leicester will review their position at the end of the season ahead of the final year of the contract, but have no major concerns at present.
BC.Game is appealing against the bankruptcy order in Curacao, where the company is registered.
MCC members won’t get Hundred dividend
The MCC will not pay a dividend to members if it opts to sell the club’s stake in London Spirit, the Hundred franchise it hosts.
At an extraordinary general meeting last month MCC members voted to accept the 51 per cent share in London Spirit they have been offered by English cricket chiefs, who are in the process of running an auction to sell off the remaining 49 per cent to private investors.
The MCC’s current position is that it is planning to keep hold of its 51 per cent and run London Spirit in partnership with the successful bidders. Should this change, however, the members will not receive a dividend as they are not shareholders in MCC.
The second round of the Hundred bidding process closes this week, with London Spirit expected to attract bids from Lancer Capital, who are chaired by Manchester United co-owner Avram Glazer, Cain International, led by Chelsea director Jonathan Goldstein, Formula 1 owners Liberty Media and the owners of Indian Premier League franchises Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings and Lucknow Super Giants.
Premier League to cash in from IMG split
The Premier League’s decision to end a 20-year production partnership with IMG is driven primarily by a desire to cut costs rather than any imminent plans to launch its own direct-to-consumer TV channel.
At last week’s shareholders meeting the clubs were told that major savings would be made by bringing all of the Premier League’s overseas TV production and distribution in house from 2026, which led to the proposed change being approved unanimously.
IMG charged the Premier League a significant annual fee for running Premier League Productions, the joint venture responsible for all of the top-flight’s overseas TV output, with all 380 games broadcast live in 189 different markets.
The Premier League will set up its own team to provide that service from the 2026-27 season.
The resultant saving has been welcomed by clubs at a time when other Premier League expenditure is rising – particularly legal fees, which have increased tenfold to more than £50m in the last two years.
The Premier League has previously discussed launching its own streaming service – dubbed “Premflix” in the industry – similar to NFL+, which provides live American Football to fans in the US and abroad.
While cutting out the broadcasters remains under consideration in future for some of the smaller international TV markets, insiders say such thinking did not influence the decision to dump IMG.
Given the Premier League also announced a 23 per cent increase in the value of its overseas TV deals last week, it is considered extremely unlikely to make a wholesale move to direct-to-fan broadcasting any time soon.
Autumn Nations brings viewing boom for TNT
TNT Sports obtained record viewing figures for rugby union in this month’s Autumn Nations Series, with almost 1m people watching England’s defeat to South Africa at Twickenham.
England’s third successive defeat was the first time that TNT has closed in on the 1m threshold for a rugby broadcast, with the audience numbers comparable to those for the channel’s Saturday lunchtime Premier League matches.
TNT’s aggregate viewing figures for the Autumn Nations Series are also understood to have been higher than those achieved by previous rights holders Amazon Prime Video, which TNT attributes to having built up a loyal rugby audience through its weekly live coverage of the Premiership.
With a huge subscriber base of more than 13m, however, Amazon’s peak audiences were higher than TNT’s when they had the rights, with some England games attracting more than 2m viewers.
Rooney’s agent link to Plymouth doc
The documentary about Wayne Rooney’s managerial reign at Plymouth Argyle is being made by a production company owned by a major shareholder in the former England captain’s agency.
Kenny Shepherd is an owner and director of Triple S Sports, the agency that manages Rooney’s career, as well as a business partner of Julian Bird, whose Lorton Entertainment began filming the doc at Plymouth earlier this month.
Rooney has used Triple S’s other main shareholder, Paul Stretford, as his agent since he was a 16-year-old breaking into the first team at Everton over two decades ago.
Stretford also negotiated Rooney’s surprise move to Plymouth last summer, six months after he was sacked by Birmingham just 15 games into the job.
Stretford is not involved with Lorton, which two years ago also produced the feature-length documentary Rooney, which was bought by Amazon Prime.
Lorton also made a documentary on Jurgen Klopp’s last six months at Liverpool last season, but have yet to find a buyer for the series.
Plymouth are hoping their documentary will raise the profile of the club and aim to release it next summer.