Chanel chief Leena Nair joins Tech Titans investor group at London Spirit
Chanel chief executive Leena Nair has joined the Tech Titans group of investors who now own 49 per cent of London Spirit.
The British-Indian executive was at Lord’s last week for the first game of this year’s Hundred competition between Spirit and Oval Invincibles after reaching out to Nikesh Arora, the chief executive of Palo Alto Networks who is leading the consortium.
Mair is the first British woman to take a stake in one of the Hundred franchises after being appointed the first female chief executive at Chanel three years ago.
The 56-year-old, who was born in Kolhapur, had no previous experience of fashion before joining Chanel having spent 20 years at Unilever, latterly as head of Human Resources.
The Tech Titans have been inundated by offers from executives and high-net-worth individuals seeking to join their consortium since their successful £151m bid for London Spirit in the Hundred auction in January. An initial group of 15 investors has grown to 25 during the last few months, and more may join in the future.
Johann Rupert, a South African billionaire who is chief executive of Swiss luxury good brand Richemont, is understood to be another recent London Spirit addition.
The chief executives of Adobe, Google and YouTube have been investors in London Spirit from the outset. Satyan Gajwani, the vice-chairman of Times Internet, said last week that not even the World Economic Forum could bring such a group together.
Sky Sports extra-time
Sky Sports could potentially broadcast an extra 10 Premier League matches this season on top of the “215 live games” they have been enthusiastically promoting ahead of Friday night’s big kick-off between Liverpool and Bournemouth at Anfield.
As part of their new four-year deal Sky have the rights to all of the so-called “displaced” games featuring clubs involved in European competitions on Thursday evenings, which were not originally selected to be broadcast.
The final number of games shown by Sky will depend on how far English clubs progress in the Europa League and Uefa Conference League, but with Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace all involved in those competitions the chances of getting extra games without an additional rights fee are high.
One small silver lining for Palace fans following confirmation that they will be demoted to the Conference League, is the likelihood that more of their Premier League games will be televised if given Oliver Glasner’s side will be confident of doing well in Uefa’s weakest competition.
Football galore
Sky’s increased Premier League offering is just the tip of an iceberg which demonstrates the huge growth in the amount of televised football available in recent times. With Sky also having live rights to the EFL, Women’s Super League, Scottish Premier League and Women’s SPL they will broadcast over 1,500 live games this season.
Their main domestic rivals TNT Sports will show over 700 games from the Premier League, FA Cup, women’s FA Cup and all three Uefa club competitions. In a competitive market Amazon Prime, Dazn, Disney+ and Premier Sports have also bought significant football rights packages.
Bargain basement bouts
The BBC have secured a bargain by agreeing a deal with insurgent fight promoters Boxxer to bring professional boxing back to Saturday night free-to-air TV.
Morning Wire has learned that BBC Sport are only paying a minimal rights fee for the deal that was announced last week, but have committed to covering production costs. The new contract is understood to be a four-card deal in which the main fight of each promotion will be shown live on one of the BBC’s main channels, with selected undercard fights and behind-the-scenes content to be made available on BBC iPlayer, their website and app.
Boxxer, whose stable of fighters includes Chris Eubank Jr and female world champions Caroline Dubois and Lauren Price, previously had an exclusive rights agreement worth around £9m per year with Sky Sports, who opted not to renew when their contract expired in June.
The limited rights fee is likely to raise questions about the size of the purses to be made available to fighters and the quality of the cards Boxxer will be able to put on.
As revealed by The Sunday Times last weekend, the BBC obtained formal written assurances from Boxxer that convicted cricket match-fixer Mazhar Majeed, who brokered a 2021 fight between Amir Khan and Kell Brook shown by Sky, is no longer involved with the company.
Pay up!
Middlesex are facing demands for increased rent from the Marylebone Cricket Club to play at Lord’s next season.
Under the current terms of their lease Middlesex pay rent to MCC, who keep the gate receipts and hospitality revenue from their games, which is understood to have remained stagnant over the last few years while the cost of staging matches has increased considerably.
The two parties have yet to agree an extension to the existing 12-month rolling deal which expires at the end of the season, but are expected to do so.