Women's Sports Club, Welcome to St Louis, Maracan? 2023, MLS on fire, CBS Sports Golazo Network, and+

Top-3 Highlights

(1) THE WOMEN'S SPORT CLUB

Four-time Olympian and gold medal-winning ice hockey star Angela Ruggiero’s Sports Innovation Lab?announced a partnership with banking giant Ally to create the Women’s Sports Club, a coalition of major brands and media that will work to tackle some of the challenges in buying women’s sports inventory and to elevating investment in women’s sports. More than 20 global brands that buy and sell sports media and sponsorships are coming together to drive media spending to women’s sports. They include names such as Morgan Stanley, Nike, Gatorade, Coca-Cola and Delta, in addition to leagues such as the WNBA and LPGA.?Ally earlier this week completed a major media buy with ESPN. The one-year, multimillion-dollar deal requires 90% of its investment to be put to women’s sports, through expanding game highlights, branded content and features across ESPN. The company also teamed up with the NWSL?and increased its media investment with CBS to elevate the league championship match into a primetime time slot for the first time ever. The company has committed to achieving equal spending in men’s and women’s sports over the next five years.

(2) PROBLEM SOLVED! OR WAS IT REALLY??

FIFA is reportedly planning to drop Saudi Arabia’s tourism board as a sponsor for the 2023 Women’s World Cup. Visit Saudi was revealed as a tournament partner in January, but the announcement received criticism in regard to the nation’s controversial human rights record. Shortly after, hosts Australia and New Zealand wrote a letter to FIFA demanding clarification, as they were not consulted on the deal. But it appears that the matter is still not settled. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the deal could be disassociated from Saudi Arabia’s tourism board and credited to another Saudi body. Now that would be something FIFA would?do, wouldn't it??

In related news,?FIFA has unveiled Women’s World Cup posters for host cities.?

(3) WELCOME TO ST LOUIS (& WELCOME BACK TO DALLAS!)??

Check out this amazing drone tour of St Louis City SC's CITY PARK stadium and this epic drone ?show at Dallas FC's home debut.?

Other relevant US Soccer News

The MLS is planning its own sports technology incubator, building on the launch of MLS Season Pass with Apple TV and a raft of recently announced partnerships designed to strengthen its technical and content capabilities. The aim of MLS Labs is to use the North American soccer league’s scale and profile to provide a platform for early stage sports tech firms to test and scale their innovations at real-life events – including the MLS All-Star Game.

In related news, the MLS has agreed a multi-year deal with sports technology companies Sportec Solutions and Deltatre to create data feeds from all MLS matches for Apple’s MLS Season Pass service.

MLS has also unveiled a 'multi-year' agreement with Ticketmaster to replace SeatGeek as the league's official ticketing partner.?

MadaLuxe Group CEO Adam Freede has purchased a minority stake in MLS'?LAFC.?He joins a long list of LAFC limited partners with business expertise in sports-adjacent areas such as technology, media, investing and e-commerce, like former YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, actor Will Ferrell, Phoenix Holdings chairman Henry Nguyen, Fanatics chief strategy and growth officer Tucker Kain, Endeavor president Mark Shapiro and Joe Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba and owner of the Brooklyn Nets.

According to The Athletic, the MLS' deal to broadcast its games on Apple TV+ contains an “opt-out” clause that would allow Apple to walk away from the agreement if a certain number of subscribers have not added MLS Season Pass within a set timeframe. But, not only it's a 10 year deal, but also both MLS and Apple seem content with their partnership: last week, they announced that the producers of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” would be making an MLS docuseries to stream on Apple TV+. Also, MLS drew 380,502 fans to its games on opening weekend — the most in league history. I don't see that "opt-out" clause being used anytime soon...

The NWSL has announced a deal with Canadian sports broadcaster TSN to air league matches in English, including the championship game, on its network and streaming service TSN+.

Soccer promoter Relevent Sports' lawsuit against FIFA and the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) can go to trial after an appeals court reversed a lower-court's decision to throw out the suit.

The “German Clásico,”?Bayern Munich?against?Borussia Dortmund,?a game that could help decide the eventual Bundesliga champion,?will be?broadcasted ?in the US on?the over-the-air free television network?ABC, together with?ESPN+, on April 1st’s.?Scheduled to kick off at 12:30PM ET, this is the second year in a row that Der Klassiker is on ABC.

The USL Championship and League One -- the United Soccer League's two men's pro leagues -- will air all their matches on ESPN platforms in 2023, the eighth season that ESPN is the USL’s exclusive national media partner.

CBS Sports will launch a 24-hour soccer digital network, the CBS Sports Golazo Network, on April 11. CBS Sports has entered the U.S. soccer broadcasting in a big way with its coverage of the UEFA Champions League, the NWSL, Italy's Serie A, Brazil's Brasileir?o?and Concacaf national team competitions, among others. The CBS Sports Golazo Network will air on CBS Sports digital platforms, Paramount+ and Pluto TV.

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Other relevant Global Football News

Conmebol confirmed that the 2023 Libertadores Final will be played at the Maracan? stadium, the most iconic stadium in the world. The Sudamericana final will be played in Uruguay, in a venue TBD.?

Brazil is preparing a bid to host the 2027 Fifa Women’s World Cup, the country’s sports ministry has announced.

Read?here ?how investments from online betting brands in the sponsorship of Brazilian football clubs and competitions over the last 12 to 18 months have led to massive inflation in the value of sponsorship rights, even though sports betting is still not fully regulated in the country.

European football’s governing body UEFA?received total revenues of €4.05bn ($4.32bn) last season, according to its recently published Financial Report for 2021-22. It is the first time that non-Euro competition revenues have exceeded €4bn, a milestone which UEFA puts down to its new club competition, the UEFA Europa Conference League, and a revamped format for the UEFA Women’s Champions League.

After winning the women’s Euro in July 2022, England’s national women’s football team landed another victory off the pitch as the world celebrates International Women’s Day. Responding to an open letter written by the team, the U.K. government is providing roughly $710.4 million over the next two years to create equal school opportunities for girls — including requirements to offer equal sporting access and a minimum two hours of physical education per week. Currently, only 46% of schools provide the same extracurricular opportunities as boys, according to the FA, while 67% of all schools and 41% of secondary schools offer equal soccer opportunities in PE lessons.

Leeds United's American midfielders?Tyler Adams?and?Weston McKennie?sparred with British boxers?Josh Warrington?and?Maxi Hughes— in a baking challenge sponsored by?Hisense. Watch it?here .

The German Football League Association (DFL) plans to put an end to exceptions to the current rules requiring member control of clubs in the country's top leagues. The rule, nicknamed 50+1 and enshrined in DFL regulations, requires that all Bundesliga clubs wholly or partly own the team. The 50+1 rule, unique among the major European leagues, is popular among German supporters for encouraging ownership by fans -- and discouraging foreign ownership.

Canada Soccer?and the country’s women’s national team struck a?deal ?on interim funding for 2022, helping to resolve an issue that had the team threatening to strike last month. The two sides are still negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement, after the previous one expired in 2021. In related news,?GE Appliances, a sponsor of?Canada Soccer,?says ?that it is prepared to put up C$100,000 ($72,685) to help resolve the pay dispute between the governing body and its women's national team.