Why Does Jay-Z Want to Buy Tottenham? 🎤
Plus F1 teams to add female drivers, Canadian footballers threaten Nike and Google changes its algorithm to promote women's sports.
Welcome to Athletic Interest.
In the past, when a bunch of Americans showed up suddenly in your neighborhood, it usually meant that you had some oil deposits. Today, they probably just want your local football club.
This is particularly true for American celebrities, with several big names snapping up stakes in football clubs.
NFL legend JJ Watt recently invested in Burnley
Michael Phelps has a small stake in Leeds United
Tom Brady just purchased a minority share of Birmingham City.
This list could soon have another big name…
According to some reports, Jay-Z is considering a bid to purchase Tottenham Hotspur!
If Tottenham’s current owner Joe Lewis is convicted of his charges of insider trading, the club will be forcibly placed on the market. A close associate of Jay-Z has supposedly told the Daily Express that the rapper would consider a bid for the club alongside a team of investors if the price was right.
This isn’t the first time that Jay-Z has attempted to enter English football. In 2010, the rapper failed in a bid to get a stake in Arsenal, a club that he claims to hold dear to his heart.
So, why is Jay Z interested in football?
Well, if you look closer at the rapper’s business interests, it becomes clear that he is building a sports empire.
Through his Roc Nation Sports agency (an off-shoot of his Roc Nation PR company) Jay Z has signed several big names in multiple sports including:
LaMelo Ball 🏀
Robinson Cano ⚾️
Skylar Diggins-Smith 🏀
Kevin De Bruyne ⚽️
Romelu Lukaku ⚽️
Roc Nation hasn’t just stopped with Athletes. The company recently entered a deal with Serie A to help boost the popularity of the Italian league in the U.S. and purchased one of the biggest football agencies in Brazil in order to gain access to some of the biggest young talents in South America.
A move into club ownership would be a new challenge for Jay Z but it seems to follow a wider trend from American investors who seem to think that there is some hidden value in European football teams.
Currently, the average price of an NFL team is around $4 billion. In Europe, top teams like Chelsea, Tottenham, Juventus, or Atletico Madrid are worth almost half that amount. In many cases, the European clubs have higher turnover than the NFL teams, and investors think they open new income streams through better TV deals and lucrative new sponsorship deals with U.S. companies.
But Jay-Z wouldn’t just bring money to the table. The rapper’s overall star power and connections could help Tottenham become one of the most popular clubs in the U.S. - Think Wrexham and Ryan Reynolds but on steroids!
🍎 Sports Business Bites
🏎 All F1 Teams to Have Female Drivers from 2024
Well, sort of… From next season, each of the 10 F1 teams will nominate a driver and put their sponsorship on a car in the all-female support series known as F1 Driver Academy.
It is significant for two reasons:
Greater exposure. The F1 teams will undoubtedly start promoting their new drivers and teams within their existing media structure, exposing the series and its stars to millions of F1 fans.
Greater Opportunities. There have long been calls to have a female driver in the main F1 series, and bringing the teams closer to an all-female support series could help that become a reality.
This move by F1 mirrors a wider trend, with other traditionally male-dominated sports like Football and Basketball starting to give their women’s teams greater exposure and opportunities.
🔎 Google has Changed its Algorithm to Help Promote Women’s Sport
Google has been making a huge push into Women’s sports, partnering with the German and English Women’s Football Teams and becoming an official sponsor of the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
But their support isn’t limited to just sponsorship. Google has actually altered its all-powerful algorithm to help make Women’s sports more prominent in search results.
To be more specific, Google will make sure that gender-ambiguous search results don’t automatically revert to the male teams/tournaments. For example, if you search ‘German Football Team’, Google normally always shows the results of the men’s team. Now, Google is more likely to show you the results of whichever team has most recently played. Google has said it will also make it easier to switch between seeing results for male or female sports/teams.
This may seem like a small change, but it’s hugely significant for the future of women’s sports. Google and its algorithm heavily influence how we see the world and drive what our collective culture considers relevant. These changes will undoubtedly make women’s sports more prominent in our day-to-day lives.
If any Google exec is reading this, we have a video about Women’s football that is ready for an algorithmic push:
👟 The Boot Room
💰 Adidas to Donate Yeezy Money to Anti-Hate Groups
Adidas is set to donate around $120m from the recent sale of Yeezy stock to a number of Anti-hate charities, this includes the Foundation To Combat Anti-Semitism run by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
All Yeezy shoes going forward will include a special blue pin developed by Kraft’s foundation as a symbol of the fight against anti-Semitism and hate speech.
This comes after Adidas sold $565m worth of Yeezy products, with another drop of the remaining stock to be released for public sale this month.
🇨🇦 Nike and Visa Handed Cease and Desist Letters by Canada’s Footballer Federation
The Canada Men’s National Soccer Team Players Association has demanded that Canada Soccer sponsors stop using players’ names, images, and likenesses in advertising. This has included sending cease and desist letters to the sponsors, a list that includes Nike, Visa, and Toyota.
So what is going on here?
For more than a year, Canada’s male and female footballers have failed to reach a collective bargaining agreement with their national federation.
Much of the dispute seems to settle on a deal between the national federation and an entity known as Canada Soccer Business (CSB.)
Since 2018, CSB has managed all of the media rights associated with the national teams and received all of the revenues. In return, Canada Soccer gets about $2-3m per year.
Some of this yearly fee is given to the players when they appear in media for sponsors like Nike or Visa, but the players are not happy that the deal is locked in for around 20 years.
In their view, the value of these rights, and in particular their own image rights, will increase dramatically over the next few years as Canada gets ready to host the World Cup.
By signing away all of the rights for such a long time, Canada Soccer and its players will not see any of this increase.
In an attempt to force Canada Soccer and CSB to re-negotiate this agreement, the players are trying to stop the likes of Nike and Visa from using their likenesses.
Will this work? Well, it’s unclear if the sponsors will listen to the demands of the players. That being said, the sponsors may not want the negative attention and could push CSB to modernise its agreement with the national federation (something that CSB has previously suggested it planned on doing.)
📱 Social Media Madness
🏴 🇪🇸 Scottish team releases new kit inspired by the Canary Islands
Why would a Scottish team release a kit inspired by some islands in Spain?
Did they all get a little too drunk on their most recent package holiday and ask some locals to design their kit? (the football club equivalent of getting a tattoo while drunk.)
Not really…
In reality, this kit, which features the yellow and Blue of local team Las Palmas and an outline of the islands, is a tribute to the strange role that the Canary Islands has played in the history of Raith Rovers.
In 1923, the club was short on money and decided to take a tour to the Canary Islands to help raise some cash. While their boat neared Galicia in Northern Spain it became shipwrecked and sank. Luckily, the entire team was able to escape on a lifeboat and they re-grouped in the Galician town of Vigo.
Eventually, the team caught another boat to the Canary Islands and played four friendlies against local teams, winning every game.
This story has become a key part of the history of Raith Rovers and the club is using this small link to the islands to not only pay tribute but also to help boost some international sales. The club has even opened up the store to international orders in the hope of encouraging some Canary Islanders to buy the shirt.
👀 Spot the Difference!
This is the promotional image for a new deal between Paris Saint Germain and Brilliant Crypto. The image posted by Brilliant Crypto (top) includes Kylian Mbappé, while the one posted by PSG (bottom) doesn’t show Mbappé anywhere.
This perfectly illustrates the different ways that PSG and its sponsors view Mbappé.
For PSG, Mbappé’s refusal to sign a new contract, and his reported agreement with Real Madrid is an embarrassment and his removal from the promotional material is just another way to freeze him out of the team.
For sponsors, the commercial pull of Mbappé hasn’t been damaged, in fact, it may have increased in recent weeks. These companies will attempt to make use of this valuable commercial link to one of the biggest names in sport for as long as they can.
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