Industry Shorts: Fifa, Formula 1, UFC
FIFA will allow player contracts to be extended until the end of the currently-suspended football season and has also said it will be flexible with moving transfer windows to allow seasons to be completed before the transfer period.
World football’s governing body has recommended that player contracts expiring at the end of June can be extended until the season is completed, and has also confirmed that it will permit transfer windows to be put back beyond the end of August. The move will also create a gap between the end of the suspended season and the start of the next one.
Those transfer deals which are already due to be completed in the summer will be delayed until the end of the current season.
Formula 1’s Canadian Grand Prix has been postponed in what is the ninth race to be impacted so far in the 2020 season.
The event, which was due to be held in Montreal on 14th June, has been postponed, but organisers say they will attempt to find alternative dates to host the event later in the year.
Meanwhile F1 has announced that it will seek to redraw the 2020 race calendar, but says the actual sequence and schedule dates for races are likely to ‘differ significantly’ from the original schedule.
Dana White, President, UFC, says that he plans to host the UFC 249 event on a ‘private island’ in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
UFC has, like most sports, been forced to cancel and postpone events, but White now says that the organisation is ‘back up and running’ and that he is ‘a day or two’ away from finalising plans to host fights on the private island.
Horse racing’s first four classics of the year, including the Derby at Epson and the Guineas at Newmarket, have been called off.
Organisers, however, say that Royal Ascot may be able to take place behind closed doors, ‘dependent on government and public health policy and the approval of the BHA,’ according to Guy Henderson, CEO, Ascot Racecourse.
Pitch Productions says it is to donate all profits from new production briefs over the next three months to the NHS.
The company says its designers are working from home and open to all briefs, but that profits over the next three months will be donated as a ‘thank you’ to NHS staff.
TriNorth Communications has launched two new magazines for freelancers working in football and cricket.
The sports media agency produces titles such as The Blizzard and the Nightwatchman and will now produce sister titles for both of those publications – The Squall and The Pinch Hitter respectively – which will be available in digital format each month.
TriNorth says its staff have sacrificed 20% of their wages as a short-term measure to get the publications up and running, but that it plans to ensure the two titles become self-funding and an outlet for freelancers to continue to work over the coming months.
