Industry Shorts: Fifa, Wimbledon, Sky Sports
FIFA and the International Football Association Board (IFAB) have extended the five substitute rule for another year.
Due to the fact that football’s restart has necessitated more matches played in a shorter space of time than normal, the game’s rulemakers had extended the number of substitutes allowed from three to five. That change will now remain in place until 2021.
Competition organisers, meanwhile, will be free to decide whether to adopt the maximum of five substitutes or not. Multiple reports suggest that UEFA competitions including the Champions League, the Europa League and EURO 2020 (which will be held in the summer of 2021) will stick to three substitutes.
The Premier League has not yet announced whether it will continue with the five substitutions it has allowed temporarily during the current restarted 2019/20 campaign.
The AELTC has announced that its Commercial & Media Director, Mick Desmond, will retire after the 2021 Wimbledon Championships.
Desmond, who joined the club as Commercial Director in 2010, and is a former CEO of ITV Broadcasting, has overseen a major transformation of the AELTC’s commercial business which has included extended partnerships across media and sponsorship, the enhancement of Wimbledon’s digital strategy, the in-housing of host broadcasts.
Sky Sports has confirmed that it will make the Premier League match between Liverpool and Chelsea on 22nd July free-to-air on the night the Reds will be presented with the trophy.
The broadcaster had initially promised to make 25 games during the Premier League’s Project Restart available for free to the public at large, and this game was not initially scheduled to be one of them.
However Sky has confirmed that, after talks with both the Premier League and Liverpool, it would make the move, allowing fans to mark the occasion by watching on TV, as well as joining in with family and friends through Sky Sports Fanzone.
The IOC has confirmed that the Youth Olympic Games Dakar 2022 has been pushed back four years, and will now take place in 2026.
The organisation says the postponement of the Games was a mutual decision by both the IOC and the Organising Committee. The pair say the move will allow National Olympic Committees and International Federations the chance to better prepare for the Games, having been affected by the rescheduling of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and the reshuffling of numerous other events in the sporting calendar.
Former ATP Chairman Chris Kermode has been announced as Vice Chairman of Professional Triathletes Organisation.
Kermode served as Executive Chairman and President of the ATP between 2013-2019, establishing the season ending World Tour Finals, which have taken place at the O2 Arena in London. He was replaced in January 2020 by Andrea Gaudenzi.
Twitter and Italian Serie A giants Inter Milan have entered into a new partnership to promote and monetise the content the club hosts on its Twitter channels.
The move will see Inter join the social media platform’s Amplify Programme, which enables advertisers to align with ‘brand-safe content’ from publishers in sport, news and entertainment.
