Industry Shorts: Limelight, Sky Sports, Castore

LimeLight Sports Club has announced new 2021 dates for each of its seven UK mass participation races, which it says will see 100,000 participants enter across all of its dates, while it aims to raise £5 million for over 400 different charity partners this year. 

The programme of events will begin with the ASICS London 10K on 25th July, with the  London Triathlon set to take place on 7th and 8th August, the London Duathlon set for 5th September, and the Blenheim Palace Triathlon on 11th and 12th September.

Two half marathons will take place in September and October, with the Hackney Half scheduled for 26th September and the Oxford Half for 17th October. Meanwhile, the Scottish Highlands cycling sportive, the Etape Caledonia, is scheduled for 19th September. 

Sky Sports has announced it will continue its rights deal with the Betfred Super League for a further two seasons until 2023.

The deal takes the ongoing partnership to 28 years in duration, and will see Sky Sports broadcast 66 live games exclusively per season – including the Dacia Magic Weekend, Play-Offs and the Betfred Super League Grand Final. 

Sky will get the first pick of games in each of the regular season rounds as well as in Play-Off weeks, while the broadcaster says it will also work with the league to reach new audiences, including making a commitment to screen some of the fixtures on free-to-air Sky platforms.

Sportswear brand Castore will move its headquarters from Liverpool to Manchester, having signed a 13-year lease on a new city centre location.

Founded by brothers Thomas and Philip Beahon, the brand is expected to reach £100 million in revenue this year, and says the move will relocate its current employees as well as create 300 jobs.

In recent months, Castore has announced a series of deals with high-profile sports teams including Scottish champions Rangers and the West Indies Cricket Team, as well as individual brand ambassadors including England pair Jos Buttler and Owen Farrell, Scottish swimmer Adam Peaty, and Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville. It also has a long-standing deal with Sir Andy Murray, which features a collaboration with tennis label AMC.

Hashtag United, the football and esports club formed by Spencer Owen, has announced a five-year partnership with hummel.

The club will launch new bespoke hummel home and away kits for the start of the 2021/22 football season and will also create a third bespoke top that will be worn by the esports team for the FIFA 22 season. In another first for the club, fans will be able to buy the full range of playing and training kit, as well as a range of Hashtag United branded leisure wear, from this summer. 

The club is expected to wear the home shirt for the first time in pre-season, with the away shirt launching at the start of the 2021/22 campaign. 

LDN UTD has partnered with the Rio Ferdinand Foundation to launch UTD AGAINST RACISM – a new online event set to ’empower’ young people through the medium of esports.

The event will take place on 30th May 2021, and will draw on the support of ‘like-minded organisations’ to inspire opportunity, and to celebrate youth-led social action. 

Fans will be offered the opportunity to compete in open qualifiers on FIFA 21 with a chance to play alongside celebrities in the finals brackets at the event, which will be broadcast live on LDNUTD’s Twitch channel and produced by 1080 Media. In tandem with the theme of empowering young people, the stream will include a short film shown in segments on how young people see solutions to racism one year on from the death of George Floyd, as well as other content from celebrity participants.

Scottish Premiership champions Rangers have partnered with pain relief device brand BioWaveGO in a two year deal.

The brand will launch its pocked-sized pain relief device, the BioWaveGO, in the UK, which uses ‘high-frequency electrical signals’ to block pain signals at the nerve. The brand says this ‘tackles pain without the need for medication’.

BioWaveGO will become an Official Partner for Rangers men’s team, as well as taking front-of-shirt sponsorship for the women’s team. It will also sponsor the men’s training bibs, as well as becoming part of the treatment options used by club physios. 

The Welsh Sports Association (WSA), the membership body for the sport and leisure industry in Wales, has announced an exclusive multi-year partnership with live-streaming platform Joymo.

The sports streaming service will become the WSA’s Official Live-streaming Partner and will work with the WSA’s members to ‘accelerate their direct-to-fan streaming ambitions’.

The platform enables teams and leagues across all levels to broadcast their content direct to fans who can watch live or on-demand, allowing creators to generate revenue from their content by charging supporters per game, competition, event or offer season passes.

Arsenal owners Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE) have insisted they will not sell Arsenal ‘at any stake’, following reports that Spotify Founder Daniel Ek is preparing a bid to take over the club.

Ek is reportedly joining forces with a number of Arsenal legends who were part of the Invincibles campaign – Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, and Patrick Vieira – to buy the club, after tweeting last week that he is a lifelong fan of the Emirates club and would ‘throw [his] hat into the ring’ if KSE were willing to sell.

BT Sport has announced that it will make Bank Holiday Monday’s Non-League Finals Day available for free on a range of platforms, allowing fans to watch both the FA Vase and FA Trophy finals without a subscription.

BT Sport’s coverage will begin at 12:45pm as Consett play Hebburn Town in the FA Vase final at Wembley, following by the FA Trophy final between Harrogate Town and Concord Rangers.

Matches will be available on BT Sport’s website, as well as the BT Sport App, BT TV, Sky’s Digital Satellite platform, and Virgin Media.

Coverage will also feature an hour-long episode of The Grassroots Football Show and Proud To Be Town – a documentary from the BT Sport Films series, which charts the journey of Harrogate Town from non-league to the Football League amid the pandemic.

The English Institute of Sport (EIS) has partnered with Nutrition X, which will see the sports supplements manufacturer work with more than 20 nutritionists at the EIS in a bid to support the hydration, energy and muscle recovery of top British athletes across the UK. 

The EIS Nutrition Team works in partnership with over 40 sports, aiming to ensure the 8000 meals every athlete eats every four years, combined with the right nutritional supplements, reduces the risk of injury and illness, facilitates the adaptive response to training and enhances competition performance.

As part of the partnership Nutrition X and the EIS will work together to develop a range of educational opportunities for the sports that the EIS works with, and will also supply products to the UK Sport funded institute.