Industry Shorts: Wwf, Pga Tour, Formula 1

A number of brands – including a host of sports clubs – have taken animals out of their logos and crests as part of the World Wildlife Fund’s World Without Nature campaign.

To mark World Wildlife Day, Premier League sides Aston Villa, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers – who are changing their badge for the second year running – have removed the lion, throstle and wolf respectively from their badges for the day. Joined by a number of EFL clubs such as Millwall, Middlesbrough, Coventry City and Brentford, and Serie A side Roma, the WWF itself has removed the panda from its iconic logo for the first time in its 60-year history.

The campaign – which has the support of brands such as Dove, PG Tips, and Brewdog – aims to highlight the loss of nature, and show that a world without animals is incomplete.

The PGA Tour has announced Amazon Web Services as an Official Partner in a deal which will see the cloud-based platform use its machine learning capabilities to help distribute video footage from every shot of its tournaments, as well as engage with fans.

AWS will become the Official Cloud Provider, Artificial Intelligence Cloud Provider, Deep Learning Cloud Provider, and Machine Learning Cloud Provider of the TOUR, and will power a new OTT streaming platform, Every Shot Live, to give viewers live access to every shot of a tournament – which would see more than 32,000 shots broadcast across a tournament like the upcoming THE PLAYERS Championship, which includes a starting field of 144 golfers.

The Tour will also be able to migrate nearly 100 years of media content to AWS – including video, audio, and images dating back to the 1928 Los Angeles Open – and will stream live footage from future tournaments into that ‘data lake’. The TOUR will then be able to automatically tag content with data like player names and sponsor logos, making the archive footage searchable, and giving broadcast partners instant access to the archive to aid coverage.

Formula 1 has named Ferrari Trento as its Official Sparkling Wine, which will see the brand become the racing series’ Official Toast, used on the podium ceremony throughout the 2021 campaign and beyond.

The three-year deal sees the Italian company replace Champagne brand Carbon ahead of the 2021 season, which begins on 28th March in Bahrain.

Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One team has announced a new deal with software company Netapp.

The partnership will outfit the team with data and cloud services, aiming to help the team maximise its performance on and off the track, with data used to inform the team’s racing strategies as well as helping the team make adjustments to its car in the factory before and after races.

To mark its very first anniversary, The Black Swimming Association (BSA) has announced plans to take on a new research project aimed at tackling inequalities and barriers that preclude African, Caribbean and Asian communities from participating in aquatics. 

Co-founders Danielle Obe, Ed Accura, Seren Jones and Alice Dearing hosted a virtual event to mark the occasion, with key stakeholders including the BSA’s Official Partners, sponsors, national governing bodies, operators, aquatic brands, sports councils, government agencies, media outlets and MPs in attendance. 

The research, which is part of the BSA’s three year strategic plan and core mission to ensure people from African, Caribbean and Asian people have access to equal, inclusive and safe experiences in the water, will focus on ‘identifying, understanding and removing’ the barriers that have led to a significant proportion of people from ethnically diverse communities, particularly those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, disengaging with the UK’s aquatics sector.

New research from Public Health England, written by academics at the University of Derby, saus urgent action is needed to address “stark inequalities” in physical activity levels.

The PHE-funded report warns that the pandemic and a rise in obesity has also exacerbated health differences, and recommends new measures from public bodies responsible for delivering participation opportunities across sport and physical activity.

The recommendations include action to ensure the physical activity workforce is diversely represented; opportunities to create role models and ‘peer-to-peer influencing’, and the creation of a range of accessible communication tools.