Latest news with #sponsorship
Reuters
6 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
Report: Aces players receive another $100K with investigation in limbo
June 3 - Every player on the roster of the Las Vegas Aces will receive a $100,000 sponsorship fee, courtesy of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. That's according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which reported that all 13 players have signed an agreement for the 2025 season. It's the second consecutive season the tourism group and the Aces are partnering. After the first deal was announced last May, the WNBA announced it was launching an investigation. Steve Hill, the president of the LVCVA, told the Review-Journal on Monday that his group has not been informed of the status of the investigation. "I don't know the inner workings of the league," Hill said. "I'm not looking to cause more of an issue, and it doesn't seem like there's an issue there. So we're just moving forward." Please also have benefited from perks such as concert tickets as part of the sponsorship agreement. As for the benefits for the organization, the report said social media views of the players' interactions with its membership at the time of the 2024 deal announcement received at least 2.2 million views on the X platform alone. "The announcement itself made it a success, just all by itself," he said. "There was an awful lot of attention and eyeballs on Las Vegas." The players' commitment is to represent Las Vegas at various events, including at the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix, and the deal was agreed to directly with the players and didn't have team input. Hill said the LVCVA's sponsorship agreement was never intended to help the Aces skirt the league's salary cap. Pay in the league in 2024 ranged from the mid-$60,000s to a $242,000 supermax deal. "This was not in coordination with the team, and there was not an attempt to support the salary cap," Hill said, per the report. "It's just a sponsorship that helps draw attention to the pay levels of players. So getting those ambassadors out there and making them a part of our marketing effort has been great." --Field Level Media
Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Guinness and Three seen as Ireland's ‘top sponsors' as number of deals rises 29%
Guinness and Three have been named as Ireland's top sponsors as the number of sponsorship deals rose 29 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, according to data from consultancy firm Onside. The group, which announced the top sports and non-sports sponsors in its quarterly review on Tuesday, said the GAA had a 'very active first quarter', with renewals from long-standing sponsors Centra, SuperValu and Allianz. The group, which has been running the reviews since 2016, said horse racing and soccer were also 'very active categories'. Guinness secured the 'most appealing sponsor' position in sports, driven by the success of the Guinness Men's and Women's Six Nations Championships. READ MORE Vodafone, a long-standing partner of the IRFU, claimed second place, followed by Lidl for its sponsorship of the Women's Gaelic Football Association (LGFA). Telco company Three emerged as the top non-sports sponsor, recognised for its music and venue naming rights strategy with the 3Arena and the 3Olympia. Electric Ireland, for its partnership with Pieta and Darkness Into Light, secured second place, while SuperValu rounded out the top three for its Tidy Towns sponsorship. Onside said the research shows the 'enduring appeal' of rugby as a sponsorship platform in Ireland. Five of the top 10 most admired sports sponsors have prominent partnerships in the sport. 'Despite a disappointing result for Ireland in the 2025 Guinness Six Nations, the review highlights the mass appeal of rugby for consumer-facing brands,' the group said. 'Leading IRFU sponsors Guinness, Vodafone, Aviva, Bank of Ireland and Aldi all feature prominently among the top sports sponsors.' Connacht rugby star Bundee Aki was named as the 'most recognisable, admired, trustworthy, and influential' Irish rugby personality, followed by Leinster's James Lowe and Caelan Doris. Other appealing sports sponsors included Allianz as the top sponsor of Paralympics Ireland and the Olympic Federation of Ireland, and as a sponsor of the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship. Elsewhere, notable sponsors named were Sky as primary partners of the women's and men's national football teams, as well as AIB which sponsors four codes in GAA. 'The sponsorship landscape is constantly evolving, and our review highlights the power of authentic partnerships that resonate with the Irish public,' says Kim Kirwan, director of intelligence and insight at Onside. 'Rugby's continued dominance demonstrates its ability to connect brands with consumers, while the success of non-sports sponsorships like Electric Ireland's Darkness into Light shows the importance of aligning with meaningful causes.'
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Who really owns the music festival you're heading to this summer?
Anyone who works in the kind of music festivals that don't have billion-dollar entities behind them, will tell you how challenging it is to make things financially sustainable right now. Costs for almost everything a festival needs to run have gone up. Trends in ticket sales are still fluctuating since the pandemic, with big-event experiences sucking up audiences over smaller events. Money needs to be found somewhere, and for years, the experience at many large music festivals is akin to being in a mall where the visual noise of brand 'activations' is as loud as the main stage. We are deep in festival and outdoor concert season. This summer, what that means is asking questions about ownership, sponsorship, and line-ups. A rolling wave of artist and cultural boycotts related to Palestinian solidarity is simultaneously exposing the role of private equity in festivals: who owns what, and who funds what. Some lines of ownership are relatively simple. Coachella, for example, is run by Goldenvoice, which is a branch of AEG Presents, which is the live arm of Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which is part of the Anschutz Corporation, which began as an oil well drilling company. The name of Philip Anschutz – the billionaire owner of the entity and son of its founder Fred Anschutz – popped up in the 2017 hearings of the now US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. According to the New York Times, in 2006 Anschutz successfully lobbied a Colorado senator and the White House in George W Bush's era to nominate Judge Gorsuch to the federal appeals court in Denver. In the 2017 hearings, then-Senator Patrick Leahy noted Anschutz financed uber-conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation . Rock and roll. READ MORE Other lines of ownership, and where various parent companies invest their money, are more opaque. Currently under fire is Superstruct Entertainment. Superstruct operates in what it calls 'the experiential economy', and owns multiple festivals including the massive Sónar in Barcelona, which it bought in 2024, and the equally large Hungarian festival, Sziget. Last January, Superstruct bought the hugely popular electronic music brand, Boiler Room, from the ticketing platform Dice. It also owns the UK LGBTQ+ festival Mighty Hoopla, and the Dutch electronic music festival DGTL. [ How Live Nation calls the tune for the live music industry Opens in new window ] In June 2024, Superstruct was sold by the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners to another private equity firm, KKR , for €1.3 billion. KKR's portfolio is worth around €620 billion. Its investments include the Israeli data analytics company Optimal+, and the Israeli data centre company Global Technical Realty. In 2019, KKR bought Novaria Group, a manufacturer of aerospace hardware, an acquisition characterised by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute as 'betting big on the US defence industry and aerospace engineered parts are part of that theme'. In 2023, KKR bought Circor International, described as 'one of the world's leading providers of mission critical flow control products and services for the Industrial and Aerospace & Defense markets'. Discontent around the KKR-Superstruct relationship has been brewing for some time. Now artists are taking a stand. The London festival, Field Day, bought by Superstruct in 2023, saw 15 artists pull out due to the KKR links. At the time of writing, 28 artists have pulled out of Sónar. Spain's culture minster, Ernest Urtasun, said that KKR is 'not welcome in Spain' , citing policy that companies with alleged economic interests in illegal settlements in Palestine 'cannot operate normally in the European Union'. Superstruct's sale to KKR was beyond the control of various festivals under this umbrella, and they have said as much. But the lack of autonomy festivals have over whose portfolio they ultimately end up in is a recurring theme. Individual consumers experience the same issue. The difference now is that artists and music fans are becoming more aware of financial flows in the context of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and Palestine solidarity more generally, especially at a moment when artists are core to such activism. This is before we even get into the US antitrust lawsuit concerning Live Nation (long-merged with Ticketmaster), heading to trial next March. Last month, Live Nation added a new figure to its board of directors, Richard Grenell , Donald Trump's special presidential envoy for special missions. In Trump's first term, Grenell was ambassador to Germany, a tenure that led Martin Schultz (the former leader of the Social Democratic Party) to characterise his behaviour as 'not like a diplomat, but like a far-right colonial officer'. [ Occupied Territories Bill: what's in it, how it has changed and what the implications might be Opens in new window ] The consciousness of artists and fans is being raised. This moment is about many things. It's about a younger generation and the artists they admire drawing a line. It's about the claustrophobia of capitalism, a system within which escape from ownership and practices whose values you disagree with often feels stiflingly impossible, rendering consumers inadvertently complicit as their spend downstream filters up to god knows what. It's about the billionaire class. It's about shape-shifting conglomerates, private equity, and their Hungry Hippo approach to gobbling up companies and brands digested in heaving portfolios. But it's also about a new generation querying financial flows and their beneficiaries. It's about the BDS movement becoming more and more mainstreamed. And ultimately, it's about something that has always been the case: big money is rarely clean.
Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
College Star Xaivian Lee Signs Signature Sneaker Deal
College basketball star Xaivian Lee has signed a sponsorship deal with Serious Player Only. College basketball star and NBA prospect Xaivian Lee already has a deal for a signature sneaker. The Toronto native who played at Princeton and is now with the University of Florida signed a deal with Serious Player Only for a multi-year brand sponsorship that includes a future signature shoe. 'SPO is a young and upcoming brand with a strong belief in their products and future,' Lee tells me, 'similar to how I view my own story.' Oigi Yang, CEO and co-founder of Serious Player Only, says that Lee brings innovation, craft and an unstoppable work ethic that can inspire. 'Xaivian is more than a rising star,' Yang says, 'he's a cultural bridge, and we're proud to walk this global journey with him. This partnership represents more than just a brand and athlete endorsement, it's a statement about the future of sports branding.' The new deal for Xaivian Lee includes a future signature sneaker. Yang says value-driven brands can stand 'toe-to-toe with legacy giants' by having a focused understanding of their audience. With basketball continuing to expand globally—and with young players—Lee says that upcoming athletes gaining more notoriety could be the future of sports branding. 'I wouldn't be surprised to see similar, innovating things like this in the future,' the 21-year-old says about signing a signature deal so early in his career. George Langberg, founder and CEO of GSL Sports Group, helped craft the sponsorship deal and says the combining of Lee and SPO offers a partnership where 'vision meets craftsmanship.' MORE: Xero Shoes Set To Release X1 Basketball Shoe Worn In NBA SPO, which already has Toronto Raptors Jonathan Mogbo, the first NBA player to sign with the brand, and a top-ranked high school point guard in Emilee Skinner, adding Lee will be about more than just another name on the roster. The brand has committed to a future signature shoe, immediate signature colorway releases and full creative freedom in a collaborative design process as the brand looks to amplify Lee's influence 'across Asia and North America.' Xaivian Lee is from Toronto and will play at Florida next season after playing at Princeton ... More previously. 'I'm excited to be a part of the creative process in both the shoes and clothing,' Lee says. 'I want to inject my sense of style into their already existing ideas and create something special.' From a performance point of view, Lee says SPO's different sneaker models 'strike a nice balance of performance, functionality and style.' A key feature of SPO footwear is the interchangeable insoles, providing differing performance needs. 'I enjoy the optionality with the different insoles to adjust to my needs,' Lee says. Lee's looking forward to seeing where Serios Player Only heads and how he can be a part of that. 'Looking for a brand to partner with, I thought Serious Player Only has a really good vision on where they want to be,' he says. 'I'm really excited to see where the brand can go in the future and how I can be a part of that and help bolster it even more. I love seeing how Serious Player Only is growing across regions and building something unique globally as a young and upcoming brand.' MORE: On's The Roger Footwear Line Modernizing And Growing
CTV News
3 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
Pride Toronto faces another setback as Google, Home Depot pull sponsorship
Two more major corporate sponsors have pulled their funding for Pride Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Lahodynskyj) Pride Toronto has faced another setback, losing two more major corporate sponsors — Google and Home Depot — just before Pride Month begins, Pride Toronto executive director Kojo Modeste told CP24 Saturday afternoon. This latest setback follows several other sponsorship losses Pride Toronto experienced in recent months. Modeste spoke to CTV News about those earlier losses in February. The non-profit in charge of the 2SLGBTQ+ festival is facing a loss of around $700,000 in corporate sponsorships as a result of all the withdrawals, he said. Modeste and the Pride Toronto team first heard about Google's withdrawal on May 1, while Home Depot's decision was disclosed on Wednesday. However, no reasons were provided for the termination of sponsorships by either company, he said. 'They both agreed that they were going to be part of the festival this year. They gave us a verbal commitment. In one case, they gave us a written commitment,' Modeste said. 'It was not a signed contract. So, it was very unfortunate to lose both these sponsors.' Pride Toronto has numerous contracts with artists and vendors from across Canada, so there won't be any major changes in the planning of the 2025 festival. However, Modeste stated that things could look very different by next year if this trend continues. 'We do hope that we're going to be able to recover from the loss that we currently have,' he said. Modeste attributes these changes to the influence of the political climate in the U.S. and the direction taken by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration. 'Pride Toronto has been in other hard positions in the past, and they recover,' he said. 'And I can assure you, I want folks to know that they're coming and should expect nothing but the best from Pride Toronto.' Google and Home Depot have not responded to CTV News' request for comment. Pride Toronto will host festive activities beginning June 1, when Pride Month begins. The Pride Parade will take place on June 29.
