What do you think of Umbro's new England football kit?

Umbro unveiled a retro-inspired new England football strip at the team’s match with Slovakia on Saturday and it seemed to prove lucky, helping the team to a 4-0 victory.

The Umbro kit features the brand’s Football Tailored concept, and was designed in a collaboration with Savile Row-trained tailor Charlie Allen.

The football kit, which is made up of a white T-shirt with a collar and reworked Three Lions crest, is influenced by retro shirt designs but uses modern performance fabrics and design techniques.

Umbro senior designer David Blanch said the kit was inspired by the all-white strip worn in the 1966 World Cup semi-final against Argentina.

Blanch said: “The new England kit is a performance garment rooted in tailoring. There’s a lot of work that has gone into the kit design and the detailing. We wanted to kit that would make the give the players pride and confidence to wear.” He added that the t-shirt would have a recommended retail price of £50.

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CBS's $6 Billion NCAA Wager Isn't Dead Yet

A decade ago, when CBS struck a comprehensive $6 billion, 11-year pact with the NCAA for the rights to 89 NCAA properties, including the men's basketball tournament, it was considered one of the most bloated sports deals in television.

But CBS had the foresight to secure a crucial sweetener: new-media rights. A week before tipoff, CBS says it has nearly sold out its online ad inventory to 35 marketers including AT&T and Coca-Cola and expects online ad revenue to reach about $30 million this year, up 30% from $23 million in 2008. Analysts say the current ad slump could make it challenging for the network to profit on March Madness this year, but the deal, which runs through 2013, isn't turning out to be quite as mad as many thought.

During the past couple of years, CBS has knit together a broad network to distribute the tournament, ranging from the Web to a new mobile partnership with AT&T. It has a deal with DirecTV to distribute games by satellite and also broadcasts games on CBS College Sports, the college sports cable network CBS acquired in 2005. "These different platforms were just a gleam in somebody's eye when the deal was signed. Now, they are very real," says Lee Berke, a sports media consultant.

At the height of the dot-com bubble when CBS struck the deal, most consumers had yet to watch online video on their computers, let alone their mobile phones. But Internet stocks were booming, and the prospect didn't seem far off. "Everyone thought the Internet was going to save every business in America," but CBS had no idea how it would use the rights, says Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports and CBS News, divisions of Sumner Redstone's CBS Corp. (Last year, CBS started to distribute the videos across a broad network of sites, including YouTube, Facebook, ESPN.com and Yahoo Sports).

Online ad sales are just a sliver of the total revenue tied to the games. Advertisers last year spent $643.2 million on the men's tournament on CBS, up 23.8% from $519.6 million in 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a unit of ad holding company WPP. Under the pact, the rights fees escalate over the term of the CBS contract -- they're $571 million this year -- putting the network in the awkward position of seeking increases in ad dollars despite a tough economy and shrinking ratings. While Web usage has increased for March Madness, last year's final between Kansas and Memphis drew 19.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen -- down from 34.3 million in 1992. CBS says it has yet to finish its ad sales for this year.

—Emily Steel

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, 09/03/09 page B10

Setanta Could Be In Trouble

The Irish Times details the recent missed payments on a key deal that may indicate some trouble within the UK sports network:

DUBLIN-BASED pay TV broadcaster Setanta Sports is believed to have missed a £10 million installment payment to the Football Association in England, potentially jeopardising its rights to live FA Cup and England internationals and raising concerns about its future viability.

www.Ifight365.com, which is headquartered in the UK, has some keen insight into how this may affect the Setanta's partners.

Speculation is rife that the satellite broadcaster could collapse in a situation that shows signs of mirroring the failure of ITV Digital several years ago.
And one scenario currently being looked at is cutting back on the number of channels currently offered to subscribed in a move that could potentially cause the UFC and Setanta's other partners problems.

And while those deals may be the ones that stand out in the company accounts, the likes of the UFC and an exclusive 3-year deal with Frank Warren’s Sports Network to give a new home to boxers such as Joe Calzaghe and Enzo Maccarinelli could also be hit by the cash-strapped company.

One option is for the company as part of a cutback would be to focus on a smaller number of channels. Currently, Setanta offers customers up to twelve subscription channels. Restructuring and cost-cutting could reduce that number down to as few as two channels, with the focus being on offering as much top quality football as possible.

Obviously if that is the route Setanta choose to go down, other sports will likely be affected to some degree and in some cases, dropped completely.


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