Companies pay millions upon millions of dollars to advertise their brands at major sports tournaments. This concept was shaken up recently when a story came to the fore that a Dutch Beer company allegedly engaged in ambush marketing.

South African Airways was the brand that benefited most its sponsorship of the Fifa Football World Cup last week. UK Internet searches for the South African Airways brand (one of the South African team’s official sponsors) increased by 129.2% between the week ending June 5th and the week ending June 12th.

According to reports in South Africa, 36 female Dutch fans were ejected from the Netherlands-Denmark World Cup 2010 match at Soccer City on Monday and questioned by FIFA regarding alleged ‘ambush marketing’.

Champions League winners Inter Milan has announced a new sponsorship strategy which will cut the number of team sponsors from 60 to 25.

The move, which comes after a similar move by fierce rivals AC Milan, was the brainchild of Italian sports marketing agency RCS Sport.

Yahoo Inc said it signed British soccer star David Beckham as a brand ambassador ahead of the World Cup tournament in a move to draw more users to the online media company’s products.

With the World Cup kick-off just about one week away, football fans are already going wild in anticipation. Today Visa has launched its VISA FIFA YouTube Channel to collectively harness this enthusiasm and create the longest “goool!” shout in history.

Italian A.C. Milan and Infront Sports & Media, the club’s official marketing partner, have presented a new marketing concept starting with the 2010/2011 season. The most significant changes are the reduction from 42 to only 32 sponsors and the introduction of a clear, four-tier sponsorship hierarchy

On the night of the October 21st the Real Madrid played Champions League match against AC Milan.
Heineken convinced several university professors, girlfriends, and several bosses to convince their students, boyfriends and employees to go to a concert on that night. All of them couldn’t say no and had to go to the classical concert. But…

BETCLIC chief executive Nicolas Béraud has hit out at UEFA’s refusal to let French football team Olympique Lyonnais (Lyon) wear his company’s logo for tonight’s Champions League tie with Real Madrid, saying it has “no legal basis”.

Sports daily newspaper Marca reported today of a new and improved contract between Nike and Cristiano Ronaldo. Nike will pay Real Madrid’s superstar Cristiano Ronaldo 6 millions euros per year until 2014, which make Ronaldo the highest paid footballer under Nike’s contract.