A sponsor cost Pirlo the Italy job | MJBurrows Sport - Issue No 8

Two Tuesday stories from sport's back office: a sponsorship deal that cost a legend the Italy job, and a streamer that walked into live darts without paying for a single right.

Andrea Pirlo was all but the next Italy manager — until someone read his sponsorship file. His role since October as an ambassador for Fonbet, a Russian betting firm, sank the appointment before it was even announced: Italian politicians, among them a European Parliament vice-president, objected to anyone promoting Russia holding national office, and the federation quietly let the idea go without a formal offer ever being made. None of the Fonbet detail was hidden — it had simply never been read as part of a job application. That is the shift worth marking: an ambassador deal is the cheapest tier of endorsement there is, a logo and a few appearances, and it has just cost an Italian great the biggest job in his own country. Federations will vet those contracts before the CV now.

Netflix, meanwhile, found a door into live sport that costs almost nothing to open. On 30 October it will stage its first live darts night, putting £501,000 on the board for any of 20 amateurs who can beat Luke Littler over a single leg — a co-production with the Matchroom-run PDC, with no rights auction and no bidding war. Set that £501,000 against the reported £20m of Littler's ten-year Target Darts deal and the prize looks less like sport than marketing: if nobody beats him, Netflix keeps the money and the audience anyway. Sky still holds the darts, this season at least — but a streamer has now run a live PDC event on its own platform, and the next rights conversation will not be held against nobody.

One contract sank a manager, another let a streamer skip the rights queue — the week's sharpest plays were made in the back office.

Italy have not reached a World Cup since 2014, and the man lined up to end that run has just lost the job before he was ever given it. Yet Andrea Pirlo did not lose it on tactics or results. He lost it over an ambassador deal he signed in October with Fonbet, a Russian betting firm. Sponsorship used to be announced after the hire — now it decides whether the hire happens.

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£501,000 is sitting on a dartboard, and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) has put it there. Yet the prize money is the least interesting number in this story. Netflix has walked into live darts without an auction, without outbidding anyone and without buying a minute of rights. For a company that has circled live sport for years while balking at the price, this is the cheapest door it has found — and nobody was guarding it.

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Andrea Pirlo lost the Italy job over a logo and a few appearances, while Netflix walked into live sport by putting half a million on a dartboard. The lesson, as ever, is that the smallest contracts and the cheapest ideas tend to move the most. — MJB

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