Antonella Care elected as President in Football Victoria AGM

Football Victoria's first ever female President was announced at the 2021 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Wednesday, May 12.

Football Victoria’s first ever female President was announced at the 2021 Annual General Meeting (AGM), which took place on Wednesday, May 12.

The groundbreaking moment took place at Darebin International Sports Centre in front of a strong attendance including Members and Life Members from the Victorian football community, where Antonella Care was elected for Presidency unopposed. She has become the first female to be elected for the position in Football Victoria’s 137-year history and will serve a two-year term.

Care has been a Member of the Football Victoria Board since March 2016 and has over 20 years’ worth of corporate experience. She has proven to be a highly qualified professional, priding herself on a strong understanding on governance matters and having positive working relationships with many Local Government departments.

The democratic electoral process also saw the appointments of three Directors, who will each serve four-year terms. Their wealth of experience involves a range of unique skills that will bring fresh initiatives and ideas to Football Victoria.

Jo Bladen is an experienced commercial business and marketing professional mainly in the entertainment industry for The Walt Disney Company, Yianni Zaparas is a Partner of firm Zaparas Lawyers after spending time playing for a range of Victorian clubs in his junior days, while Steve Forbes has had an extensive career in technology, product development, marketing and strategy, in a career spanning 15 years.

Once the electoral results were confirmed, Football Victoria CEO Kimon Taliadoros spoke to the audience summarising the year just gone and targets for the future. He presented the 2020 report and went through the organisation’s key strategic goals for 2021 and 2022.

Taliadoros was followed by Matthew Green, Senior Executive Manager Business Operations – he read out a financial summary.

The impacts of COVID-19 ultimately took their toll, but Taliadoros and Green were equally confident for the future, signalling that stability is starting to return for Football Victoria and the wider community across the state.

Avatar
Liam Watson is the Co-Founder & Publisher of Soccerscene. He reports widely on football policy, industry matters and technology.

The serious waves Series Futsal have made and what it means for the sport

Football within Victoria in a broad sense is difficult to unpack from multiple angles. What is clear is the passion displayed by fanatics.

Although not a traditional form of football, it’s cousin futsal has slowly emerged as a popular indoor sport that has abundance of opportunity within Australia’s major futsal organisation, Futsal Oz.

Futsal Oz has been the manifestation of the football extraordinaire Peter Parthimos, who founded the entity in 2006. When discussing with Peter in regards to why he created Futsal Oz, he discussed how he wished to unify people, provide competitive competitions to those who played the sport, all the while providing opportunity to those who want to play on a leisurely level all the way to a professional level.

Despite having a turbulent tenure throughout the global pandemic in 2020. Futsal Oz came out of Covid-19 with a newly furbished Futsal court fit for its most talented players. The court resides in their Thomastown location. Series Futsal is currently the highest level of futsal across the country and features abundance of Australia’s most coveted football players.

Melbourne-owned Sport Recreational Wear manufacturer AKU is a proud partner, with many women’s and men’s series sides opting to use AKU as a kit sponsor. The company also designed and created kits which were featured in the monthly major event in Thomastown, combining the best players across the Series Futsal competition to represent their respective ethnicities. The event was broadcasted on FireTv, a subsidiary to American-Bulgarian Company TrillerTv, who specialise in combat and European Sport streaming. Melbourne born Commentator Michael Schiavello spearheaded the broadcast acting as executive producer.

Each Wednesday and Friday the competitions are streamed live via YouTube and its independently ran application “Wefroth”, allowing its humble yet passionate fanatics to watch each round of Series Futsal unfold.

Through the running of competitions and the opportunities it sets through broadcast, futsal is in a healthy position.

Feyenoord secure record shirt sponsorship deal with MediaMarkt

German electronics retailer MediaMarkt will become the new shirt sponsor of Dutch club Feyenoord for the 2024-25 season in a record multi-year deal.

The two parties have agreed a three-year deal – through to the conclusion of 2026-27 – believed to be worth around €20 million (AU$33.1 million) in total, according to Dutch outlet De Telegraaf.

The company will replace EuroParcs which has been featured on the front of the Eredivisie club shirts since 2021.

MediaMarkt is a German multinational chain of stores selling consumer electronics with over 1000 stores in ten countries in Europe. The company is one of the largest sellers of electronics in Europe with a total of nearly 2.1 million products sold in 2023.

MediaMarkt’s head office is in Rotterdam and the company became convinced of the collaboration after gaining insight into various data about Feyenoord that suggests large growth is imminent.

It became attractive for the company because Feyenoord has gained a greater reputation not only nationally, but also internationally through long, reasonably successful participations in the Conference League, the Europa League and also the group stages of the Champions League.

As a result of this on-field success, the MediaMarkt partnership would be the Dutch clubs most lucrative shirt sponsorship deal which follows on from a record kit supply deal signed by Feyenoord last year with Castore, a UK sportswear brand.

Feyenoord have been winning off the field as well, recording record net revenue numbers in two of the last four years, including the 2022/2023 season which amounted to €99 mil (AU$164.2 mil), a thirteen percent increase on the previous year.

In domestic shirt sales, they ranked third last season behind PSV and Ajax but are projected to overtake PSV in 2023/24 after their recent league success.

Feyenoord has a tradition of long-term contracts with main sponsors, MediaMarkt will only be the eighth big name on the shirt. More than half a century ago in 1982, the Gouden Gids was the first shirt sponsor.

This deal is proof of Feyenoord’s incredible growth on and off the pitch with their marketing and trophy successes. MediaMarkt hopes to grow further by investing in Feyenoord’s upward trajectory, located right near their main headquarters.

Most Popular Topics

Editor Picks

Send this to a friend