Traffic Sports

Aaron Davidson, the former president of the US division of Brazilian sports marketing agency Traffic Sports, will attend a sentencing hearing on April 24 after pleading guilty to corruption charges in a case involving football’s global governing body Fifa.

The Traffic Sports agency has said that it remains the international rights-holder for a series of tournaments operated by Conmebol, after the governing body of football in Latin America announced it had agreed a deal with pay-television broadcaster Fox International Channels.

Jose Hawilla, the founder of the Traffic agency, admitted to a judge in December that he paid bribes regularly from at least as early as 1991, according to court papers that were unsealed on Wednesday.

Imagina, the operator of the Mediapro agency, has categorically denied that it is involved in an investigation into allegations of football rights corruption after the Reuters news agency reported that an affiliate of the Spanish media company is one of the unidentified sports marketing companies to have been allegedly implicated in the scandal by the US Department of Justice.

The partnership between Concacaf, the governing body of football in the Caribbean, North America and Central America, and the Traffic Sports USA agency, has been curtailed.

The bribery crisis engulfing world football looks likely to have a more profound impact on the sports marketing industry than the combined failures of the ISL agency in August 2001 and Germany’s KirchMedia in April 2002.

Executives from the Full Play, Torneos y Competencias and Traffic Sports agencies were accused today (Wednesday) of corruption in relation to the sale of media and marketing rights surrounding certain football matches and tournaments in the Americas.

French basic-tier broadcaster Ma Chaîne Sport has bounced back from losing several rights properties in recent months by agreeing deals for football and tennis competitions.

The IMG Events & Media agency picked up the media rights for the Concacaf 2015 Gold Cup and the Champions League but strong competition failed to materialise.

The centenary version of the Copa América, which will take place in the US in June 2016, looks likely to earn at least twice as much in media rights income as the 2015 Copa América.