English Premier League football club Arsenal has inked a new partnership with Chinese lottery products supplier DJI Holdings.
The three-year deal will see Arsenal FC serve as DJI Holdings’ Official Lottery Partner in China. DJI will get to offer its customers “a range of high-quality Club content on a regular basis” while Arsenal will (presumably) get to cash lots of checks.
The UK-listed DJI will offer fans weekly prizes, including team swag and tickets to matches at Emirates Stadium, in case anyone from Guangzhou happens to be in London that week. DJI will also gain access to “exclusive information about The Gunners,” which hopefully includes tidbits like Arsène Wenger’s Facebook log-in.
This deal isn’t the first unorthodox Asia-EPL pairing to make news this season. Last month, Manchester United signed its first Asian land-based casino partnership with Donaco International, which operates casinos in Vietnam and Cambodia.
TITANBET RE-UP WITH BARNES
Playtech’s B2C Titanbet offshoot is sticking with former England and Liverpool winger John Barnes as its brand ambassador. The deal, which spans the 2015-16 season, will see Barnes offer insights into Premier League action via his official Twitter account, as well as via a weekly bog and audio in which he offers his picks for upcoming matches, plus public appearances on behalf of the Titanbet brand.
Barnes said he was “delighted to be working with Titanbet for a second year” and expressed the hope that his forecasting skillz will allow punters to win big. Titanbet’s UK sports manager Russel Yershon said the association with Barnes “fits with our UK strategy perfectly” and will help cement the bookies’ reputation as “a competitive UK operator.”
CORAL GET SOCIAL WITH STRICTLY COME DANCER
Finally, and this has bugger all to do with sport, but UK bookies Coral have inked a social media deal with James Jordan, the professional hoofer who until recently appeared on UK reality series Strictly Come Dancing. Jordan, whose show partners over the years included Denise Van Outen and Alex Jones, will promote Coral’s odds on the show via his Twitter feed, as well as offer predictably catty comments regarding the show’s current lineup.
Coral’s head of social media Tania Self said social conversation about reality TV and novelty betting accounted for 14.5% of Coral’s total brand conversation last year “so there’s certainly an appetite among our community for this type of content marketing.”
