Samba’s Weekly Trends in LatAm and the US (01/07/20)

In this week’s look at the latest social media and sport updates from LatAm and the US we talk TikTok’s ban in India, virtual tours, sports betting in Brazil and much more. 

LeBron James gets $100m investment to build media empire

SpringHill brings together businesses James is involved with; Robots Co, a marketing Agency, SpringHill Entertainment and Uninterrupted LLC. It’s described as part Disney storytelling power, part Nike coolness, and part Patagonia social impact. 

In a time when organisations are looking at their staffing makeups and starting task forces, SpringHill says its employees are 64% people of colour and 40% female. 

“This is a company designed to move the culture”. 

Sports betting could be regulated by year’s end in Brazil generating market ‘boom’

In a time when the pandemic has created a halt to sport and economic troubles, Brazil’s paving of the way to sports betting is one that could create opportunities, revenues and jobs in a time when they are most needed. 

We should look at gaming as an important economic activity capable of attracting new capital to Brazil, revolving the economy and promoting a substantial increase in government revenue through taxes. We need this and we hope that the government will proceed with the regulation for the benefit of all Brazilian society.”

Carlos Cardama, CEO of GMB

TikTok unite football players from South American clubs with LGBT TikTokers to create LGBT Pride Awareness

Bayern Munich follow Dortmund in announcing a virtual summer tour

With summer tours to the usual destinations of the US and Asia not possible this year, teams have had to look at other ways in which to engage with their international fans. Could a ‘virtual tour’ be the answer?

Guild Esports launches with David Beckham as co-owner

This isn’t just the launch of another esports team by a sports celebrity. Guild Esports brands itself as a ‘talent development company’ that is looking to take learnings from sport into the esports world, using the traditional academy model. The industry has gotten a lot of people excited and the blurring of the lines between it and sport has become bigger this year. Watch out for more deals with big names getting involved over the next year or so. 

YouTube’s latest experiment is a TikTok rival focussed on 15-second videos

Hot off the back of Instagram’s expansion of ‘Reels’, something we recently spoke about on our blog, there is this latest YouTube experiment. The news doesn’t guarantee it will launch as a feature but, as with their launch of Stories in 2017 to mimic that of Instagram and Snapchat, this could be seen as an opportunity to gain some of the attention that TikTok has taken back to YouTube. 

India bans TikTok, dozens of other Chinese apps

Coming a year after a two-week ban came into force in TikTok’s biggest market, this is a big blow to the platform. To give you an idea of how important it is, in May this year 13.19m downloads on Google Play were from India, with Brazil the next biggest on 5.48m. 

Political tensions between the two countries could affect many popular apps in the world’s second biggest population. How quickly the ban will be lifted is very much out of their hands. 

La Liga sends you matches left for your team on Twitter

A nice little Twitter activation from La Liga allowing you to get your team’s remaining fixtures by using the hashtag and your team in the reply. 

Leo Messi hits 700 goal milestone (video by B/R)

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