By Paul Kennedy

Traffic has snagged commercial partnership rights to the 2013 Gold Cup and the 2013-14 and 2014-15 Concacaf Champions League away from SUM.

The Concacaf executive committee approved the deal after due process from the Concacaf Evaluation Committee that included U.S. Soccer general secretary Dan Flynn.

Traffic had held the Concacaf rights for the Gold Cup and Concacaf Champions Cup until 2003.

SUM has held the Concacaf rights since then as it gained increasingly control of the American soccer market. It is also the MLS and U.S. Soccer marketing arm and organizes many international friendly matches.

The switch back to Traffic from SUM coincides with the change in regimes at Concacaf, where Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands replaced Trinidadian Jack Warner as president and Colombian-born Enrique Sanz replaced American Chuck Blazer as general secretary.

Sanz previously worked at Traffic, which was founded 32 years ago in Brazil and is a leading international soccer agency. It is a major stakeholder in the NASL.

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