Kenneth Briodagh

In the United Kingdom, football, or soccer to we colonists, is the number one spectator sport, and EA’s FIFA soccer game is the biggest selling title for the game maker in that country, too. To keep the marriage happy and grow its market, the brand has established a permanent footprint called the EA Sports Blue Zone on the grounds of the Man City football club stadium. The glass-walled structure is designed to attract attention and sports fans inside to play FIFA 2012 and push the online gameplay at least an hour before and after the team’s home games.

Bacardi USA this year is celebrating its 150th birthday and to kick the year off right, House of Bacardi set out to crown the best bartender in the world through its 2012 Bacardi Global Legacy Cocktail Competition. The finals were Feb. 19 and 20 in Puerto Rico, where the 26 regional winners from all over the world spent a week learning about the history of the rum, visiting the distillery in Cataño where it is made, sharing their skills and techniques with each other and learning bartending philosophies and expertise from the brand’s tastemakers. 

Throughout the month of February, luxury automaker Bentley Motors took over Kuusamo, in the province of Oulo, Finland, where it has created its Power on Ice winter driving adventure, set to conclude on Feb. 26. The lucky few who put up the 8,000 to 10,000 Euros that was the price of admission got behind the wheel of either the 6.0 liter 567 horsepower Continental GT coupe or the 621 horsepower Continental Supersports coupe on one of the world’s most challenging test tracks—a frozen lake.