Eastern Europe

Budapest 2024 has seen the latest attempt to call a referendum on its bid for the 2024 summer Olympic and Paralympic Games rejected by Hungary’s National Election Committee.

United World Wrestling, the sport’s global governing body, has awarded hosting rights to its 2018 World Championships to the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

Uefa, European football’s governing body, has ordered Polish Ekstraklasa team Legia Warsaw to play its next home Champions League match against Spanish Liga club Real Madrid behind closed doors as a punishment for crowd trouble in an earlier match.

Budapest 2024, the organising committee behind the Hungarian capital city’s bid to host the summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, has appointed Attila Mihók as its new chief executive, following the resignation of Miklós Fekete.

The International Skating Union (ISU) has announced that the 2019 European Figure Skating Championships will take place in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.

Fina, the global governing body for aquatic sports, has revealed that five bidders have come forward for the hosting rights to its World Swimming Championships (25m) in 2022 and 2024, including the Russian city of Kazan.

Sports and betting-related services company Sportradar has entered into a two-year partnership with the Belarusian Ice Hockey Association (BIHA).

European football’s governing body Uefa has awarded hosting rights to the 2018 editions of its Champions League final and Super Cup matches to Kiev in Ukraine and Tallinn in Estonia, respectively, while Theodore Theodoridis has been named as the organisation’s general secretary on a permanent basis.

Aleksander Ceferin, head of the Football Association of Slovenia (NZS), has been elected as the new president of Uefa after securing an overwhelming majority in today’s (Wednesday’s) election in Athens.

Budapest, backed by the Hungarian capital’s bid for the 2024 summer Olympic Games, has launched a new Urban Games initiative, while a senior Rome 2024 executive has expressed her confidence that Mayor Virginia Raggi will rally around its bid.

Prague has been announced as the host of the first edition of new men’s tennis tournament the Laver Cup.

The Kenyan Olympic Committee (KOC) has ordered a sprinting coach to return home from the summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro after he posed as an athlete and gave a urine sample to drug testers, while Chinese swimmer Chen Xinyi and Bulgarian runner Silvia Danekova have both reportedly failed doping tests.

The administrators behind the Ukrainian Premier League are adopting new commercial models and an updated competition format to overcome multiple problems – including Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Kevin Roberts reports on how the changes have attracted the interest of the world’s sports marketing agencies.

LEN, the governing body of European swimming, has awarded the Hungarian capital of Budapest hosting rights to its 2020 European Championships across all disciplines.

Russia faces another blanket ban from the 2016 Olympic Games after the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said it is one of three nations it will seek to exclude due to doping violations.

The International Basketball Federation (Fiba) has announced that the 2016 edition of its 3x3 European Championships will be staged in Bucharest, after the Romanian capital hosted the inaugural event two years ago.