Italy

The tribunal investigating charges that four leading Italian football clubs fixed matches is expected to return a verdict today in Rome’s Olympic Stadium. Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio could be demoted from Italy’s top flight Serie A if found guilty of conspiring with referees to rig matches.

The World Cup final between Italy and France was a ratings winner in France, Italy and the USA. In Italy over 23 million watched public-service broadcaster Rai’s coverage of the final, some 84 per cent share of the audience, with an estimated two million more watching coverage on pay-broadcaster Sky Italia.

Italian commercial broadcaster Mediaset has written to the Italian football league, the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio, to say it has frozen payments for its exclusive TV highlights rights for Serie A.

Italy is in danger of losing its bid to host the 2012 European Championships as a result of the Serie A match-fixing scandal.

The FC)dC)ration Internationale de l’Automobile approved the calendar for the 2007 World Rally Championship, adding three new races in Ireland, Norway and Portugal. The new races replace those in Australia, Cyprus and Turkey. The FIA said in a statement that its World Motor Sport Council had approved a calendar which would continue to run on the existing January-November format instead of the proposed August-May switch. It said that it would decide whether to add further events to the calendar at its next World Motor Sport Council meeting.

The 24-hour sports channel ESPN Classic agreed a deal with Spanish telecoms company TelefC3nica for carriage on its IPTV platform Imagenio. The deal marks the channel’s first move into the Spanish IPTV market.

The 2006 World Cup is generating record television audiences for football in the US.Before the quarter-finals US network ABC averaged 3.7 million viewers for each of its 10 matches while cable channels ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 1.8 million and 1.1 million viewers respectively per match and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision averaged 2.2 million viewers per match.

While Italy celebrates its place in the FIFA World Cup final, a prosecutor has called for the relegation of four of its most famous soccer clubs.

Italy's stock market regulator Consob says match-rigging allegations in Serie A raises the issue of whether clubs should be listed on the stock market, reports Forbes.com

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The adidas Group has agreed a deal to take control of the distribution and license rights for the Reebok brand in China.

The trial into the match-fixing scandal involving four top Italian soccer clubs has been adjourned shortly after proceedings began.

A panel of judges will meet today to begin deliberations into the match-fixing charges which have shocked Italian soccer to its core.

The probe into the match-fixing scandal in Italian soccer shows no signs of slowing after officials confirmed the focus was now shifting onto a number of smaller clubs.

The owner of Italian soccer club Inter Milan is calling for his club to be crowned champions of Serie A if both Juventus and AC Milan are found guilty in the on-going probe into claims of ‘sporting fraud’.

Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio have all been ordered to stand trial in the Italian soccer scandal over match-fixing allegations.