News

Credit card conglomerate Visa International will sign on as a major Olympic sponsor again.

Octagon, the Interpublic-owned sports marketing and entertainment group, is expanding into South East Asia through a partnership with Singapore-based sports marketing firm RTA.

Italian Serie A club AS Roma has said they are seeking a stock market listing by May next year to capitalise on millennium celebrations.

Bernie Ecclestone has agreed to sell half his Formula One empire to Deutsche Bank's Morgan Grenfell Private Equity in a $1.3 billion deal which puts the company's flotation back on track.

North Sydney rugby league players have voted overwhelmingly to support a merger with fellow National Rugby League club Manly at a creditors meeting.

365 Corporation, the UK Internet content company behind sites like Football365, Rugby365 and CricInfo365, is planning a stock market flotation.

The Dutch city of Arnhem is to spend one million guilders ($500,000) on close circuit television cameras ahead of next year's European soccer championship.

Top Australian Olympic official Kevan Gosper has defended Sydney Games organisers against a consumer watchdog over the number of Olympic tickets available to the public.

Outgoing New Zealand rugby union boss David Moffett has been named as the new chief executive of Australia's National Rugby League.

Movie star Hugh Grant and former England star Gary Lineker were among the star names at a special send-off to the FIFA team inspecting England's chances of hosting the 2006 World Cup.

British terrestrial pay-television company ONdigital has reached an agreement with BSkyB to begin broadcasting the Sky Sports 2 channel starting on November 1, 1999.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin has honoured UEFA president Lennart Johansson for his contribution to soccer.

Australia's consumer watchdog has said Sydney 2000 Olympics organisers may have misled the public in a ticket sale earlier this year by urging them to buy seats it could not supply.

Formula One supermo Bernie Ecclestone is reported to be on the verge of selling as much as 50 per cent of his stake in Formula One Administration in a deal worth an estimated $1.3bn.

The latest professional sports study published by Paul Kagan Associates, has concluded that $4 billion worth of proposed new stadium construction will revive fan interest in some of Major League Baseball's depressed markets.

Marking a limited gearing-up of e-tail operations, Nike will take orders for customised shoes online and deliver them directly to homes.

The host city of the 2006 Commonwealth Games is set to pay A$17m in a bid to secure the marketing rights for the event.

The chief executive of the Sydney Olympic organising committee offered to quit last week to take the blame for a ticketing fiasco that has virtually excluded the Australian public from some of the most popular events at the 2000 Games, Sydney Olympic officials have revealed.

Sydney Olympic organisers have conjured up an extra half-million tickets to the 2000 Games to defuse a public outcry over a ticketing policy that has left the Australian public scrambling for seats.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has said that all international teams will play to a unified calendar after the European Championships in Belgium and the Netherlands next year.