Finance & Law

France’s Secretary of State for Sport, Thierry Braillard, has said that the proposed new professional domestic boxing league is set to launch in the first half of 2017.

Spanish LaLiga football club Barcelona has reported record revenues of €679m ($749.6m) for its 2015-16 season as it continues to head towards its target of reaching the €1bn mark by 2021.

Barcelona and Argentina football star Lionel Messi, along with his father, are to appeal against a Spanish court decision to issue them both with a 21-month jail sentence for tax fraud, the player’s lawyers have said.

Barcelona and Argentina football star Lionel Messi has today (Wednesday) been sentenced to 21 months in prison and fined €2m ($2.2m) after being found guilty of tax fraud, however the 29-year-old is unlikely to serve any jail time.

Brazil’s government has authorised an emergency cash transfer of R2.9bn (€753m/$850m) for the state of Rio de Janeiro to support infrastructure projects and security for the upcoming summer Olympic Games.

Spanish Liga football club Barcelona has agreed to pay a fine of €5.5m ($6.13m) to the Spanish authorities to settle a long-running tax fraud case relating to the 2013 signing of Brazilian superstar Neymar.

Cumulative losses at Italian Serie A football clubs more than doubled to a total of €379m ($424m) in the 2014-15 season, according to a new report commissioned by the Italian Football Federation that outlined a “worrying lack of liquidity” in the competition.

British horseracing commercial group The Jockey Club posted a record annual turnover of £183.3m (€232.9m/$263.8m) in 2015, it has been announced.

Collective pre-tax profits generated by English Premier League football clubs dropped by 37 per cent in the 2014-15 season, according to a new report by financial services company Deloitte.

Former Fifa vice-president Alfredo Hawit pleaded guilty yesterday (Monday) in a US federal court to four conspiracy charges relating to bribery schemes associated with football commercial rights.

SA Rugby, the governing body of rugby union in South Africa, has announced a group post-tax profit of R16.7m (€997,000/$1.1m) for the year ending December 31, 2015 – a significant improvement on figures recorded for the previous 12 months.

The Spanish High Court in Barcelona has elected to suspend the trial against Liga football club Barcelona and its former and current presidents, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, in relation to alleged tax evasion linked to the signing of Brazilian forward Neymar.

Dorna Sports, commercial rights-holder of the MotoGP and Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK) motorcycling series, has said it is considering its options following a court ruling over its tax affairs.

Italian financial police have seized assets from footballers, their agents and club executives as part of a probe into alleged tax evasion in Serie A and Serie B, the top two divisions of the domestic game.

Crystal Palace has confirmed that American businessmen David Blitzer and Josh Harris have acquired a stake in the English Premier League football club.

Bayern Munich generated record profits for its 2014-15 financial year, as the German Bundesliga football club just fell short of the turnover landmark set in the 2013-14 campaign.