Media

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's pet project to build an 80,000-seater national sports stadium was in fresh trouble on Thursday as coalition partners and opposition politicians lined up to criticise the plan.

Sweden?s answer to Rupert Murdoch, Jan Stenbeck, has bought a 17 per cent stake in soccer team Djurgarden. Stenbeck's company, Modern Times Group (MTG), owns several media companies, including the free commuter newspaper Metro which was introduced in the UK two years ago.

Greyhound racing will become the only spectator sport in British history to launch a generic television advertising campaign. Three months worth of adverts will appear on Sky from Saturday with the aim to encourage viewers to visit one of the country?s 32 greyhound tracks.

ZOO Media, the UK-based company that helps brands to optimise financial returns from their sporting rights, has announced a reverse takeover of three-dimensional image provider Kazoo3D, pending shareholder approval.

Baseball?s official site, MLB.com, will this week launch two new features it hopes will raise its customer confidence after several early-season gaffes.

Sportingbet.com, the online sports betting company, has signed a five year contract with Ozmosa to provide online sporting and gaming bets in East and South East Asia. Ozmosa?s 7,000 customers can currently bet on televised US baseball and the casino game, Baccarat.

London?s Capital Radio has failed in its bid to gain the rights to broadcast Tottenham Hotspur, Fulham and Chelsea soccer matches on its Capital Gold station for the next three years.

The long-running dispute between English rugby clubs and the Rugby Football Union went some way to being healed on Wednesday when a promotion and relegation system and future funding was agreed.

PanAmSat has expanded its deal with ESPN to include nine PanAmSat satellites for worldwide programme distribution services.

Virtual imaging company Orad has won a sports Emmy for its role in NBC?s coverage of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

An American radio station has dropped its online broadcasts of a local ice hockey team because of advertising concerns.

NBC is expected to announce that the XFL won't be returning to the network's lineup next year, according to US reports.

KirchMedia has taken `full and sole control? of HBS, the host broadcasting company for soccer?s 2002 World Cup in the light of the financial crisis at ISL.

German media company Kirch has taken full and sole control of HBS, the host broadcasting company for the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

French and German media giants Vivendi Universal and Bertelsmann are understood to have agreed a deal with Swiss marketing company ISL whereby they jointly acquire the financially crippled firm for the nominal sum of one Swiss franc.

Head of Sky Sports Vic Wakeling says Kirch overpaid for the European rights to the 2002 soccer World Cup and revealed that Sky will not bid for them.