Media

Extreme Sports Channel, the adventure and adrenaline sports service, is to broadcast in Russia.

Paris will stage the best Olympics ever if it wins the right to hold them in 2008, the bid organisers said in an official statement.

Manoj Prabhakar, banned for five years by the Indian cricket board, said on Wednesday he had deserved better treatment for helping expose match-fixing.

Tennis Canada has appointed Anthony Alfred as regional director, media and public relations.

A former senior 2004 Athens Games official has accused the organising committee (ATHOC) of cultivating "virtual reality instead of substance and essence" and its president Gianna Angelopoulos of inertia.

Deutsche Bank AG has declined to comment on media reports that one of the investment funds it manages had taken a big paper loss on a stake in ailing German media company EM.TV AG .

Premier Rugby, the marketing and commercial arm of English First Division Rugby, has signed a #1 million ($1.45m) three-year deal with Sportscard, the rewards-based credit card designed specifically for sports fans.

Los Angeles has made a bid to host the summer Olympic Games for an unprecedented third time, saying it had the finance, facilities and experience that would allow Olympic officials to "sleep at night."

Member federations of the International Olympic Committee(IOC) have been commenting on the issues raised by the IOC World Conference on Sports and New Media in Lausanne, Switzerland.

European Union leaders are ready this week to recognise that sport enjoys a special status in the bloc, but will fall short of granting it any exceptions from EU law.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it was considering allowing Internet companies to broadcast small sports on the Web.

German media giant Kirch's acquisition of a stake in EM.TV is unlikely to fall under a European Commission merger review, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

China's capital Beijing has spent billions of dollars this year widening and extending roads to pave the way for its bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the Xinhua news agency has reported.

Sportal, the European based provider of interactive sports content, has secured a strategic alliance with PSN Multimedia International.

Websites have already established themselves as the fundamental means of communication for sports teams beyond their national boundaries, disintermediating the need for broadcasters, according to evidence presented by speakers at the IOC New Media Conference in Lausanne.

The International Olympic Committee added another condition for the next round of broadcast bidders looking to deliver the Olympic Games after 2008, but the requirement to take account of the importance of the internet and new media in their bids will have many reaching for their crystal balls.