Media

Animal rights supporters have called on media and sponsors to boycott the Grand National tomorrow ? the UK?s biggest horse racing event.

ESPN International has agreed a deal with the French Tennis Federation to continue its distribution deal for Roland Garros.

A new European football portal, onefootball.com, has been launched offering news, merchandise, travel packages and online betting. The site is due to launch on 19 April and will be in competition with eurosoccer.com, the new multilingual European league site developed by Purple Interactive, which announced its formation exclusively on sportbusiness.com.

Virtual imaging specialists Symah Vision has signed an exclusive agreement with BBC Sports for use of the cutting edge technology in its programming.

Colin Hutchinson, managing director of cosmopolitan English Premier League club Chelsea, has said that UEFA and FIFA could face a breakaway of leading clubs if they persuaded the European Union to change its stance on the Bosman Ruling.

The chief executive of the English Football League, John McKeown, has left his post ? after just three months.

The Volvo Ocean Race has signed major television deals on both sides of the Atlantic for next year?s event.

The Eurobet Arrows F3000 team has been officially launched at the Arrows F1 Team's Leafield, Oxfordshire headquarters.

Qpass, the digital commerce services firm, has announced a new content partnership with NHL Interactive CyberEnterprises, producers of the National Hockey League's official web site, NHL.com.

Times Mirror Co.'s magazine unit, the publisher of Field and Stream and Golf Magazine, has said it plans to launch TransWorld Motocross, a motorcycle magazine aimed at young men 14-35 years old.

Smaller Premier League clubs were ? railroaded? into signing some aspects of yesterday?s broadcast tender agreement, according to a report in The Guardian newspaper.

The Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres have both renewed their contracts with virtual advertising company, Princeton Video Image, Inc. (PVI).

The battle for one of the world's hottest broadcast deals kicked off on Monday when England's top 20 soccer clubs set terms for the sale of their lucrative Premier League screening rights.

Euro 2000 organisers have freed up well over 50,000 tickets for this summer's championships and plan to sell them from Thursday.

The court-appointed official sent in to untangle the financial situation at Atletico Madrid has warned that the club is "technically bankrupt" and in urgent need of 13,000 million pesetas ($74.75 million), according to local media reports.

Two controversial bills in Washington aim to ban wagering on college and Olympic games in Nevada, the last outpost of such legalized betting, reports APBnews.com.

Tel Aviv may bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, officials have said.

A spokesman for BSkyB has denied reports it has made any bid for exclusive UK television rights to the soccer World Cup in 2002.