Stadia

Swiss soccer club Grasshopper Fussball AG has scored a year high on the Swiss Bourse after an ownership deal announced this week.

South Africa's chances of hosting the 2006 World Cup has received a giant boost when First National Bank (FNB) bankrolled the Bid Committee with a sponsorship and threw its financial weight behind their attempt to bring the showcase event to Africa for the first time.

The NFC Champion Atlanta Falcons are pursing a relocation of the team's headquarters and training facilities from Suwanee, Georgia, to Stone Mountain Park in suburban Atlanta.

The proposed spring US Football League, the International Football Federation (IFF), have held preliminary discussions with NBC and Turner Broadcasting, the networks that lost out in the $18 billion NFL contract negotiated in 1998.

Softbank Corp have acquired an approximate 30% interest worth $80m in Global Sports Inc, the sporting goods and e-commerce company.

The new design for the English National Stadium at Wembley will not include the historic twin towers according to UK press reports.

Membership sales for a new stadium in Wellington, New Zealand have passed the halfway mark - six months before construction of the $121 million complex is completed.

SportsTicker, one of the leading suppliers of real-time sports news and information, has reached an agreement in principle with NHL Interactive CyberEnterprises, a joint venture between the National Hockey League and IBM, to commercially distribute statistical output from the NHL ICE Real Time Scoring System (RTSS).

Berlin is ready to buy new seats for the historic Olympic stadium to avoid a UEFA ban on home games when Hertha Berlin play in Europe next season.

A free Internet web site has been set-up for amateur sports enthusiasts. Florida-based ScoreCardUSA.com will target approximately 80m players of organised amateur sports and personal training programmes in the US.

The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA) has awarded Pepsi-Cola exclusive carbonated soft drink pouring rights and sponsorship at Meadowlands Sports Complex.

French hopes of staging the 2003 world athletics championships have received a significant boost when it was claimed that the main rivals to Paris may not have its stadium ready in time.

Gart Sports Company, the parent company of Sportmart, has unveiled a new superstore concept with the opening of three Sportmart stores in Southern California.

Around 1,000 people gathered on Bondi Beach in Sydney at the weekend to protest at plans to build a 10,000-seat beach volleyball stadium.

The construction costs of the Olympic Games to the New South Wales state budget will almost halve in fiscal 1999/00, with most of the construction effort completed.

Russian champions Spartak Moscow will appeal against an order banning fans from tomorrow's home match after their followers clashed with police at their lastgame.