Stadia

The central venue for the 2002 Commonwealth Games - to be staged in Manchester, England - will become the new home ground of soccer club Manchester City in 2003 it has been confirmed.

England's Rugby Football Union (RFU) is looking to reorganise itself along commercial lines in a move which could see it launch its own entertainment division, according to UK press reports.

Quokka Sports have signed a programming distribution and promotion agreement with Road Runner, a leading high-speed online service jointly owned by Time Warner Inc., MediaOne Group, Microsoft Corp., Compaq Corp. and Advance/ Newhouse.

SportsLine Europe Limited have become the exclusive Internet sports media partner for the official Manchester United web site.

Hopes that English Premier League soccer club Arsenal would build a new stadium on derelict land in central London were fading, as no building work could begin on the site until at least 2005, the Times reported on Monday.

Japan is ready to lend South Korea about $200 million to help its World Cup co-host build a soccer stadium for the 2002 tournament, the Export-Import Bank of Japan said. "We are ready to offer the loans at any time, but we are still waiting for a formal request from South Korea," an official at the bank told Reuters.

A #30m investment programme ear-marked for The Royal Antwerp Football Club, the oldest club in the Belgian league, has proved to be a sham.

Cardiff?s new Millennium Stadium could host the English FA Cup final for three years from 2001.

Westwood One, America's largest radio network, and SportsLine USA, the leading global Internet sports media company and publisher of CBS SportsLine, have signed a three-year, $9 million promotional and programming agreement.

Telecommunications giants Foxtel, Telstra and Optus have joined the battle for the AFL's next TV rights, ensuring football an unprecedented financial bonanza after 2001 reports the Melbourne Age.

Talk Radio plan to invest #6m to start up the UK's first 24-hour all-sports radio station.

CBS and the NCAA are in talks to extend their broadcast rights agreement to the Division I basketball tournament.

Walt Disney Co.'s (NYSE:DIS - news) Buena Vista Internet Group has agreed to purchase 60 percent of soccernet.com from the Daily Mail & General Trust Plc (quote from Yahoo!UK & Ireland: DMGO.L) for an undisclosed amount.

SportsLine USA, the global Internet sports media company, has announced that its combined reach among Internet users at home and at work exceeded all other sports Web sites for the month of July.

ESPN.com is kicking off a series of significant product launches with the debut of newly acquired Soccernet and culminating with a completely redesigned ESPN.com the first week of September to coincide with the opening of the NFL season.

Dick Ebersol, NBC Sports and Olympics chairman, and Alan Ramadan, Quokka Sports co-founder and chief executive officer, have introduced NBC's expanded Olympic coverage at www.nbcolympics.com.