The England and Wales Cricket Board structure group met earlier this week in the first of two meetings and recommended to the ECB board to reduce the season by between eight and 12 days “to enable a coherent and balanced domestic schedule to be delivered”.

Changes are set to be made to the Clydesdale Bank 40 competition to bring it in line with international one-day cricket from 2011.

A statement said: “The group will recommend that quarter-finals for the Clydesdale Bank 40 competition be delivered from 2012 and that the competition should be played in four pools of five teams.

“The group further noted that following the ICC World Cup in 2011 the format of international ODI cricket will be reviewed and recommended that the format of the Clydesdale Bank 40 competition should mirror the international format.”

The statement added: “The group will meet again prior to the ECB board meeting in mid-November to consider the number of LV County Championship and Friends Provident Twenty20 matches to be played in future seasons.

The Rugby Football Union (RFU) have signed a three-year partnership with deltatre to produce a new website and creative content.

The project will be managed by deltatre North’s Hugo Sharman alongside the company’s London office.

“We are delighted to be partnering with the RFU for the next three years.  We have delivered digital solutions to manage some of the most demanding and complex live sports events in the world, cheap ” he said.

“Taking the RFU’s digital presence to new heights brings unique challenges, abortion but it is also a great opportunity we are excited to be a part of.”

The RFU.com website will relaunch next summer and will be the first site to be built on the latest version of deltatre’s in-house content management system, Forge. This, the agency explained, means that the site can be optimised for mobile devices, and when combined with CRM, would enable “personalised user-journeys.”

“Our vision to connect English rugby and become a destination for rugby content has an ambitious digital strategy at its heart.  We have been very impressed not only with deltatre’s unique understanding of sport, but also their proven technology which will support us to meet our goals,” added Nick Shaw, the RFU’s head of digital.

The recently-launched US Pro Squash Series, a collaboration between the Professional Squash Association (PSA)and US Squash, has been given a further boost this week by the inclusion of the Life Time Grand Prix Squash Tour.

Life Time Fitness has 107 clubs with 44 squash locations and 116 courts nationwide, with more clubs being built in 2014. Events staged at clubs in Atlanta, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Chicago and Boca Raton this year will add to the growing list of events already included within the US Pro Squash Series.

Life Time Grand Prix Tournament Director & Promoters Andre and Danielle Maur are very excited, not only for the PSA Pro players, but also for squash in the US, which is growing at an incredible pace.

“This year’s locations are in Atlanta, Houston, Vegas, Chicago, Phoenix and Boca Raton, and next year we will add more locations to the tour,” said Andre Maur. “We have a fantastic team with tournament coordinators Jahanzeb Khan in Houston, Richard Glanfield in Vegas, Garry John in Phoenix and Franz Schwerer in Chicago, who are all excited to welcome players to their events.

“Our tour brings $60K in total prize money ($10K each) to the PSA,” Maur continued. “We will be adding one more location in 2014 and another in 2015 to round us out with eight stops on our Grand Prix Series.”

Maur, a former player on the PSA World Tour, has been promoting and directing tournaments for the past 20 years. “But this is by far my biggest challenge,” added Maur. “I know the expectations and how to treat the players to the highest professional level.”

United States Tennis Association (USTA) announced it has selected DDB New York as its agency of record.

The agency will be responsible for brand strategy and creative, including digital campaigns.

“We’re thrilled. First, the USTA has the potential of getting more people on tennis courts, which will make the world a lot better,” said Peter Hempel, Chief Executive Officer of DDB New York.”Second, we are uniquely qualified to help the USTA achieve its worthy goal because we can energize their current players while also acquiring new members.”

DDB New York was selected as USTA’s advertising agency because of its full service offering and understanding of the brand’s business model. 

Los Angeles is set to have a new NFL stadium after a City Council committee today approved construction of a $1.1 billion stadium and an estimated $315 million convention center hall, despite some concerns over the pending sale of development company AEG.

The green light for the 76,000-seat stadium and convention center upgrade, however, is dependent on AEG’s ability to secure a football team to move to Los Angeles.  

The full City Council is expected to approve the plan and environmental impact report Friday. That approval will trigger a 175-day period for opponents to challenge the project in court. A state bill last year gave the project special legal protection, including the truncated period for legal challenges.

AEG President Tim Leiweke described the vote as the culmination of two years of work that puts the region the “closest we’ve ever been to returning the NFL to L.A.” since 1994. That’s when the Los Angeles Raiders moved to Oakland and the Los Angeles Rams moved from Anaheim to St. Louis.

The project’s fate came into question last week with the announcement that billionaire investor Philip Anschutz was putting AEG up for sale, a decision Leiweke said was finalized during a company retreat several weeks ago. 

During the committee meeting, Leiweke apologized to the city for “the disturbance and disruption” the announcement caused. 

“That is my fault. I’ll take full blame for that,” he told the committee.

Leiweke argued that the ownership change was inevitable, saying Anschutz  would be 128 years old by the end of AEG’s ground lease with the city for the  new stadium.

“We were going to go through a sale inevitably,” he said, adding that new owners would provide “long-term predictability, not just for the city but for the NFL when we make this project a reality.”

City Councilwoman Jan Perry and other members of the committee charged with vetting the stadium proposal sought assurance from Leiweke and city negotiators that AEG’s new owner would honor the company’s financial commitments, including to fully fund the new convention hall and stadium, which would be called Farmers Field. 

“To be very clear, anybody that steps into this agreement, this  project, is going to have live by all of the agreements that we have  negotiated, or the city will not close,” Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry  Miller told the committee. “At the end of the day the city is not at risk in any way. In the worst case, we are left where we are today, and we need to rethink how to go forward with our convention center.”

The agreement includes a community benefits package that requires AEG to provide money for job training and streetscape improvements. It also has a local-hire component intended to offer jobs to workers in communities adjacent to the stadium that suffer from high unemployment rates.

Bradford Bulls have rolled into further turmoil after they were deducted six points for going into administration. 

The Rugby Football League’s board of directors imposed the punishment after the ailing Super League club breached the game’s insolvency regulations.

A statement said: “The RFL board of directors has today ruled that Bradford Bulls will be deducted six points – the equivalent of three competition wins – as a penalty for entering into administration during the 2012 Stobart Super League season.”

The deduction takes immediate effect and drops the Bulls out of the play-off positions, from seventh to ninth, ahead of Sunday’s trip to Warrington, with Huddersfield and Hull KR moving above them in the table.

Deduction of points are not a first in the league as both Wakefield and Crusaders were docked four points when they entered administration on the eve of the 2011 season after the RFL directors took into account the new owners’ willingness to pay off some of the debts to creditors.

iSportconnect, the world’s leading sports business networking platform is pleased to announce that the Euro 2012 Networking Tool is now live.

iSportconnect members attending the event in Poland and Ukraine will be able to log in to dev.isportconnect.com/euro2012 and see who else is attending the event and arrange meetings with them. Members will also be able to keep up to date with all the latest business news and discussions.

Former Global Partnerships Director at Glasgow Rangers Misha Sher said: “As someone attending the Euro’s for business and pleasure, this is such a great and unique tool. iSportconnect has come up with an impressive platform that is exclusive for everyone in the sports business industry. It will be very useful for someone like myself to find out who I can make potential business with”

If you are lucky enough to be attending this year’s UEFA European Championship’s then why not log in to your iSportconnect account and join the Euro 2012 Networking Tool.

If you are not yet on iSportconnect, get on board for around the clock news, discussions, job listings, business events listings and of course fantastic networking. dev.isportconnect.com