FIFA has today launched a new Facebook page dedicated to women’s football and available in six languages, cough while also activating the official Twitter account for the FIFA Women’s World Cup ahead of a busy calendar of events in 2014 and 2015.

The Facebook page and Twitter account will provide the latest information on the FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015™, asthma FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Canada 2014, FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup Costa Rica 2014 and other events, as well as the development of the women’s game both on and off the field.

Coverage will also include FIFA’s work around the globe to promote women’s football, from the Live Your Goals campaign and Girls’ Festivals, to Football for Health and Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.

Featuring behind-the-scenes images and videos, one of the key aims is to engage with the community and provide fans with further opportunities to interact with each other, and FIFA, wherever they are in the world.

The anti-doping laboratory in 2016 Olympic host city Rio de Janeiro has had its accreditation suspended, the World Anti-Doping Agency said Friday.

The suspension prohibits the lab from carrying out any WADA-related anti-doping activities and took effect on Thursday.

It’s the second action against the lab in two years. The facility was barred from conducting isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) testing — used to measure testosterone levels — from January to October of last year.

WADA did not specify what standards the lab has failed to meet to warrant the latest suspension, but said a “further decision regarding possible revocation of the laboratory’s accreditation” would be made by the global anti-doping body’s executive committee.

The lab, one of 35 worldwide with WADA accreditation, can appeal the suspension via the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The Executive Board of FILA, the international wrestling federation, has selected Las Vegas, USA to serve as host for the 2015 World Wrestling Championships.

The city which will host the event is Las Vegas, Nev., considered one of the most popular destinations in the world. It has been scheduled to be hosted in September of 2015 at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas.

This is a tremendously important event in international wrestling, as it serves as the first qualifying event for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well as the event in which the largest number of athletes earn a spot at the Olympics.

Competition in all three Olympic styles of international wrestling will be held: men’s freestyle, women’s freestyle and Greco-Roman.

A number of other nations bid on the opportunity to host the 2015 World Championships, with the strongest of these bids coming from the Olympic city of Sochi, Russia. Other bid cities included Panama City, Panama; New Delhi, India and Tehran, Iran.

“The new FILA will embrace the strengths of our sport, both our long history and our desire to continue to improve ourselves. USA Wrestling has proven itself as one of the top national federations in the world. We trust them with one of our most sacred and important properties, the 2015 World Championships, which is the qualifying event for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Hosting the World Championships in Las Vegas is certainly a positive step forward in our quest to show the world the relevance of wrestling and help entrench our sport on the Olympic program,” said Acting FILA President Nenad Lalovic.

“USA Wrestling is excited to receive the bid to host the 2015 World Championships in Las Vegas, Nev. We believe it will be a historic event for international wrestling. We have assembled a strong team that will ensure that the World Championships in Las Vegas will be an amazing success and will display the excitement and popularity of international wrestling worldwide,” said USA Wrestling Executive Director Rich Bender.

“Las Vegas has a long and storied history with amateur wrestling date back to the 1970’s,” said Pat Christenson, president of Las Vegas Events. “The 2015 World Wrestling Championships are a culmination of decades of support for wrestling, which includes the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, 2007 World Team Trials, Cliff Keen Invitational and the U.S. National Championships. We look forward to hosting the top international wrestlers and playing host to fans from around the world.”

“Las Vegas will provide a great backdrop to showcase the sport of wrestling to a worldwide audience,” said USOC CEO Scott Blackmun. “We’re excited to team with USA Wrestling and FILA in bringing this important event to the United States and we look forward to hosting wrestlers from all over the globe as they look to qualify for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.”

The United States has hosted five previous Senior World Wrestling Championships. The most recent World Championships were held in world famous Madison Square Garden in New York City in 2003, and featured men’s and women’s freestyle wrestling. This was also the first qualifying event for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games for wrestling. Record crowds attended the World Championships in New York City, and it was regarded internationally as one of the most successful World Wrestling Championships ever held.

UEFA have renewed their partnership with TEAM, physician a company of Highlight Communications AG a new Agency Agreement.

UEFA has appointed its long-term partner TEAM for the marketing of an expanded set of commercial rights including the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Europa League and the UEFA Super Cup initially for three additional seasons 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 and, subject to performance, for an additional three-year term thereafter. 

As part of the new agreement TEAM has appointed Michael van Praag, a UEFA
Executive Committee member and David Taylor, the CEO of UEFA Events SA, to
its Board. Bernhard Burgener will continue to serve as Chairman of the
Board, Martin Wagner as Delegate of the Board, with Taylor and Wagner being
part of the new Management Committee of the Board to assist in the
supervision of the business.

A Qatari/Australian led consortium’s design has won an international architecture competition to create a national stadium and sports village in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Doha-based Australian firm, DESIGNSPORT, and Australian LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture), in collaboration with local Ethiopian architects, JDAW,  won the competition for their design which references Ethiopia’s world-famous excavated architecture and the ‘Mother womb’, the skeleton of one of the first humans, Lucy, who is about 3.2 million years old.

The stadium is shaped like a coffee bean, the main source of income in Ethiopia. The façade material that wraps around the stadium was similarly inspired by Ethiopian culture, modelled on the Massob, an Ethiopian communal serving basket made from woven grass.  Completing the salute to nature, the roof of the stadium, which is an intelligent membrane, appears like a cloud on the horizon of the vast Ethiopian sky.

Work on the Addis Ababa stadium is scheduled to begin in 2014.  The development is the largest sporting infrastructure project in Ethiopia, the second-most populous country in Sub-Saharan Africa and its fastest growing economy. The new facility, set on a 60-hectare site, will consist of a 60,000-seat stadium, an athletics track, aquatic centre, residential village, sports halls and arenas, retail and commercial zones as well as the headquarters of the Federal Sport Commission.

Samantha Cotterell, CEO of DESIGNSPORT, a consultancy specialising in sport architecture and event design, who led the bid said: “The brief was to design a centre that would revitalise sport in Ethiopia.  The result is a sports venue which can be used by all.  It is for community use at a grass roots level right through to providing a high performance training centre for elite athletes and a location for major international sporting events.”

Chris Bosse, who led the design team, and is a director of LAVA, an award winning international firm of architects added: “We have gone back to the very origin of stadium design with the sunken arena surrounded by grandstands formed from excavated material.  The man-made crater is a clever remodelling of the existing terrain, integrating facilities within the landscape.  It is an efficient use of space which optimises the site’s environmental performance while minimising construction costs.”

The finger has been pointed at the Rugby Football Union (RFU) for failing to supply the funding they promised the RFU Championship clubs following the re-vamping of English rugby’s second tier.

The clubs claim that they are each owed £77k for the last three seasons based on an agreement struck with the governing body when the league was reduced from 16 teams to 12 back in 2009.

The RFU reportedly promised initial funding of £2.3m plus £1m from Premier Rugby for eight years but is has since stressed that these figures – £295,000 per club in 2009-10 rising to £400,000 in 2015-16 – were only estimates. The Daily Telegraph also reports that under a new agreement proposed by the RFU, the clubs could be faced with a further £120k shortfall.

The newspaper details that Championship clubs were expecting to receive £400k in 2015-16 but following a new offer from the RFU, the new proposal would see them get £359.4k. With the two bodies seemingly at loggerheads, Championship chairman Geoff Irvine has called on the organising body to “honour” their original commitment.

“All of the clubs in the Championship are busily preparing for the new season but we are being constantly hampered by the RFU’s refusal to deliver what they promised,” said Irvine. “Every club in the league has embraced the format in spite of the concerns that were allayed prior to its inception and everybody can see the impact that the Championship has on Premiership and international rugby.

“No one would argue the fact that playing standards have risen and that the dual-registration scheme has proven a success with many Premiership teams clambering at the opportunity of their youngsters playing in such a demanding environment. What is of particular concern to the clubs though is that the RFU refuses to fulfil its responsibilities to the Championship when it ‘owns’ the competition.

“The RFU has not kept the promises that it made and if we want to see standards improve then we need to have a commitment that is honoured.”

An RFU spokesman told the newspaper that they had put forward “a good proposal that not only includes an increase on last season but also runs for four years, offering stability of funding.”

Manchester City Football Club have announced that they have teamed up with Mass Relevance, the technology leader in social curation, to unveil several new social initiatives for City fans attending and watching matches during the 2012 season.

Following a few successful trial integrations during matches against Newcastle United and Norwich City in 2011, the club plans to expand these initiatives throughout the year.

City’s social enhancements include the use of Twitter to engage and entertain fans who tune into the TV broadcasts at City Square, a dedicated fan area near the club’s shop. They also integrate real-time fan Tweets on Etihad Stadium’s video boards, jumbotron and other stadium distribution channels. City is the first Premier League club to use the popular social media platform as part of their in-game displays.

The initiatives are powered by Mass Relevance’s social engagement platform that allows the Club to instantly aggregate, curate and deliver the best fan content into stadium displays, TV broadcasts and mcfc.co.uk.

To date, trials of the integration have seen tremendous results. In a December match against Norwich, the club leveraged Mass Relevance to deliver social content on match day screens throughout the stadium and create dialogue with and between fans, pundits and announcers before and after the game (hashtag #blueview). The strategy resulted in more than 1,500 #blueview Tweets in just six hours from more than 965 unique Twitter authors, providing the club with message and brand reach of nearly 400,000 Twitter users and nearly 2.5 million impressions.

Richard Ayers, Digital Playmaker for Manchester City, said: “At City we have always believed that home games at the Etihad Stadium are not just exclusive to the 47,000 fans in the stands. They are an opportunity for City supporters from around the world to connect with one another and feel part of the match day experience.

“Mass Relevance enables us to empower our fans and add a new dimension to our pre-match build up by being able to broadcast their Tweets in real time around the stadium big screens. This partnership continues our strategy of innovating with digital media in order to give fans more access to the club — to increase engagement and improve their experience.”

Mass Relevance CEO Sam Decker, added: “Football fans are some of the most dedicated and vocal fans on the planet and real-time social content continues to play a key role in enhancing the experience whether you are at the match, watching on TV or following on your mobile device. We’re very excited to work with Manchester City to kick off a new era of fan engagement and momentum moving into the 2012 season.”

The Mass Relevance Platform, which powers the team’s strategy, uniquely combines a cutting-edge social technology that can instantly aggregate, curate and deliver the best content for any context with an enterprise SaaS infrastructure to meet the needs of the Fortune 500 at a scale of tens of thousands of Tweets per second and less than a second to publish to a real-time experience.

Mass Relevance has powered successful integrated social content strategies for media, entertainment and consumer brands such as Cisco, Dick Clark Productions, E! Online, ITV, MTV, NBC Sports and Pepsi. The company partnered with Twitter to power President Barack Obama’s July 2011 Twitter Town Hall.

Kyle Busch  was fined $25,000 by NASCAR on Tuesday for his obscene gesture, and the driver again apologized for losing his temper.

Busch was also placed on probation through Dec. 31 – the same day as his wedding – for what NASCAR called unsportsmanlike conduct in Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.

“I lost my cool, plain and simple,” Busch said in a statement. “It’s not acceptable, and I know that. I apologize to NASCAR, its fans, all the partners who support Joe Gibbs Racing, and all the people who work so hard to give me a racecar that’s capable of winning races every week. All of those people deserve better from me, and I owe it to them to keep my emotions in check.”

Busch was penalized for speeding at Texas and called into the pits to serve a one-lap penalty. While sitting in his car, he held up his middle finger toward the NASCAR official standing in front of his Toyota ( TM – news – people ).

The in-car camera caught the gesture, and it was broadcast live before ESPN realized what Busch was doing. The network apologized and cut away from the shot.

NASCAR immediately penalized Busch an additional two laps and ordered crew chief Dave Rogers to get the driver under control.

It led to a testy exchange between driver and crew chief, with Busch arguing that NASCAR was denying his right to free speech.

“They’re going against the constitutional rights for everybody,” Busch yelled over his radio.

Rogers implored Busch to shut his mouth and serve the penalty.

“Kyle, stop, please!” Rogers told him. “We all work too hard for this! You’re costing us. Bring it to pit road, park it for two laps.”

Busch was unable to recover from the sequence and finished 32nd, two laps down. He apologized immediately after the race for his latest blowup, and reiterated it following Tuesday’s fine.

“I accept NASCAR’s penalty and realize what I did during Sunday’s race at Texas was inappropriate,” he said. “Even in my relatively short time here in NASCAR, it’s pretty obvious to everyone that I wear my emotions on my sleeve. Sometimes that passion has allowed me to find that little something extra I needed to win, and other times it’s made me cross the line. Sunday at Texas was one of those days.”