malady helvetica, ailment sans-serif;”>London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games official hotel provider, Holiday Inn, hosted a free running club World Championship gold medallist Mo Farah.

Starting and finishing at Holiday Inn London Regent’s Park, the 5000m run was open to all running enthusiasts and fans of Farah.  

The first 250 runners that completed the run were rewarded with a free breakfast served outside the hotel. 

The run was Mo Farah’s last UK appearance in 2011 before he returned to the United States to train for the Olympic Games.  

Mo Farah is on Holiday Inn’s Athlete Engagement Programme which supports 50 emerging and established British athletes including Rebecca Adlington and Victoria Pendleton in their medal bid by giving them over 1,500 free room nights.

Holiday Inn has given athletes free overnight stays at hotels around the world under the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) family of brands that include InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express in the lead up to London 2012.  

Athletes and their support teams can use the stays while they are training, competing or during rest and recovery.

In return for hotel rooms, participating athletes provide memorable experiences for Holiday Inn staff and guests. 

Farah said: “As I spend a lot of nights away from home at track and field events around the world, it’s great to have this support from Holiday Inn.  It’s really nice to have my coaching team and family with me when I’m away training or competing. I’ve really enjoyed hosting this running club for Holiday Inn and it’s been great to see so many Londoners turning out and taking part.”

London FIS Snowboard World Cup Big Air Competition event has been axed due to economic reasons.

The organisers say they hope to reinstate it for the following year. Funding seems like the most likely reason for this year’s cancellation.

The news was announced by a short statement on the FIS web site.

“This is to inform you that the FIS Snowboard World Cup Big Air competition, scheduled in London (GBR) on October 27th, 2012 has been cancelled due to economical reasons.

“The Organiser in cooperation with the British Ski and Snowboarding Federation has already indicated that it is their goal to organise the successful event as a FIS World Cup again from the 2013/2014 season onwards.”

Financially stricken sports retailer, JJB Sports, has put itself up for sale after admitting it is unlikely to raise new funds to keep the business afloat.

The struggle to keep the business afloat has been one of the continuing sagas of the sector this year, though its troubles date back to 2008.

Since then investors and suppliers pumped more than £225m ($357m) into the group alongside two insolvency procedures to ditch stores and reduce its rent bill.

However even the scaled-back, 180-shop operation has struggled. Underlying sales are down 3.3 per cent from already depressed level and more worrying, the cash margin has decreased 9.5 per cent.

JJB currently has bank debt of £16.5 million ($26m), £18.75 million ($29.7m) in convertible loan notes and has also drawn down £1.1 million of another loan facility.

In a statement to the stock exchange this morning, the group said: “The company has continued its discussions with its strategic partners regarding a further capital raising and restructuring of its store portfolio to facilitate the turnaround of the group’s trading performance.

“However, following these discussions, the Directors do not believe that the company will be able to raise the level of funds required to implement the turnaround.

“As a result, the board has decided to conduct a formal sale process of the company and now wishes to invite offers to support further investment in the company, which may result in a sale of the company or its assets.”

After almost two years of talks with telecommunications company Telus, British Columbia’s provincial government has declined an offer of $40million for the naming rights for Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium for 20 years. 

Following a $563million redevelopment, which hopes to prolong the facilities existence for a minimum of 40 years, the BC Place re-opened in September. The $40million provided by Telkus would probably have gone towards the renovation bill of the home of Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps and Canadian Football League’s BC Lions.

The potential agreement would have seen a rebranding strategy for the stadium, but Pat Bell, the minister of jobs, tourism and innovation felt that BC Place should retain it’s original name. By not agreeing to a name change, Bell hopes that BC Place officials will be able to exceed $40million over the same 20 year period. He said: “For us the underlying principal came back to the name BC Place“There are many in cabinet and many across the province who believe that name has tremendous value to it and we wanted to retain that. Telus was certainly of the view that they didn’t want any reference to BC Place, and I understand that. They felt very strongly about it. Cabinet felt equally strongly in the other direction and in the end we thought it was important to retain the integrity of the name BC Place.”

Telus President and CEO Darren Entwistle stated: “I think Telus is deeply disappointed with this decision, which we find regrettable. We believe that Telus, our brand, and our 25,000 team members across British Columbia, would have been a great partner for one of the premier sports facilities in all of North America.”

Soccer’s governing body FIFA have said it would recommend a UEFA-backed plan that would abolish unpopular international friendlies in August.

A working group from international confederations, players, clubs and professional leagues met at FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich to discuss the post-2014 calendar.

Last week the European Clubs Association (ECA) said it was boycotting the FIFA talks over the calendar, saying progress had been disappointing.

However, FIFA now appears to have taken on board the proposals from European confederation UEFA, publishing a list of recommendations it said would now be submitted to its executive committee for approval at the end of March.

The proposals include a maximum of 18 international matches per nation in a two-year cycle, split into nine double dates in March, September, October and November and every other June.

Getting rid of international friendlies in August would be a major coup for clubs, who object to having to release their players often before they have even started the domestic season.

February friendlies, which are also unpopular because of the crowded domestic schedules at that time, would also have no place in the proposed new calendar.

by Ismail Uddin

The International Rugby Board believes the revenues for the commercial programme of the 2011 Rugby World Cup will deliver an estimated £80 million ($128 million) net surplus boost to the game.

The competition reached its conclusion on Sunday (October 23)  New Zealand, with hosts the All Blacks lifting the trophy after beating France 8-7 in a tense final.

The tournament accounts for 95 per cent of IRB revenues, with the governing body investing £150 million ($241 million) over the 2009-12 investment cycle to develop the game around the world.

Bernard Lapasset, Rugby World Cup Limited chairman, hailed the competition as an “exceptional rugby World Cup”, saying it had positioned New Zealand as “a major event host, a superb tourism destination and a great country”.

“It has also taken our sport to new audiences and has set the bar for future hosts,” he added.

A study commissioned by MasterCard during the tournament has indicated that the event is due to deliver NZ$750 million ($598 million) in direct economic benefits for New Zealand and over NZ$2 billion ($1.6 billion) in long-term benefits.

Rugby is preparing to return to the Olympic Games, with the sport’s seven-a-side format to be included in the programme at Rio 2016.

Brands that have managed to associate themselves with the Olympic Games without paying the exorbitant rights fees that come with official sponsorship seem to making more of an impact than official sponsors according to the Global Language Monitor (GLM).

The Global Language Monitor conducted its first rankings on ambush marketing (what you call unofficial sponsorship) which measures the strength of the brand affiliation between each of the worldwide partners, official partners, and official sponsors and the London Games and then compares it to competing companies that are not officially affiliated with the Games .

Sony, Subway, DuPont, Barclay Card and Lenovo are the top five companies with the highest unofficial London brand affiliation.

All have a stronger association with the Games than the official sponsors they compete against. 

They’ve achieved this by incorporating Olympic imagery into their ads, such as athletes competing in the sports being contested in London.

Paul JJ Payack, president of GLM said:”Few things in top tier consumer-facing companies occur ‘naturally’ or ‘spontaneously,’ especially when they are engineered to look that way. This is why advertisers adept at associating themselves with an event, even though they are not ‘official’ sponsors of that event, can often outperform official sponsors.”

Subway, for instance, is roughly two times as likely as official Olympics sponsor McDonald’s to be associated with the Games.

That’s mainly because swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Summer Olympian ever, appears in Subway ads.

“Subway is acknowledged as a leader in this regard [ambush marketing] with their close ties to Michael Phelps, who in many minds personifies the Olympic brand and spirit: clean-living, hard-work, pulling himself up by his own bootstraps,” says Payak.

Some sponsors are still reaping the benefits of past sponsorship. Lenovo, for example, ended its sponsorship deal after the 2008 Beijing Games, but the company is three times as likely as the computer vendor that took its place, Acer, to be associated with the Olympics.

Bundesliga club Werder Bremen have revealed their president and chief executive Klaus-Dieter Fischer will step down from his posts at the end of the year.

The 73-year-old made the surprise announcement via a club statement on Wednesday, citing “personal reasons”.

“I have always had the ambition to determine my departure and that will be at the end of the year,” Fischer said in the statement, posted on the club’s website.

“My association with Werder has determined my life and opened worlds that I could not have otherwise experienced. For that I will be eternally grateful and I hope I have provided just as much back.”

Fischer hopes that Werder vice president Dr Hubertus Hess-Grunewald will be elected as his replacement.

“I have never made a secret of the fact that I value our vice president Dr Hubertus Hess-Grunewald as a strong candidate to be my successor,” he said.

“I have been preparing him for this task for two years and we will now step up the joint work.

“I hope that the election committee follow my suggestion and Dr Hubertus Hess-Grunewald is nominated and that the club members can join in this opinion.”