New Zealand’s soaring currency is disparaging efforts to revive an industry still reeling from the 2009 global recession and the deadliest earthquake in eight decades even though the Rugby World Cup is on the horizon.

Instead of the rugby arenas there are snow-capped mountains, cough glaciers and fiords the backdrop to the “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy and the birthplace of bungee jumping that the tourism officials want fans to experience to help bolster future visits and spending.

The kiwi “at these elevated levels does have the effect of making New Zealand less attractive than some other potential destinations,” Rob Fyfe, chief executive officer of Air New Zealand Ltd (AIR), the nation’s largest carrier, said Aug. 25, after announcing full-year profit slumped 45 percent because of currency, fuel and quake costs.

The airline, which has painted an Airbus A320 domestic jetliner to match the colors of the host nation’s All Blacks team, will offer cheaper prices outside of game days to cater to tourists who may want to see more of the country. “We’ve never had a better chance to showcase our country on the world stage in recent times,” Fyfe said in an interview.

Spending by international visitors has fallen 10 percent to NZ$5.56 billion ($4.7 billion) in the year ended June 30 from a record NZ$6.18 billion ($5.18bn) three years earlier, according to government figures.

FIFA reforms proposed by Sepp Blatter will be announced in October, the President has claimed.

Blatter won his fourth term of office on June 1 as FIFA President and chosen the Executive Committee meeting of October 20 and 21 to reveal details of exactly how he intends to move forward.

“I will announce a road map of where we go and when we go,” Blatter said, first among which is likely to be rubber-stamping the proposal for future World Cup hosts to be selected by a full Congress hearing rather than simply by FIFA’s 24-strong elite Executive Committee.

Mohamed Bin Hammam, Blatter’s former election rival withdrew after claims he tried to bribe Caribbean voters and is now appealing a lifetime ban imposed by FIFA’s Ethics Committee.

The infamous scandals also ended the football career of senior FIFA vice-president Jack Warner who resigned rather than face a similar punishment.

Two more FIFA Executive members, Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii, were suspended last November after allegations of vote-trading in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid races.

Their are issues still to be resolved as FIFA are still investigating the roles played by 16 Caribbean officials in allegedly accepting $40,000 cash payments in return for voting for Bin Hammam before he pulled out of the race to face Blatter.

“I’m very disappointed and very sad,” Blatter said of the Caribbean region’s alleged complicity. They are part of FIFA and I’m very concerned about that. It was a very difficult year, I am working on different items and I will present to the Executive Committee of FIFA during the meeting.

The southern hemisphere rugby group SANZAR (South Africa, New Zealand and Australian Rugby) has rejected proposals for a new Twenty20-style competition planned for South Africa.

The concept was conceived by former Springbok Rassie Erasmus, and is an attempt to mirror the success of the hugely popular Twenty20 cricket format. It would have seen shorter matches with amended rules to increase excitement.

SANZAR chief executive Steve Tew said: “SANZAR’s representatives met with promoters of the competition so as to better understand what was envisaged and because we are always open to any ideas that might help promote rugby in our three countries.

“We were told we would then receive a formal proposal and this has not happened. However, having considered the concept and the way in which it has been developed, SANZAR has decided it has no interest in any further discussion of the proposed competition.

“We do not see any benefits for SANZAR and we have also expressed our strong disappointment to those involved that approaches were made to players in the SANZAR countries without the courtesy of informing the SANZAR member unions in advance.”

World Snooker has unveiled ‘Power Snooker’ a new Twenty20-style shortened format of the game, with the first competition due to take place at London’s O2 Arena in October.

Featuring eight players, the competition will be a one day-event with each match lasting just 30 minutes, the winner being the highest points scorer.

The new format has been devised by Rod Gunner, and endorsed by World Snooker chief executive Barry Hearn.

Ronnie O’Sullivan has already confirmed his attendance, with Neil Robertson, Ding Junhui, Mark Selby, Ali Carter, Shaun Murphy, Luca Brecel and Jimmy White being lined up to participate.

Gunner, who created the new format, said: “It had struck me for some time that the game of snooker needed a new and exciting transfusion.

“Having seen how Twenty20 cricket has revitalised that sport, I am delighted to have come up with the concept of Power Snooker and seen the positive reaction from within the game.”

O’Sullivan added his typically unique support for the format, saying: “To be honest I find the World Championship quite a bore. I’ve won it three times, but 17 days in Sheffield is draining. People just want to pitch up and play.

“This is the future of snooker. It is just that a few people have got to get their heads around it. We are not stuck in the 1970s anymore.”

Five countries have expressed their interest in hosting the 2015 AIBA World Boxing Championships.

Qatar, ailment Russia, there Thailand, viagra cheap Vanuata and the Venezuela will now prepare their bid document for 15 May before presenting it to the AIBA Executive Committee in July. Based on these presentations, the AIBA EC will then make a decision on the host country.

The 2015 AIBA World Boxing Championships will be an Olympic Qualifying Competition with the World Champion in each of the ten AIBA weight categories directly qualified for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Stand-in Chairman of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission for the Nanjing 2014 Summer Youth Olympic Games, Lambis Nikolaou, praised the Chinese city following the Commission’s inspection visit.

“We are delighted to see the progress made by NYOGOC with just under two years to go,” Nikolaou said.

“The operational planning stage is a critical phase in which they start to turn their vision into reality.”

“The support from both central and regional Governments and local partners is very positive and together they are on the right track to delivering a successful second Youth Olympic Games.”

The Commission inspected all areas of the organisation for the event and visited key construction sites, such as the Olympic Village, which will become a housing facility, school and kindergarten after the Games.

The Commission also visited the site of the Youth Olympic Sports Park, one of the only sports venues to be built from scratch for the Games.

The Sports Park will host hockey, BMX, rugby and beach volleyball during the Youth Olympics before being transformed into a community sports facility after the Games.

Venue planning is also close to completion with 26 competition venues now confirmed.

The volunteer recruitment process for the event is also under way with an estimated 20,000 volunteers ready to offer their services.

Nanjing 2014 will be the second edition of the Summer Youth Olympics after Singapore hosted the first in 2010.{jcomments on}

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. (MLSE) has chosen Dalet Sports Factory as the end-to-end Media Asset Management (MAM) platform for all content related to its in-house production and television broadcasts for its professional sports teams that include the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Toronto Maple Leafs, symptoms National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Toronto Raptors, Major League Soccer’s (MLS) Toronto FC, and the American Hockey League’s (AHL) Toronto Marlies.

Dalet Sports Factory combines a robust MAM platform and workflow engine with built-in Dalet tools that streamline sports production from ingest and logging through broadcasting and archiving. The Dalet MAM content catalog manages media, essence files and metadata across different systems in the organization, storing and tracking contextual sets of associated multimedia of all kinds along with metadata, including time-coded locators. The catalog provides ultimate flexibility with easily customizable metadata schemes to satisfy every type of sports and media organization and make assets available across the entire enterprise – using Dalet tools or existing/new third party business/broadcast systems.

The first phase of the project at MLSE’s Broadcast Centre in Toronto will involve aggregating years worth of existing metadata and critical information from legacy records of the four teams into the centralized Dalet MAM catalog.

“We have a tremendous amount of very valuable and historic content,” said Chris Hebb, Senior Vice President of Content for MLSE. “Over the years we’ve attempted to manage the content through a document system, but it has been a siloed process, making it difficult to search and find content when we need it. Dalet’s system will centralize our content and organize it in a meaningful way that makes it accessible and easy to distribute across multiple platforms.”

“MLSE owns some incredibly high-profile franchises and we’re excited to be working with them as they generate more exciting programming for their loyal fans,” says Frederic Roux, Director of Sales, Dalet, US. “We hear all the time about how ‘just the right clip’ can add depth and dimension to sports coverage. Remote crews, in particular, complain about how cumbersome it can be to locate previous game footage for game coverage or half-time shows. With Sports Factory, it is far easier to bring those clips into live or post production. Assets are fully searchable from the centralized catalog; all it takes is a simple browser to search, find and then preview the clip, whether you’re at Air Canada Centre or in a remote truck. The clip can be pushed to an NLE for fast turnarounds. When content is more accessible, it’s more valuable.”

There are indications that Brazil’s Maracana Stadium, one of the stadiums scheduled to be used for the 2014 World Cup has been heavily over-priced after a two month analysis of the project.

After the court audit, Rio de Janeiro state officials had to reduce the project’s budget in $60 million on the arenas’ final budget. The project cost, therefore, has changed from US$ 602 million to US$ 540 million.

The project was bided, in June 2010, for $443 million, but right after that, the budget bumped up to $602 million due to the arena’s coverage cost, that needed to be demolished.

During the consolidation process and documentation delivery to the court, Rio de Janeiro state government had already altered the project’s budget to $586 million, $16 million reduction. Despite that, the court aided by the Union General Controller (CGU) still found traces of overpricing, about US$ 103 million, on the project’s financial budget.

According to the federal court’s process official, Mr. Valmir Campelo, there has been an intense negotiation process with the state’s technical department in order to get the budget reduced $540 million. With that in place, there is no other additional barrier for the state to receive the promised federal loans ($252 million) granted by BNDES Bank (Federal) for the Maracana’s renovation project.

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