The Gator bowl have announced Alan Verlander has been named Chief Operating Officer of the Events Division of Gator Bowl Sports effective January 2, 2014.

His duties will include establishing the structure of the new entity that is charged with bringing new sporting and entertainment events to Jacksonville.

In November, the Gator Bowl Association announced that it was expanding its mission that would enable the organization to work in conjunction with the City of Jacksonville in a public/private partnership to aggressively pursue new sporting and entertainment events to the First Coast area. The Gator Bowl Association, now known as Gator Bowl Sports, will be the umbrella organization that will encompass the annual Gator Bowl game, its Charities Division and the Events Division. Alan will be reporting to its President, Rick Catlett and its Board of Trustees. 

Verlander most recently served as the Executive Director of Sports and Entertainment for the City of Jacksonville where his role was to oversee all sporting operations and events in the City. Prior to that, he served as the Director of Athletics at Jacksonville University from 2005 to 2012.  

“We are very excited to welcome Alan Verlander back to the Gator Bowl as the Chief Operating Officer of the Events Division of Gator Bowl Sports. He was born and raised here and comes from a prominent business family in the Jacksonville area….He has worked through the ranks on multiple levels of the sports industry and is uniquely qualified to hold this position,” said Gator Bowl Sports President, Rick Catlett. 

“I want to thank Mayor Brown and the administration for the opportunity given to me the last 18 months….I am looking forward to a new challenge with Gator Bowl Sports that will provide a unique chance to create a new sports and event organization that embodies a true private-public partnership with our great city and allows us to continue the Mayor’s vision to make Jacksonville a premiere sports destination,” Verlander said.

London Paralympics TV covergae in Britain and America has received a backflash after disability groups criticised US broadcaster NBC for failing to show any of the action live and Channel 4 fell foul of critics in the UK.

NBC, which was also attacked for its Olympic coverage, denied its viewers the chance to watch an opening ceremony for the second time this summer and will show only four hour-long highlight programmes on its TV network. A week after the Paralympics finish, it will air a 90-minute special on the event.

Although there are highlights packages on the NBC YouTube channel there is anger in some quarters and several online petitions have been started.

One has been launched by Damon Herota of Florida. He told the Daily Mail: “It’s a sign of disrespect, especially to those military veterans who are competing. Attitudes are supposed to have changed since the days of Vietnam, when veterans were ignored. What message does this send?”

The story has also been picked up in America, where Sports Illustrated noted: “This year’s Paralympics are expected to draw their largest ever live television audience – except in the United States, where events will receive only minimal coverage and won’t be screened as they happen.”

The US broadcaster’s approach is in “sharp contrast” to that of other nations, said The Daily Telegraph.

Philip Craven, President of the International Paralympic Committee, told the paper: “Some people think that North America always lead on everything, and on this they don’t. It’s about time they caught up.”

Channel 4 came under fire for running too many ad breaks during the opening ceremony. Although it recorded its best viewing figures for 11 years, the Daily Mail reported that the channel was “hit with a tide of criticism about its coverage of the Games”.

“Viewers are furious that the broadcaster kept cutting away from the action to go to commercial breaks during Wednesday night’s ceremony and as the sporting events kicked off yesterday,” it explained.

Elemental Technologies, pilule the leading supplier of video solutions for multiscreen content delivery, today announced that the breadth of its deployment for multiscreen delivery of the Summer Games has expanded to include the BBC in the United Kingdom, Terra in Latin America, Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium in Canada, and Eurosport throughout Europe.

The company is also supporting customers delivering multiscreen content of the events in the US and Japan. These deployments, when combined with Elemental’s support for transnational feeds of the Games, will make video streams from Elemental available in 70 countries and to more than a billion potential viewers. 

“When we began the intense evaluation process for streaming of the Olympic Games more than a year ago, Elemental had little idea of just how broadly we’d be adopted on a global scale”

The BBC plans to stream 2,500 hours of the Olympic Games using Elemental Live and to provide its audience with up to 24 alternative live HD streams from which to choose. The BBC will also use Elemental Live to encode and archive events that can be easily transitioned into video on-demand (VOD) assets for streaming catch-up TV to viewers in the UK.

Eurosport will deliver live coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games via PC in 50 countries through the Eurosport Player service. Live streaming coverage will also be available via smartphone and tablets in 33 countries and for Panasonic Smart TV users in 38 countries. From a technical point of view, Eurosport will use Elemental’s encoding farm, consisting of 13 Elemental Live systems, to handle 42 Eurosport live video streams available in more than 5 bit rate profiles each, representing a global bandwidth of 400 Mb/s.

In Latin America, Terra plans to stream more than 2000 hours of the Olympics Games using Elemental gear to audiences in more than 17 countries. To deliver online and connected device coverage of the games, Terra directs incoming HD and SD fiber optics and satellite feeds into Elemental Live for video processing. The density available with Elemental Live allows Terra to output six HD and 12 SD adaptive bit rate streams simultaneously for streaming to web and tablet devices as well as smartphones.

“Elemental’s solution provides a level of quality that is unmatched in the market without sacrificing the traditional tradeoff of density and cost,” noted Werner Michels, engineering director at Terra. “We chose to partner with Elemental because compared to the vendor we used for the Vancouver Olympics, with Elemental we were able to increase our coverage of the games and throughput by more than 50% in less than half the rack space while improving quality.”

“When we began the intense evaluation process for streaming of the Olympic Games more than a year ago, Elemental had little idea of just how broadly we’d be adopted on a global scale,” said Sam Blackman, CEO and Co-founder at Elemental Technologies. “To play such an integral role in the ‘first truly digital Olympics’ is a privilege that every Elemental employee accepts with great pride.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has shown their analysis to be a record year for attendances at sporting events.

Data was taken at four high profile events. They were the Tennis Championships at Wimbledon, capsule The British Formula one Grand Prix and two horse racing meeting which were Royal Ascot and The Cheltenham Festival. The four events enjoyed their best ever attendances.

Julie Clark, UK head of sport at PwC, said: “Despite uncertainties around the strength of the UK’s economic recovery, these figures demonstrate the sustained appetite for live sport in the UK. The public continue to be attracted to the live experience and sense of occasion offered by the highest profile sporting events; a trend confirmed by the huge demand for tickets to the London 2012 Olympic Games.”

There was a 1% growth at Wimbledon where 494,761 fans attended. It is however a 13 day event which explains the huge number.

Over three days Grand Prix at Silverstone attracted 315,000.

Attractive prices have helped with more than 28,500 fans at  Lord’s for the fifth and final day of the first Test against India at the end of July this year – the highest attendance for the fifth day of a Test match in the history of the ground and 4,500 more than the final day of the Ashes Test match at the same venue two years ago.

Japan Football Association (JFA) president Junji Ogura has called for the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to hold immediate presidential elections to replace Mohamed bin Hammam after his FIFA life ban.

Bin Hammam on Tuesday called for support from the heads of the AFC’s 46 member associations as he continues his fight against the bribery allegations that led to his ban by world football’s governing body.

However, herbal Reuters reported Ogura as stating: “(Bin Hammam) has been banned for life so there is a need for elections to be held.”

China’s Zhang Jilong currently serves as acting AFC president and any election would see the victor gain a prized seat on FIFA’s Executive Committee.

Bin Hammam wrote in a letter on AFC headed paper which he posted on his official blog, therapy saying: “I have all the right to fight against this shameful decision until I clear my name. It may take some time before I go through the appeal committee of FIFA and the Court of Sports Arbitration and possible other procedures.”

Bin Hammam added: “That means I will not render my resignation as AFC president and FIFA member representing Asia as far as the legal proceedings are continuing. I am appealing for your understanding and appreciation for my cause and reasons and looking for your support to me until I prove my innocence.”

The Wasserman Media Group (WMG), ed a leading sports marketing and management agency, has acquired golf player representation agency, SFX Golf.

Wasserman’s existing roster of golf talent including Scott Verplank, Hunter Mahan, Zach Johnson, Jason Day and Rickie Fowler, will now be united with SFX Golf’s champions and broadcasters.

John Mascatello, who was CEO of SFX Golf, will lead the new golf practice and report to Arn Tellem, Wasserman’s principal of Management. 

Veteran SFX Golf agents and senior executives Bud Martin, Terry Reilly, Brad Buffoni, and Sam MacNaughton will also join Wasserman and the management team. 

Tellem said: “I had the great pleasure of working collaboratively with each member of the executive team while I was at SFX, and am incredibly excited to join forces with them as we become a leader in the global landscape of golf together at Wasserman.

“They have built a powerful golf representation firm over the past two decades, and clients will collectively benefit from the Wasserman platform by now also having access to our preeminent management, consulting and sales disciplines.”

Mascatello added: ‘We are thrilled to become part of Wasserman, and look forward to working with Arn and the entire company to continue to build an unparalleled global practice that will serve clients in the best possible way’.

NASCAR has followed the purchase of Iowa Speedway by announcing Jimmy Small as the new president og the circuit.

Several of the sport’s top executives along with state and local dignitaries were present for the announcement. 

“Jimmy’s tireless dedication, anabolics energy and experience make him the ideal candidate for leading Iowa Speedway into this new era, clinic ” said Eric Nyquist, anesthetist NASCAR vice president, strategic development. “He has a strong background in identifying and creating fan experience improvements and defining best practices designed to help strengthen sponsor relations and ticket sales. In addition, he will have a great support structure at the Speedway and NASCAR.” 

Small, 28, joins the Speedway after six years with NASCAR in various business-building capacities. Most recently, he served as senior manager for team marketing services within the NASCAR Industry Services department out of the Charlotte, N.C., office. In that role, he was the business and marketing liaison with teams and drivers in all three national series. 

When Small started in the sport in 2008, he worked out of NASCAR’s Daytona Beach, Fla., headquarters coordinating event weekends with tracks, television partners and teams. 

“I’m honored to be presented with this opportunity to help guide Iowa Speedway in the next chapter of its life,” Small said. “We will continue fanning the intense passion for motorsports that is prevalent here, and do our best to showcase Iowa Speedway’s fast, exciting short-track racing in creative, fan-friendly ways.” 

Small is a Detroit native and graduate of the University of Notre Dame. He was named as a member of Sports Pro Magazine’s The 10 NEXT Class of 2012, an honor recognizing 10 sports executives under the age of 30. 

The track currently is gearing up for its slate of three NASCAR race weekends during the 2014 season. The Speedway’s season opens May 17-18, with the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East versus West Challenge on Saturday night followed by a 250-lap NASCAR Nationwide Series race on Sunday. The weekend of July 11-12, Iowa Speedway will host a Friday night NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event and an IndyCar Series race on Saturday. A second NASCAR K&N Pro Series East versus West Challenge race is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 1 followed by another 250-lap NASCAR Nationwide Series event Saturday night. 

The Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony attracted a peak audience of over 11 million viewers last night.

According to The Guardian, a total of 10.9 million viewers tuned in to Channel 4 to watch the event between 8.45pm and 9pm. For a five-minute window during that period, the audience rose as high as 11.2 million.

The event had an “enlightenment” theme and was narrated by Ian McKellen and Dr Stephen Hawking. It also featured aperformance of Ian Dury’s 1981 track ‘Spasticus Austisticus’ by dance duo Orbital, before concluding with a renditition of ‘I Am What I Am’ by soul singer Beverley Knight.

The average audience across the Opening Ceremony, which began at 8pm and finished later than scheduled at 12.20am, settled at 7.6 million. The Guardian reports that this is five times higher than Channel 4’s average for a Wednesday night over the last three months.

The Olympic Games Opening Ceremony was watched by a peak of 26.9 million viewers on July 27, while the Closing Ceremony on August 12 attracted a slightly smaller audience of 26.3 million. The Paralympic Games Closing Ceremony will take place on September 9 and is due to feature a performance from Coldplay.