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.

American Cable televison network, try Golf Channel has selected leading content optimization platform RAMP to deliver next generation search and video experiences on GolfChannel.com.

RAMP’s new implementation on GolfChannel.com includes RAMP’s award winning universal search solution, brand viagra online which enables users to easily and quickly find all relevant content on the site across all formats- video, audio, text and image, as well as RAMP’s topic page publishing solution, which automatically identifies and publishes thousands of user-friendly topic pages for easy navigation across Golf Channel’s content collection. Golf Channel is also utilizing RAMP’s topic page solution to build customer “advertorial” offerings for its sponsors. In just the first month since launch, RAMP’s search solution has increased user engagement by 141% and topic pageviews by 14%. RAMP’s solution replaces a previous search implementation that lacked the ability to deliver comprehensive results across the site’s deep catalog of premium golf content.

In addition, Golf Channel will be integrating RAMP’s new MetaPlayer video framework, which delivers a more engaging user experiences with advanced time-based capabilities such as “jump-to” video search, tag and scene-based navigation, and contextually related content and advertising integrations. Golf Channel implementation will also take advantage of MetaPlayer’s integration SDK with Golf Channel’s existing online video provider ThePlatform. RAMP’s studies have shown that other MetaPlayer implementations increase video engagement by more than 70%.

“RAMP’s solutions are designed to deliver immediate results for media companies and enterprises building next generation digital businesses,” said Tom Wilde, RAMP CEO. “We are thrilled to be working with Golf Channel and creating unique experiences for users across their digital properties.”

“RAMP’s search and video solutions were easy to integrate across GolfChannel.com, and have delivered immediate results for us,” said Mike Lowe, Senior Director of Business & Strategy. “Most importantly, RAMP enables us to create unique experiences for our users that keep them coming back.”

Birmingham are to host ‘Cricket in the City’ on the 8 August 2011. The all day free cricket festival will take part in the city centre around Victoria Square.

Edgbaston will be hosting the 3rd npower Test Match against India two days later.

‘Cricket in the City’ is a flagship debut event to engage the public and create a local buzz for the upcoming Test Match.

The England and Wales Cricket Board is looking to create more positive enthusiasm right through to the grassroots level of the sport, even more so with the positive results that English Cricket has produced lately.

Public engagement is very much the name of the game when ‘Cricket in the City’ was decided upon.

Confusion continues to reign across India over the governing bodies running the country’s hockey, one of the country’s most popular sports.

Rival bodies Hockey India (HI) and the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) are competing to control the administration of the sport. However, amidst news that the two bodies agreed to form a joint executive board to run the game on Monday, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) acting president Vijay Kumar Malhotra has rubbished the new truce, labelling it “a bizarre live-in relationship”.

The arrangement to form a joint board was set to run until December 31, 2012. Indian Sports Minister Ajay Maken, who has tried to reform sport in the country since being appointed earlier this year, has been the driving force behind the partnership, although the organisations involved have insisted it is not a merger.

However, Malhotra insisted the National Olympic Committee would only recognise one body.

He said: “We don’t want to open a Pandora’s box which will lead to total chaos in Indian sports.

“Unless a unified body is formed to run hockey, it will not be acceptable. IOA will never accept two co-chairpersons for one federation. This is not feasible and workable.”

On the role of Maken, Malhotra said: “In his bid to be seen as a minister in action, he has become minister in distortion. How can two separate entities run a single sport?”

He added: “This so-called skewed agreement also strengthens IOA’s stand that government should steer clear of interfering in the affairs of sports bodies. It is laughable and highly incredulous to call such agreement good for Indian sports.”

Digital sports rights firm Perform announced last Friday, April 8, that it is to float on the stock exchange at 260p per share, giving a market capitalisation of £586m (US$958m).

Perform is the first digital media company since Moneysupermarket.com, four years ago, to float on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.

The company, perhaps best known for delivering the online only broadcast of England versus Ukraine in 2009, had given guidance that the price range for the float would be 255p to 325p.

Perform’s two main sources of revenue are from distributing sports content to bookmakers and online media across the world, and revenue from ads running within content on its own and others’ websites.

The company has made an initial public offering of 25 per cent of its equity and has raised proceeds of £67.5m ($110.4m) for ‘strategic acquisitions and to exploit more fully organic growth opportunities’.

Perform has experienced a compound annual sales growth rate of more than 50 per cent over the past three years.

One Direction singer Louis Tomlinson and former Doncaster Rovers owner John Ryan have completed the takeover of the League One outfit, a spokesman for Ryan has said.

The duo will become co-chairmen and equal partners after buying out majority shareholders Terry Bramall and Dick Watson.

A deal had been close before but a move was twice delayed because of negotiations over image rights.

Ryan’s spokesman said: “It’s done, the takeover is complete.”

Tomlinson, 22, was born in Doncaster and is a lifelong supporter of Rovers; he also played for their reserve team against Rotherham in February.

Ryan, who ended his 15-year association with Rovers in November, will be the lesser known of the two men but will doubtless be the more hands-on.

The businessman has extensive football experience and oversaw Doncaster’s rise from non-league to the Championship as well as their move from Belle Vue to the Keepmoat Stadium before stepping aside in November to allow Terry Bramall and Dick Watson to take over.