As the world descends on London for the Olympic Games an estimated £700 ($1.1bn) million will be transferred into UK pounds by visitors from overseas, anabolics according to currency brokers World First.

“Obviously August is always a busy period for tourism in Britain. However, with the 2012 Games putting London and the rest of the country firmly in the spotlight, the number of visitors this year is set to increase dramatically – meaning an amplified demand for our currency.”

Everyone from tourists to the athletes themselves will require UK currency to get them through their few weeks in the country, and currency companies are set for a busy period trying to manage the demand for sterling during this period.

Visitors from certain parts of the world will see their money go a lot further than might have been the case had the games been put on a year ago, whilst others will have the opposite experience.

For example, people from Eurozone countries will be adversely affected by the falling value of the beleaguered euro, which has tumbled to 4 year lows against the pound this summer.

Whereas €1000 would have bought you around £876 this time last year, that same amount has fallen to around £780 at today’s GBP EUR exchange rate. That’s nearly £100 less.

Meanwhile US visitors will be slightly better off this year, with $1000 buying you around £642 at the present GBP USD exchange rate, versus just £615 this time last year. That’ll get our American friends an extra few portions of Fish and Chips when they’re in town.

Jeremy Cook, chief economist at World First, said: “Obviously August is always a busy period for tourism in Britain. However, with the 2012 Games putting London and the rest of the country firmly in the spotlight, the number of visitors this year is set to increase dramatically – meaning an amplified demand for our currency.”

Goal line technology may be a realistic prospect as FIFA delegates are visiting League One side Rochdale FC’s home ground to see whether a camera system implemented in the goals can tell referees for certain whenever the ball crosses the line

Rochdale’s home stadium, Spotland, stands to take a proud part in a potentially historic development in the game, if Goalminder a creation from two Lancashire-based businessmen passes a series of stringent tests.

The researchers will spend around 13 hours putting Goalminder through its paces in the town, famed more for Gracie Fields than for its footballing exploits.

The FIFA test team spent Tuesday at Southampton’s home, St Mary’s, looking at Hawk-Eye, already used in other sports including cricket and tennis.

But Goalminder, patented in 1990, is different, utilising a total of 24 cameras implanted in the goalposts, 16 of them concentrating solely on the goal-line.

A further eight cameras look outward, bringing the possibility of the use of footage commercially by TV companies and coaches at top football clubs.

Goalminder’s founders say data from the cameras is processed instantaneously by a box behind the goal, and a verdict on whether the ball has crossed the line is transmitted within one second to a referee’s wristwatch.

The strict testing regime is being carried out behind closed doors, but news of the researchers’ visit to Rochdale will reassure football fans that the technology is finally on its way. The Rochdale tests are part of the first phase of trials of nine European-based systems.

Former Manchester United player Lee Sharpe is endorsing Goalminder.

“The technology is there now where if the ball crosses the line, you get a little bleep or a flashing light or something like that straight away then, yeah, I say bring it in,” he said.

“If it’s going to take a couple of seconds to stop and take a look at it then you can’t do it. I think it needs to come in.”

The system’s inventor, electrician Harry Barnes told Sky News: “If you take my system, we have eight cameras in each post, eight cameras in the crossbar. You get a definitive shot of the ball crossing the line, straight in line where the camera should be, no error. (It’s a) fantastic system.”

The aim  accepted now by Fifa as long as a reliable system can be found is to rule out the possibility that a clear goal, like Frank Lampard’s against Germany in the last World Cup, could be missed by the officials.

Goalminder would cost £100,000 to install in grounds. Its founders including director David Parden have made only losses on it to date, but stand to make millions.

Mr Parden said: “All we’ve done is put money in for 14 years. Me personally, and Harry, and I suppose all the others over the years, we must have put in £100,000 each Over 20 years, you could be making hundreds of millions.”

Also the Football Association (FA) have backed the idea of goal-line technology and believe it can be introduced to the Premier League as early as next season.

Alex Horne, the FA general secretary, told the BBC that the FA was supportive of the addition of goal-line technology to the ‘armoury’ of referees, and that its introduction would depend on the results of nine systems currently being tested.

“I think goal-line technology would be a huge boost for the game,” Horne told the BBC. “For years we’ve thought this was a good addition to referees’ armoury.

“It’s easy to make mistakes and we’ve all seen examples where the referee and assistant referee can’t see if a ball has crossed the line or not. We need to support them in decision-making.”

The current testing phase will be assessed by the International Football Association Board (IFAB) in March, with a second testing phase between March and June. IFAB and FIFA will then make a decision on the future of goal-line technology in July.

Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) President Mike Fennell is set to end his 17-year reign over the body, having promised Malyasia’s Prince Tunku Imran that he will not stand against him in the elections later this year.

The Jamaican was first elected at Victoria in Canada in 1994 but will step down in November at the Assembly in St Kitts and Nevis when Tunku, who has been the CGF’s vice-president since 2003, is expected to be the only candidate.

Fennell confirmed that he would not be seeking another term during a telephone call with Tunku earlier this week. Fennell had been forced to miss this week’s Executive Board meeting of the CGF because he is currently recovering in Jamaica from triple heart bypass surgery.

Tunku stated: “I was in contact with Mike Fennell to let him know that I’d like to announce my candidacy during the time of the EB, particularly as so many [CGF] regional vice-presidents were here.

“I did announce to the Board that I would be standing. Mike Fennell said to me, ‘If you are standing then I won’t’. He’s said he is going to stand down.”

Tunku has been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 2006 and President of the Olympic Council of Malaysia since 1998, the year that Kuala Lumpur became the first country in Asia to host the Commonwealth Games, the event widely credited with helping reinvigorate the Games. 

Tunku added: “Since Kuala Lumpur the Federation has gone…to something that is much bigger. Our vision was that the Games should represent what the Commonwealth is best at. We made it happen.”

Tunku now wants to carry on that philosophy when he is elected as President and plans to arrange a strategic review early next year involving the GCF, Commonwealth Games Associations and sports to discuss the future direction of the events, including how to get the top athletes like Usain Bolt to compete. 

“I’m keen not to change direction but to strengthen the Federation in so many ways,” he said. 

“We need to be better known. We have to try establish the desire of top athletes to want to be part of the Games, without obviously getting into the payment of monies because we can’t go down that route.

“We’ve got to change the perception of the top athletes. That’s to do with how we market the Games and position the Games.”

Football Federation Australia Chairman Frank Lowy has revealed all A-League clubs will get a share from their $10 million sale of Western Sydney Wanderers.

The long-awaited deal means ownership of the club will pass to a consortium chaired by Primo Smallgoods businessman Paul Lederer.

Lederer will be joined by Pirtek founder Peter Duncan, Filipino-Chinese businessman Jefferson Cheng and a fourth investor who Lowy confirmed would be David Slade, who is a family friend of the FFA chairman and a partner in British fashion outlet Topshop-Topman.

The FFA, which started the Wanderers with the help of $4 million in federal funding almost two years ago, has been eager to sell the club.

While Lowy called the Wanderers “a good investment”, the amount of money the FFA poured into the club is not known.

Lowy would not disclose what revenue the governing body was expected to make, but he confirmed A-League clubs would get a share.

“The new people who are coming in are very experienced in running the club,” Lowy said.

“I think we’ll get around $10 million or so (for the sale).

“I don’t dare to tell you (the expected surplus). We don’t have the final result and I don’t like to talk before then, but we’ll be sharing some of the surplus with the clubs.

Asked what other areas the money would be allocated to, Lowy simply said: “The whole of the game will benefit from this.”

London 2012 event organisers LOCOG have apologised to North Korea’s women’s football team after the wrong flag was displayed during national anthems.

The South Korea flag was shown alongside players’ names on screens at Hampden Park instead of the North Korea equivalent when a video package was being shown ahead of kick-off.

The Koreans headed back into their dressing room in digust but were eventually persuaded to take the field and the game kicked off an hour and five minutes after it was meant to.

However, the organisers of the London 2012 event (LOCOG) issued a statement of apology over the incident which came a day before the Games were officially opened.

It read: “Today ahead of the women’s football match at Hampden Park, the South Korean flag was shown on a big screen video package instead of the North Korean flag. Clearly this is a mistake, we will apologise to the team and the national Olympic committee and steps will be taken to ensure this does not happen again.”

South Korea and North Korea exist as neighbours but have a far from harmonious relationship.

The countries were formally established as separate entities in 1948, and the Korean War began in 1950. Only two years ago, North Korean artillery shells killed four people, two from the military and two civilians, on Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea.

Manchester City are in the midst of expanding their season ticket scheme to allow fans to use their membership cards to interact with each other and swap content.

The football club, discount currently hitting the heights at the top of the Premier League, site is utilising the cards’ RFID (radio frequency identification) technology to make the cards more personal to each individual fan.

Manchester City supporters will soon be able to use their smartphones to access exclusive augmented reality content based around players from the team. When they are in the vicinity of another fan with a membership card they could soon be able to swap the content – like stickers – with friends.

Richard Ayers, rx Manchester City’s head of digital, says: “[This] takes [being a fan] out of the TV and the home and the stadium and puts it in the pub and makes it very personal.”

Manchester City launched its digital membership scheme this season. Beyond augmented reality content, the tiered scheme also allows fans to collect points to go towards purchases at the City of Manchester Stadium and the club’s website.

The football club has launched a series of digital initiatives in recent months as it looks to take advantage of the team’s current good run of form and engage with more fans to boost online revenue.

They recently signed a lucrative deal with YouTube.

Despite untimely fresh allegations of corruption within FIFA, the current president of world soccer’s governing body Sepp Blatter has received another boost in his bid to re-elected for a fourth term after the Oceania confederation confirmed their support for the Swiss.

Blatter is widely expected to gain the support of CONCACAF at the elections, as well as UEFA, who last week confirmed their backing for the 75-year-old, up against Qatari Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Mohamed Bin Hammam.

Oceania have followed suit following a meeting of their executive committee in Auckland today, May 12, with a statement revealing Blatter’s “significant impact” on the region during his 13 years in office had been a determining factor.

The statement read: “As the 61st FIFA Congress draws closer, OFC has confirmed its support for the re-election of FIFA president Joseph Blatter citing a range of initiatives that have positively impacted the region under his leadership.

“The OFC Executive Committee met in Auckland today to discuss key issues including the upcoming FIFA election that will be held in Zurich on the 1st of June.

“OFC President David Chung says all members agreed that the current FIFA administration has had a significant impact on the development and popularity of football across the Pacific.

“While all Member Associations have an independent right to decide on which candidate to vote for, President Chung says today’s decision highlights the unity and transparency within the Confederation.”