Former Manchester City chief Graham Wallace has been appointed chief executive officer of Scottish League One team Rangers.

Wallace, 52, was previously chief operating officer at Manchester City and is also former chief financial officer with IMG and MTV Europe.

The Ibrox CEO post has been vacant since Craig Mather’s departure in October.

And Rangers in recent weeks have appointed David Somers as acting chairman and Norman Crighton as a non-executive director.

They joined James Easdale and finance director Brian Stockbridge on a board which been depleted by the resignations of Mather, chairman Walter Smith and director Ian Hart.

Dumfries-born Graham will assume his role immediately and also joins the Rangers International Football Club Plc board of directors.

“I watched from afar as the Rangers support came to the club’s aid during the times of turmoil and now it is the turn of the board and management to provide the stability and governance to drive Rangers’ recovery forward and ensure further football success,” said Graham.

Global sports brand, viagra adidas has announced their Olympic sponsorship has allowed them to reach their £100 million ($156m) sales mark.

adidas CEO Herbert Hainer (pictured) said the German group had sold around £100m of Olympics merchandise since products first hit the shops over a year ago, asthma with more to come.

adidas has got its money back on the 100 million pounds it has invested in sponsoring London 2012 and associated marketing.

“The biggest sales are coming now, apoplectic ” Hainer said from the adidas media centre in London that the company has set up next to the Olympic Park in Stratford for the duration of the Games. “We can see people are queuing in stores now to get their products.”

Hainer, speaking to journalists after adidas reported second-quarter results, said licensed product sales were already more than triple what it achieved in Beijing, making London 2012 the most successful Games ever for adidas from a commercial perspective.

Traditionally, sportswear makers do not see the Olympics as such a big money-spinner as football tournaments. The Euro 2012, for example, will help adidas to record football sales of over 1.6 billion euros ($2 billion) this year.

Along with making the official London 2012 sports apparel merchandise – which does not feature its three-stripes logo – for sale in the UK, adidas provides the kit for hosts Team GB, replicas of which can be bought in stores.

As official sportswear partner, it is also providing 3 million items of clothing for the athletes to wear in the Olympic village and for volunteers.

adidas will not be official sportswear partner of the next Olympics in Brazil in 2016. Hainer said the group had decided instead to focus on the football World Cup, also to be held in Brazil in 2014.

Undoubtedly the biggest public corruption scandal of its history hit world soccer’s governing body FIFA this weekend, which saw presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam and key executive committee member Jack Warner suspended as the roof was lifted on the much maligned body’s worst kept secret.

It was reported that Qatari Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Mohamed Bin Hammam had withdrawn his presidential candidacy after being investigated on charges of corruption following a report handed to FIFA’s ethics committee by American ExCo member Chuck Blazer. The report also claimed that Warner was highly involved in offering and accepting bribes as well as investigating current current incumbent Sepp Blatter’s role in the farce to a lesser degree.

The outcome saw the two former officials provisionally suspended despite both denying the allegations, with Bin Hammam having already appealed the suspension. It is now known that Blatter’s challenger did not officially withdraw his candidacy and holds extremely slim hopes of overturning the decision in order to stand against his Swiss counterpart, who is now the sole candidate in tomorrow’s election.

In an extraordinary weekend of breaking news FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke was forced to retract claims made in an email published by the shamed Warner, saying that Qatar had bought the 2022 World Cup. Valcke confirmed that the email was genuine but stated that the comments he made were taken out of context and lost in email translation in a desperate attempt to clear the bids name after the scandal of the ‘whistleblower’ reported by the Sunday Times.

In his explaination Valcke claimed that he was referring only to Qatar’s huge marketing budget, as opposed to unethical behaviour, adding: “What I wanted to say is that the winning bid used their financial strength to lobby for support. I have at no time made, or was intending to make, any reference to any purchase of votes or similar unethical behaviour.”

The retraction was enough for Blatter, and indeed FIFA, to declare that the Qatar bid team were innocent in their lobbying process after the body found ‘no evidence’ from the Sunday Times report to take the case to the ethics committee.

The allegations made by former FA Chairman Lord Triesman were also disregarded with the FAs report suggesting that four ExCo members, including Warner, sought bribes in return for their backing in the 2018 World Cup bidding process at the end of last year. After claiming that there was no case to answer with regards to the report, FIFA agreed to publish a summary of the findings from the FAs case against its members.

As all this occurred, Blatter, who now stands as the sole candidate for re-election into what would be his fourth term as president, was forced to confront the press yesterday, Monday 30, though many of his comments only managed to multiply the feeling among many that a complete overhaul is necessary.

When asked as to whether the latest findings and allegations of corruption within the body had left FIFA in a crisis, Blatter stated: “What is a crisis? Football is not in a crisis. When you see the final of the Champions League then you must applaud. So we are not in a crisis, we are only in some difficulties.”

In a key development, FIFA’s major sponsors Coca-Cola and Adidas have both gone on record confirming their concern following the allegations of corruption that have engulfed the body.

Following the weekend’s extraordinary developments, a Coca-Cola spokesperson told the Press Association: “The current allegations being raised are distressing and bad for the sport. We have every expectation that FIFA will resolve this situation in an expedient and thorough manner.”

An Adidas spokesman had stated: “Adidas enjoys a long-term, close and successful partnership with FIFA that we are looking forward to continuing. Adidas will be an official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Having said that, the negative tenor of the public debate around FIFA at the moment is neither good for football nor for FIFA and its partners.”

In other news, overshadowed by the chaotic weekend, the FIFA Executive Committee decided to lift the suspensions on the football associations of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FFBH) and Brunei Darussalam (NFABD, formerly BAFA) during their meeting held yesterday, May 30, at the Home of FIFA in Zurich.

The Olympic Stadium row looks set to drag on further following the revelation that two casino chains have now launched judicial reviews into the decision-making procedures of the local authority.

City and Eastern and Apollo are both questioning Newham Council’s right to grant a license to a third company, Aspers, to build a casino within the adjacent Westfield Stratford City shopping centre.

The council is now under attack on four fronts following separate judicial reviews launched by soccer clubs Tottenham Hotspur of the English Premier League and Leyton Orient of League One, who are both fighting the decision to allow West Ham United to move to Stratford in 2014 after the Olympics and Paralympics.

A City and Eastern spokesman said: “The Gambling Act of 2009 makes it very clear that as party of any casino bid, regeneration has to form a significant element.

“Our project and that of Apollo both had over £250 million ($405 million) of urban regeneration. 

“This deal has been done behind closed doors in the dark. 

“Why wasn’t the bidding process open?”

Tottenham are unhappy with the process which led to West Ham being chosen as the winner after Newham Council arranged a US$65m loan to finance the move. The club have since widened their appeal and asked the High Court to start a separate judicial review into the roles of several other parties involved.

Fergus Kinloch, Director of City and Eastern, said it was clear his organisation never had a chance of winning the bid – exactly the same argument being used by Tottenham – stating: “Newham Council has in our view needlessly turned away over £250 million ($405 million) of investment plus substantial financial benefits for local residents, and at a time when councils are having to make major spending cuts.

“The whole situation quite simply beggars belief and certainly doesn’t work in the best interests of Newham residents.”

Sports agency MP & Silva has opened new offices in London and Munich, it has been announced.

The new offices form part of the agency’s expansion plans in Western and central Europe. The London office will become the centre of European operations, and group chief executive Andrea Radrizzani will lead operations while Miriam Sherlock will handle commercial activities around the UK.

In the Munich office, Peter Leible will be chief representative for Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and will be responsible for commercial activities across the three areas.

Radrizzani said: “We have been waiting for the right time to strengthen our footprint in Europe. We are cautiously positive about the future for European television, with digital TV building up strong momentum over the last three quarters.

“We believe our new operations will enable us to capitalise on the upturn in all of the key European television markets, led by the UK in the lead in to the London 2012 Olympics.”

MP & Silva now has a total of 12 offices around the world.

The International Triathlon Union (ITU) has begun the bidding process for the World Triathlon Championships 2015 to all National Federations and cities interested in hosting the final race of the 2015 World Triathlon Series. 

“ITU is committed to hosting top level events in iconic cities, capsule ” ITU President and IOC Member Marisol Casado said. “As our sport continues to rise in popularity, nurse we believe hosting the ITU World Triathlon Championships offers cities the possibility to showcase their city to a global audience.” 

In 2009, the championships were revamped, expanding the former single-day World Championship race into an exciting multi-city global series, during which athletes vie for prize money totaling more than $2 million USD. The series culminates with the ITU World Triathlon Championships, which will continue to be called the World Triathlon Grand Final through 2013. 

In addition to crowning the elite ITU World Champions, the World Championships include the junior and Under23 divisions, as well as Paratriathlon, Aquathlon and age group races. The week of action also includes the annual ITU Congress, which has representation from more than 140 countries. 

Hosting the World Triathlon Championships 2015 offers cities the opportunity to showcase themselves to millions of worldwide television audiences while attracting thousands of international guests and race participants. 

With record high participants in 2012, the Barfoot & Thompson ITU World Triathlon Grand Final generated a 307% return on national investment, while television exposure for the overall series increased by 18%. 

The 2013 World Triathlon Series will conclude at the iconic Olympic venue in Hyde Park from 11-15 September 2013, giving all athletes the opportunity to compete on the same stage as the 2012 Olympians. The 2014 World Triathlon Championships were recently awarded to Edmonton, which previously hosted the event in 2001.

Sportswear manufacturers in China that are loaded with unsold stock from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and now battling weak domestic demand are using the London Games to market their products.

Athletes from 10 teams, as well as members of several Olympic committees, are wearing Chinese companies’ sponsored clothing.

Peak Sport Products is the sponsor of uniforms and shoes for the Opening and Closing Ceremony for the Olympics squads of New Zealand, Iraq, Slovenia, Algeria, Jordon, Lebanon and Cyprus.

Peak Sports Products founder and Chairman, Xu Jingnan said: “The domestic market is full of uncertainties this year, but the overseas market offers better opportunities.”

361 Degrees agreed deals with several Olympic committees, including Belarus’s and Croatia’s.

The Erke Group is the sponsor for the Olympic national delegates of South Africa, Iran and Uzbekistan.

361 Degrees VP Zhu Chenye said that no clothing manufacturer “would consider missing the exposure offered by the Olympics – no matter how high the sponsorship cost. The teams and athletes you sponsor this year will be very likely to decide what partners you are going to work with at the next Olympic Games.”{jcomments on}

Wie das Magazin „Sponsors“ berichtet, cialis startet der FC Bayern München in rund einer Woche sein eigenes soziales Netzwerk. Über die Plattform „myfcb.de“ können sich die Fans des deutschen Rekordmeisters ab dem 28. März austauschen. Hinter dem Projekt stehen auch monetäre Absichten.

Das Netzwerk verfügt über Features, die auch Facebook bietet. So können die Mitglieder Freunde einladen, Freundeslisten zusammenstellen, chatten sowie Bilder und Videos hochladen. Ergänzt wird das Angebot durch Online-Games und die Möglichkeit für Fan-Clubs, ihre eigenen Webseiten auf der Plattform zu erstellen. Der Fan-Shop des FC Bayern ist ebenso wie das Bezahlangebot FCB-TV an die neue Plattform angebunden.

In Anlehnung an den „Like-Button“ von Facebook, heißt diese Funktion bei myfcb „Guad“. Anders als bei Facebook wird es auch den Button „Net Guad“ geben, um Kritik beziehungsweise Ablehnung zuzulassen. Für den technischen Betrieb und die Entwicklung des Designs wurde die Agentur Apareo beauftragt.

Dass auch monetäre Absichten hinter dem Projekt stehen, ist kaum von der Hand zu weisen. Ähnlich wie Facebook wird auch der FC Bayern Nutzerdaten sammeln und versuchen, seine Fans zu dechiffrieren. Im Stadion sind die Anhänger in der anonymen Masse kaum zu identifizieren.

Auf der Website gibt er dagegen selbst Daten preis: Zwar muss nicht der echte Name angegeben werden, doch tun dies trotzdem viele Fans. Daneben geben sie die E-Mail-Adresse, vielleicht auch Geschlecht sowie Beruf an, und ob sie lieber auf der Gegengeraden sitzt oder auf der Südtribüne steht. Diese Informationen wird der Verein nutzen, um zielgerichtet zu werben.

UEFA president Michel Platini has admitted concern that representatives of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) will walk out of the FIFA Congress tomorrow, June 1, as a show of disapproval over the temporary suspension of AFC president Mohamed Bin Hammam.

The Qatari was barred from all soccer activity by the FIFA ethics committee on Sunday, May 29, over allegations of colluding at bribery in the presidential election race to challenge incumbent president Sepp Blatter. China’s Zhang Jilong has taken over as acting leader of the AFC.

Frenchman Platini,who is also a vice-president of FIFA, had warned his own members at a private UEFA meeting on Monday, May 30, of the chance of an Asian walkout after a similar demonstration of discontent by the Asians took place at the 1999 Congress in a row over the number of places allocated to the AFC at the World Cup finals.

Platini said: “In 1999 Asia left, I don’t know if they will do that again. I think the election will go ahead but I don’t know.”

The AFC had been due to hold its own private meeting today, May 31, which was cancelled on the grounds that the only agenda item had been address by Bin Hammam.

The AFC issued a short statement late Monday, confirming Zhang Jilong’s interim role and saying: “We, the members of the AFC executive committee, express our deepest concern at the latest developments within FIFA and that involves the AFC president Mohamed Bin Hammam.

“We will be following the investigation as it takes its course. We hope the outcome of the investigation will be in the best interests of football in Asia and beyond . . . The AFC will continue its work in promoting and further developing Asian football in the spirit of Asian unity and solidarity.”