Australian channel Network Ten has acquired the TV broadcast rights for the Karbonn Smart Champions League Twenty20 cricket competition for 2013.

The tournament is designed to bring together the best of the best in domestic twenty20 teams around the world for the chance of winning a lucrative cash bonus at the end. The format includes three direct entrants from the Indian Premier League, allergy two from Australia’s Big Bash League, abortion and three from Twenty20 tournaments in the West Indies, with qualifying teams eligible for tournaments in New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Ten will broadcast all 23 matches of the tournament.

Network Ten Head of Sport, David Barham, said in a statement the coverage further cements Ten’s commitment to cricket.

“We look forward to helping grow T20 cricket by showing games live and on free-to-air televisions for all Australians to enjoy,” he said.

English Championship team, Derby County, have announced their losses have continued to spiral with an almost £8million loss revealed for the last financial year but CEO Sam Rush believes they can turn around their fortunes.

The club’s latest accounts show that their debt now stands at around £34million, which includes the £15million mortgage on Pride Park.

The net loss for the year ending June 2012 was £7.9million, slightly up on the £7.7million for the previous 12 months.

The club’s turnover was £17.3million, down from £18.1million the year before, while operating costs were reduced from £17.6million to £17.3million.

Despite the figures, Derby remain confident they are on the right course and insist the ownership group will continue to bankroll the club because they believe in the work being done by manager Nigel Clough.

Chief executive Rush said: “Although the figures relate to a time prior to my arrival at the club, they do offer evidence of one of the key factors that attracted me to Derby County.

“We have a strong ownership group who continue to be the single biggest source of finance. The simple truth is that somebody has to cover our working capital needs, as well as make continued investments in our squad and wider infrastructure.

“The ownership group’s strength offers the club that much-needed financial stability. We aim to be both successful and sustainable. Increasingly, clubs won’t be able to gamble their futures as they have in the past, and this can only be good for the long-term health of the game.

“I and the rest of the board aim for Derby County to be successful and challenging for promotion, and we will do this the right way, through hard work and continued improvement.

“This stability and ethos runs right through the club and this year we have all seen further development on the field. Nigel Clough has created a young and exciting team that people are talking about in a very positive and complementary way.”

British Telecom’s (BT) new sports channel has a new head to lead the launch after former CEO of boxing promoter Frank Warren’s BoxNation, Simon Green was appointed to the role.

Simon Green will start work as the head of the new BT Sports Channel from November 1 reporting to BT Vision CEO Marc Watson.

Green has 20 years experience in sport broadcasting including spells with The Football Association, Setanta and the Ukrainian Football Channel. He is currently head of BoxNation, a boxing channel that launched in September on Sky and Virgin Media.

BT intends to launch its new sports channel on Sky as well, adopting the same model Setanta Sports used several years ago whereby Sky carries the channel but subscribers deal directly with the owner.

ESPN, the current secondary broadcaster of Premier League games uses a model whereby subscribers buy the channel directly from Sky who then pay ESPN.

Negotiations over this, and a wholesale agreement with Virgin Media, where they sell the channel onto customers, are ongoing.

BT announced its arrival on the live sport scene in the UK with a bang earlier this year when it agreed a three-year deal to pay £246m ($398m) a season for 38 live Premier League football games, including several ‘first picks’ which will enable it to screen the best game of the weekend ahead of the league’s main broadcaster Sky Sports.

It has also paid £152m for live Rugby Union rights over three years in a controversial deal that has split the sport’s main European competition.

The move into live sports broadcasting is designed to boost BT’s triple-play customer base – that is subscribers who take TV, phone and broadband from a single supplier. BT believes this gives it the edge over other companies that have previously tried to take on Sky’s stranglehold on live sport in the UK and failed.

Tickets.com, provider of state-of-the-art technology solutions to over 1000 sports and entertainment clients around the world is partnering with the Sports and Entertainment Alliance in Technology (SEAT) at their 2012 conference at Boston’s historic Liberty Hotel in August.

The SEAT conference is in its 6 year of bringing together the very top leaders in Information Technology in the Sports and Entertainment field and provides education and the exchange of ideas to further the effective development and use of technology in venues across the country and around the world.

“Tickets.com has a long history of innovation with leading-edge ticketing technologies, particularly with the launch of their state-of-the-art ProVenue® platform, and has been a source of hope and excitement to technology leaders in our industry,” said Christine Stoffel, Founder of SEAT. “They have been extremely helpful and supportive in the formation and growth of SEAT over the last several years, and we’re excited that they continue to be key participants in our conference.”

Tickets.com recently began publishing APIs for their Oracle and Java based ProVenue ticketing application, beginning the next generation of ticketing — integrating directly with other applications for real-time data and transaction sharing. One example using this approach, will allow tickets to be purchased directly from a team or venue’s website without the usual re-direct to a different set of web transaction pages.

“We have consulted extensively with technology leaders in the sports and entertainment space during our development of ProVenue, many of whom are now key participants and members of SEAT. It is a natural fit for us to embrace and support this organization of our colleagues to help foster communication and the evolution of ideas in this community,” explained John Walker, President & CEO, Tickets.com.

Servicing dozens of enterprise-class organizations across the major leagues including MLB, NHL and NASCAR, as well as regional ticketing distributors with clients from all entertainment genres, the ProVenue platform is a high-capacity and highly configurable Software As A Service (SAAS) application.

The 2012 SEAT conference will feature speakers from illustrious organizations such as: TD Garden/Boston Bruins, FELD Entertainment, International Speedway Corporation (ISC), the NFL and Ohio State University. Doug Lyons, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Tickets.com, will be participating on a panel entitled “Driving Revenue through Ticketing Technologies.“

iSportcconect also has a partnership with SEAT as it’s social media partner.

China’s most successful football club, Dalian Shide FC is in limbo after sporting authorities blocked a merger with their city rivals, Dalian Aerbin FC.

Dalian Shide, winner of eight Chinese league titles, is struggling for cash despite and been due to merge with wealthy neighbouring Dalian Aerbin.

But the Chinese Football Association (CFA) reportedly “negated” the deal, and Shide  had to reapply on Tuesday for its place in the Chinese Super League (CSL).

“Shide may meet the requirements but it’s most likely that the club cannot hold it to the end of next season due to insufficient money,” said state news agency Xinhua.

Shide won the Jia A League, China’s first professional league, in its inaugural season in 1994, and gained six more Jia A titles before winning the rebranded CSL in 2005.

Shide is one of only two Chinese clubs to reach the final of Asia’s top club championship, currently known as the AFC Champions League.

Clubs in China are often controlled by wealthy businessmen and Shide were bankrolled by Xu Ming, one of China’s richest men and the owner of Shide Group.

Xu was a close associate of disgraced former politician Bo Xilai.

Xu was linked to the scandal that brought down Bo, and was reportedly detained last March, on the same day Bo was sacked as party chief of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing. He is believed to still be in detention.

Dalian Aerbin was founded in 2009 and backed by one of China’s largest construction companies, the Aerbin Group. The wealth of the owners recently allowed the club to sign former Paris Saint-Germain player Hoarau on a three-year deal, reportedly doubling his salary.{jcomments on}

English League Two club, Swindon Town have announced their chairman Jeremy Wray is to be replaced after 18 months in charge at the County Ground.

Wray, who ochestrated the appointment of manager Paolo Di Canio, has overseen a resurgence during his reign – from relegation in 2011 to the League Two title the following year.

The club’s board of directors are set to name Sir William Patey, former British ambassador to Afghanistan, as his successor.

Di Canio recently hit out at the club’s current transfer embargo imposed by the Football League after exceeding their set wage and fee limit, but the Italian remains full of praise for the departing Wray.

“The chairman is the best chairman a manager can have,” he told BBC Sport. “We have achieved what we have achieved thanks to the way he supported me in the beginning when there was some friction with the players.

“The way he handled the situation showed he is the best chairman you can have. The result is thanks to him and then Paolo Di Canio, the technical staff and then the main actors, the players.”