Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who owns current Italian Serie A champions AC Milan soccer club, may be considering selling shares in a Hong Kong initial public offering, according to reports by Italian daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

The suggestion comes days after Berlusconi’s holding company Fininvest were ordered to pay a US$750m fine to Compagnie Industriali Riunite SpA.

Berlusconi may alternatively opt to sell a minority stake in AC Milan through a capital increase, the Italian newspaper said.

Commercial broadcaster TV Klan has been awarded media rights to show the 2012–15 UEFA Champions League in Albania, including the best Wednesday live match.

TV Klan will show the best Wednesday live game each matchweek followed by a highlights programme. In line with UEFA’s platform neutral approach, football fans in Albania will also be able to follow the UEFA Champions League on mobile and online at tvklan.al.

Digitalb have previously also snapped up rights to the UEFA Champions League media rights in Albania for next season.

South Korea’s elite soccer league, The K-League, will double players’ pay and introduce lie-detector tests in attempts to prevent match-fixing, after more than 50 team members were indicted for the offence.

The K-League is also revising regulations to strip teams of the right to compete in the Asian Champions League if players are found guilty of match fixing, the Seoul-based soccer competition said today in a statement on its website.

The statement said that players’ minimum annual salary will rise to US$22,700 starting next year.

The league, which began in 1983 as the Korean Super League, will also adopt a promotion-relegation system from 2013.

South Korean prosecutors on July 7 indicted 46 players from six of the K-League’s 16 teams on charges they accepted bribes to influence games.

Most of the indicted players had been forced by colleagues and gang members to take part in match fixing, the prosecutors’ office in Changwon, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of Seoul, said in a statement. Prosecutors didn’t name any of the players in their statement.

Prosecutors also indicted another 11 former players and gang members for attempting to influence the outcome of 15 K- League games between June and October last year.

The indictments follow similar charges against nine more players and six other people on June over similar allegations.

Global Media Group (GMG) has been awarded media rights in Georgia for the 2012–15 UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League.

Further to the recent allocation of UEFA Champions League rights to Rustavi 2 and the Georgian Public Broadcaster, buy cialis pay television operator GMG will show two live matches each matchnight on GMG Football and GMG Sport 1 until the end of the group stage. A highlights programme will also be screened every matchweek throughout the season on GMG Football.

During the round of 16 and quarter-finals, GMG Football will also broadcast one live game on Tuesdays, as well as transmitting the semi-finals and the final on a co-exclusive basis.

As for the UEFA Europa League, GMG has been granted all pay rights. Each matchweek it will screen two live matches per kick-off slot on GMG Football and GMG Sport, with a highlights show on GMG Football. All rights have been awarded on a platform-neutral basis, with the rights also being exploited on internet via gmg-tv.com and on mobile.

„ran” an den Korb! kabel eins zeigt in der kommenden Saison 2012/2013 die Beko Basketball Bundesliga (Beko BBL) live. Das vereinbarte Rechtepaket beinhaltet bis zu zehn Top-Begegnungen aus der höchsten deutschen Basketball-Spielklasse. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Partien des FC Bayern München. Alle TV-Übertragungen werden von der “ran”-Redaktion produziert und sind auch im Live-Stream auf www.ran.de und www.myvideo.de zu sehen.

Zeljko Karajica, Chief Operating Officer der ProSiebenSat.1 TV Deutschland GmbH: “Die Beko BBL ist eine junge und moderne Marke, die sehr gut zu ‘ran’ passt. Die Liga hat ihre Attraktivität in den letzten Jahren kontinuierlich gesteigert – nicht zuletzt auch durch den FC Bayern München. Wir freuen uns auf die Zusammenarbeit mit der Beko BBL und den besten Basketballern Deutschlands.

The NBC Sports Group have secured a major multi-year renewal for French Open rights in the U.S.

In the agreement reached with the French Tennis Federation, NBC has secured multiplatform rights for the clay court Grand Slam event through 2024. The extension, superseding the final year of a contract that was set to expire at the end of the 2013 tournament, calls for 10 more hours of TV coverage annually.

NBC will air the opening Sunday of the French Open, as it did this year for the first time, as well as middle weekend tennis, the men’s and women’s semifinals and the men’s and women’s finals.

This extension brings key days of the tournament to the network, including Memorial Day coverage, and the women’s semifinals rounding out the network’s championship weekend. Some of that action had been carried by Tennis Channel, which last October inked a renewal with the FFT. The pact covers the Grand Slam fortnights from 2016 through 2022. Tennis and the FFT originally signed a contract encompassing Roland Garros from 2007 through the 2015 event.

At the conclusion of its new agreement, NBC will have served as the broadcast home of the French Open for 42 consecutive years.

“The French Open is one of the world’s most celebrated sports events,” said Jon Miller, president of programming for NBC Sports and NBC Sports Network, in a statement. “This ground-breaking agreement will extend our relationship with Roland Garros through 2024, and provides tennis fans with more comprehensive coverage than ever before, including live streaming of more matches.”

NBC has been covering some portion of the tournament since 1975–with a two-year break in 1980-82, when CBS held the rights.

As it is doing with the London Olympics, NBC will live stream all of its coverage on NBCSports.com.

English Premier League soccer club Blackburn Rovers say they are planning to start a club and feeder academy in the western Indian city of Pune.

The Lancashire-based club, who are owned by the Indian poultry-giant Venky’s, were purchased last year for US$73m by the Pune-based company.

Venky’s director B. Balaji Rao said: ”We are getting an academy and a stadium in Pune. The site is near the Mumbai-Pune highway and will be ready in a year and a half or two years.

“We are looking to launch a team based around players from the academy,” he said. “We have already registered the team name Blackburn Rovers FC Pune.”

Rao intends for the club to play in India’s professional I-League.

He added: ”We are looking to launch a team based around players from the academy. The academy will be run exactly like the Blackburn academy, with trainees starting when they are in the 11-12 age group, and train under coaches from Blackburn.”

Blackburn is also planning an exhibition match against a local team in Pune on July 22 and will field a full-strength squad, including its top players like Chris Samba, Paul Robinson, Martin Olsson and Ryan Nelsen for different teams in a local tournament on July 23.

The New Orleans Hornets announced today that they have signed a multi-year deal with Entercom Communications to broadcast all Hornets games  live on WWL radio beginning with the upcoming 2012-13 season.

The agreement, along with full game coverage, will include a post-game show, as well as a weekly Thursday night coach’s show with Hornets Head Coach Monty Williams hosted by Deshazier.

“We enjoy a great partnership with WWL radio and are thrilled that Hornets games will be broadcast on New Orleans’ leading radio station and become part of the great momentum we are enjoying this summer,” said Owner/Chairman of the Board Tom Benson. “WWL radio has long been the recognized leader in sports coverage. We couldn’t be happier about this partnership for Hornets basketball.”

“WWL radio, the News, Talk & Sports leader in the Gulf South, home of the New Orleans Saints and everything LSU, is proud to add New Orleans Hornets basketball to our lineup,” said Chris Claus, Vice President and General Manager of Entercom New Orleans. “The Hornets had the NBA’s best off-season and we are proud to have the opportunity to broadcast their games. Great new ownership, top draft picks, terrific free agent signings and smart trades have the entire region talking. We can’t wait to deliver Anthony Davis, Eric Gordon, Austin Rivers…exciting Hornets basketball to WWL listeners beginning Halloween night against San Antonio.”

In addition to using the power of WWL radio, Entercom will use its other amazing radio stations B-97, Magic 101.9, Bayou 95.7 and ESPN 1350am to market and promote Hornets basketball to the New Orleans metro and beyond. 

“The announcement of WWL radio as our flagship radio station is another addition to the excitement surrounding our upcoming season,” said Owner/Vice Chairman Rita Benson LeBlanc. “With both Hornets and Saints games broadcasting on WWL radio, as well as extensive coverage of both teams, it truly is our city’s leading station in regards to New Orleans sports.”

Dalian Wanda, a Chinese commercial real estate company, has agreed a US$77m financial package to support the Chinese Football Association (CFA) over the next three years.

A portion of their estimated US$21.6bn assets over the next three years into the Chinese Super League (CSL), and Dalian Wanda will assist in the management of the competition, which will be renamed the “Dalian Wanda Plaza CSL” from this season until 2013.

Money from the deal will be used to attract a world-class foreign coach to manage the Chinese national team, while up to 100 young players will be sent abroad for training and development.

CFA chairman Wei Di stated: “The progress of Chinese soccer depends on the emergence of high-level young players. China’s negligence in developing teenage soccer directly led to the slump in the sport in recent years.”

Dalian Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin said the deal would be extended if the partnership proved successful over the next three years, adding: “I hope our cooperation will reawaken people’s passion for soccer.”

The ESPN have obtained the multi-year rights to the Clydesdale Bank Premier League and Irn Bru Scottish Football League until 2017.

The agreement means ESPN’s channels in the UK and Ireland will next season screen 40 live and exclusive matches from both leagues – more than ever before and ten more than in previous seasons on ESPN.

Under the deal, 30 Clydesdale Bank Premier League games will be shown on ESPN over the season alongside ten Rangers games from the Irn Bru Scottish Football League, including three home Rangers fixtures.

In addition to ESPN’s live and exclusive TV coverage, fans can catch coverage of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League online and on mobile with ESPN.co.uk and ESPNFC.com, the sports media company’s recently announced worldwide multimedia football initiative.

Live HD television coverage of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League on ESPN is complemented by the company’s exclusive coverage of the Barclays Premier League, the FA Cup, Aviva Premiership Rugby, UEFA Europa League, multiple weekly German Bundesliga and Italian Serie A matches and much more.