Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) announced today that it has signed a five-year agreement with Fox International Channels Latin America to broadcast the CONCACAF Champions League soccer matches.

The deal starts with the 2012-13 championship commencing on 31 July and gives FOX Sports exclusive rights in Latin America, including both pay-TV and the digital platforms throughout the region. Additionally, in Mexico and South America, FOX Sports will have total exclusivity as the rights in these territories also include free TV.

“Our agreement with Fox International Channels Latin America puts the CONCACAF Champions League in perfect position to grow and fans throughout the region will be able to enjoy the competition like never before,”said CONCACAF President Jeffrey Webb.”With Fox’s many broadcast platforms and technologies, the Champions League will be presented in ways the fans want and expect.”

FOX Sports will broadcast more than 40 games live and delayed through its wide multimedia platform that consists of FOX Sports, FOX Sports+, their HD versions and FoxSportsla.com. It will also provide enhanced coverage on its shows such as Central FOX and La Última Palabra (The Last Word), and through a weekly CONCACAF Champions League highlight show.

“We’re very pleased with this new agreement and relationship with CONCACAF,” said Carlos Martinez, president of Fox International Channels Latin America, in a statement.”We are confident that we’ll turn this tournament into a favorite and make it one of the strongest in the region, leveraging FOX Sports’ wide reach and the synergies of our entertainment, lifestyle and factual channels in Latin America, as we have already done with other Latin American and European events.”

The CONCACAF Champions League, inaugurated in the 2008-09 season, is the confederation’s annual club championship. It features 24 teams from each of CONCACAF’s three sub-regions — North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

The winner of the CONCACAF Champions League qualifies for the FIFA Club World Cup.

Barcelona’s vice-president of finance, stomach Javier Faus, allergy has claimed that “the most financially solvent club in the world” within the next three years despite revealing an annual loss of Eur21 million in the latest set of financial accounts.

Faus reported that the club’s gross debt has been reduced from Eur532 million to 483 million and the net debt has been cut from Eur431 million to Eur364 million. The club’s turnover was Eur420 million for the last financial year, viagra buy but costs reached Eur441 million.

Faus acknowledged that there was still a lot of work to do to improve the bottom line of the newly-crowned UEFA Champions League winner, adding: “We want to decide our future and to do so we must reduce the debt to acceptable levels. There has been great effort, which will continue over the next two years, to reduce this debt. Barcelona lost Eur83 million last year and Eur21 this year, and we can’t afford to continue losing money.”

Faus added that Champions League-related revenues had increased from Eur39 million to Eur62 million thanks to Barcelona’s 3-1 victory over Manchester United in last month’s final, but reward payments for winning Europe’s top club competition also reached Eur28 million.

North Korea is set to air the London Olympics after a new deal was agreed with Asia’s broadcasting union.

Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) said in a statement that, Kim In-Kyu, president of KBS and the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), had reached agreement in Pyongyang this week with the North’s radio and television broadcasting committee (KRT).

KBS said that North Korea had already sent six television production workers to London.

The agreement includes “a special condition that KRT broadcast at least 200 hours of major events of interest to North Korea via terrestrial channels”, the statement said.

It was not clear whether coverage would be broadcast live or recorded.

South Korea’s private SBS station retains the right to air the Games for the entire Korean peninsula, including North Korea, until the Olympics of 2024.

The company said it would broadcast the games in the South along with two public broadcasters KBS and MBC. It had tasked ABU with handling the rights in North Korea.

The statement also said that agreement had been reached on helping North Korea secure broadcast rights for other major events including the 2014 Asian Games, the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

“The two parties have also agreed on finding ways to further cooperation in contents, technical and training programmes,” KBS said.

The announcement came as Olympic organisers apologised after a mix-up on Wednesday over North Korea’s flag prompted its women’s football team to walk off the pitch in an embarrassing start to the Games.

The squad were pictured next to the national flag of South Korea — with whom the North are officially still at war — at their opening match against Colombia at Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland.

North Korea has sent 51 athletes to London to compete in 11 events including women’s football, weightlifting, table-tennis and wrestling.

English soccer’s second tier clubs of the Npower Championship are set to bring in their own money controls, mirroring UEFA’s own Financial Fair Play rules that are being introduced over the coming years.

According to Greg Clarke, chairman of the Football League, which governs the three divisions below the Barclays Premier League, clubs have voted in principle to adopt the system. The system will be proposed later today at the Football League’s AGM in Cyprus, where it will also be put forward that League One clubs move towards the introduction of the salary cap currently in force in League Two, where teams can spend a maximum of 60% of their turnover on wages.

Clarke told Press Association Sport: “The Championship clubs voted to look at financial fair play and in principle decided that was the road they wanted to go down. I think it’s essential, and the energy to solve this is coming from the clubs themselves. It’s a perfect storm in that a lot of things have come together to make this happen, including of course the level of debt in the game – £700 million in the Football League, most of that in the Championship – and big losses being racked up by the clubs.

“These things are never unanimous and a couple of the clubs would rather not have constraints on how much money they can spend. I would hope this could lead to a return to the days when local communities could own the clubs rather than rely on offshore benefactors. There is also a proposal for League One clubs to shadow the League Two system in the coming season with a view to their adopting it the season afterwards.”

National sports station talkSPORT has secured the exclusive commercial radio rights for the FA Cup for the first time in UK and global rights excluding Europe.

The deal also includes Community Shield worldwide rights and selected England Games UK rights.

The station will be broadcasting live audio commentary of FA Cup matches in the UK following today’s agreement with the Football Association.

Additionally, click talkSPORT’s new international service talkSPORT Live launches on 18 August and will offer access to FA Cup matches as well as all Premier League games with distribution via the internet, mobile apps and international broadcast partners.

The latest agreement follows the announcement in April that talkSPORT had signed an exclusive deal with the Premier League to broadcast live commentary of all Premier League matches outside the European Economic Area in multiple languages including English, Spanish and Mandarin for the next four seasons.

Scott Taunton, Chief Executive, talkSPORT said: “Today’s announcement clearly positions talkSPORT as the leading commercial sports radio station worldwide.

“The FA Cup is the original and most historic cup competition in the world. I’m extremely excited that this deal gives us the ability to bring talkSPORT’s passion and analysis to the FA Cup, Community Shield and England friendlies to our listeners in the UK for the first time ever.

“The opportunity to broadcast FA Cup games internationally has been a key part of our global plans for talkSPORT Live and today’s rights announcement opens up the European market to us. We are in the process of creating a network of global radio and distribution partners for talkSPORT Live.”

Moz Dee, Programme Director, talkSPORT, said: “The FA Cup creates some of the best drama and stories in football. I’m extremely excited that this deal gives us the ability to bring talkSPORT’s passion and analysis to the FA Cup, Community Shield and England friendlies to our listeners.”

Mexico’s national soccer side qualified for the quarterfinals of the Gold Cup yesterday, June 9, despite having suspended five senior international players just hours before their 5-0 5-0 thrashing of Cuba for testing positive for the banned stimulant clenbuterol.

Antonio Naelson, Christian Bermudez, Edgar Duenas, Francisco Javier Rodriguez and goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa tested positive during a training camp in Mexico according to tournament organizer CONCACAF, currently in turmoil following the suspension of their own president and subsequently, acting president.

The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, will hold a meeting today to discuss the issue and decide whether Mexico can replace the suspended players after claiming that the five may have inadvertently ingested the substance.

Clenbuterol is used to treat respiratory disorders such as asthma and can increase aerobic capacity by improving the flow of oxygen in the bloodstream. Farmers sometimes use it illegally to bulk up cattle more quickly.

In fact, just this April, Germany’s anti-doping agency advised soccer players attending this month’s FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Mexico to avoid eating meat because of the widespread use of clenbuterol by farmers.

“As far as possible the consumption of meat products should be omitted,” the German agency said at the time.

The Football Association (FA) has announced a new six season deal with BBC Sport for the radio commentary rights for all men’s and women’s FA Cup & International matches along with the Community Shield.

According to a report by the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, the collective turnover of English Premier League soccer clubs hit a record £2.03bn (US$3.33bn) in the 2009-10 season and will have exceeded £2.2bn ($3.61bn) in the latest campaign.

Alex Byars, senior consultant in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, stated: “Of the £49m increase in Premier League clubs’ revenues, less than 10% (£4m) fed through to operating profits, which increased from £79m to £83m. The challenge for clubs continues to be converting impressive revenue growth into sustainable profits that allow for investment in both infrastructure and talent.”

“The record pre-tax losses of £445m in 2009-10 are a concern, particularly as credit is likely to remain less available to football clubs than it was two or three years ago. This may also, in part, explain why gross transfer spending by Premier League clubs decreased by more than 20% from the record £713m in 2008-09 to £559m in 2009-10.”

Dan Jones, partner in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, added: “Despite the difficult economic environment, Premier League clubs’ revenues increased by 2% in 2009-10. Broadcast revenue grew by 7% to £1.04bn to become the first £1bn revenue stream of any domestic football league, even before further growth in 2010-11 from the uplift in overseas broadcast deal values.”

However, the Review of Soccer Finance added that the total European football market grew to a record £13.3bn in 2009-10, with Germany’s Bundesliga proving the most profitable major league within the continent (£1.4bn revenue). However, the report suggested the high revenues of English clubs would place them in a strong position ahead of the new UEFA financial fair play rules to come into practice from the 2013-14 season.

Spain and Italy followed (£1.3bn each) and France (£0.9bn) all trailed the Premier League in the revenue stakes. However, for a second successive year the increase in Premier League clubs’ total wage costs of £64m (5%) exceeded the rise in revenues (£49m), driving total wages up to over £1.4bn and resulting in a record wages to revenue ratio of 68%.

The new deals follow an announcement yesterday about a three-year extension to ESPN’s Bundesliga rights, and come as the broadcaster plans for the future after losing out on a new Premier League deal to BT. 

ESPN is clearly positioning itself as the home of European club football, with France’s Ligue 1 coming to the broadcaster for the first time.

Serie A has been aired on ESPN since the broadcaster launched its UK channel in 2009, and it will remain so under a renewed deal. 

Agreements to Dutch and Russian top-flight club football have also been renewed. 

“The addition of France’s Ligue 1 and the renewal of Serie A, Dutch Eredivisie and Russian Premier League means ESPN is the home to the very best domestic league football from across Europe,” said Jeroen Oerlemans, the vice president of TV Channels, ESPN EMEA.

“Our portfolio of live football on ESPN is combined with our growing range of sport, which includes rugby, cricket, darts, motorsport, UFC, boxing and more.”

Gianni Infantino, general secretary of European soccer’s governing body UEFA, has heaped praise on preparations for Euro 2012 and insisted that doubts about Poland and Ukraine’s ability to co-host the tournament have been “wiped out”.

The news comes as a huge result and boost to organisers after UEFA president Michel Platini questioned progress in the host countries last year after particular concerns were raised about stadia in the Ukrainian cities of Kiev and Lviv.

Since then, construction work at the Kiev venue is expected to be completed in August or September and Infantino said at a press conference yesterday, June 8, that all preparations were now on track exactly one year ahead of the start of the competition.

Infantino stated: “It is impressive what is going on in Ukraine. There are many milestones but we are now on the final straight and have achieved much in Poland and Ukraine. The road was not an easy ride – the project was at a high risk (of cancellation) due to delays to facilities. Our doubts have now been wiped out; we are going in the right direction at the right pace.”

Football Federation of Ukraine president Hryhoriy Surkis added: “Eighteen months ago we felt it (the project) was seriously threatened, but today no one doubts it. We are on the final lap.”

Infantino also expressed confidence that the recent spate of hooliganism in Poland would not be repeated at Euro 2012. “As far as hooliganism and crowd trouble are concerned, England had this problem for many years and have more or less eradicated it through the work of the government and the authorities. I am convinced that the same thing will be happening in Poland to stop this being a problem at Euro 2012.”

Polish Football Association chief Grzegorz Lato added: “There are measures in place to stop this (hooliganism) from happening again. I am sure that at Euro 2012 Polish people will be sitting next to English fans or Greeks or Spaniards and there will be no problem with hooliganism.”