GMM Grammy Sport has signed a five-year deal to broadcast the Japanese J-League.

Grammy chairman Paiboon Damrongchaitham told a press conference yesterday that his firm purchased the J-League rights because “it’s Asia’s No.1 league and is more exciting than some European leagues.”

J-League matches will be shown live on Grammy’s satellite service.

The contract is the latest move by Grammy to increase its broadcasting power after recently winning the rights to show Euro 2012 and Germany’s Bundesliga.

The final of the London 2012 Olympics soccer tournament will be played at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 11 August next year, according to the Games’ schedule released yesterday, February 15. This will then impact on the inaugural curtain-raising event for the English Premier League – the Community Shield – which will need to relocate to accommodate for the Olympics match.

The Community Shield was scheduled for the following day, coinciding with the Closing Ceremony of the Games, due to the Premier League kick-off being put back in order to steer clear of the Olympics.

Speculation that the FA would use the opportunity to take the game overseas – as happens regularly with the Italian Super Cup which was in Beijing last year – has since been quashed by the FA. One would suggest that the game would move to Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, but this is also not a possible alternative, with the men’s third place play-off being held at the venue on August 10.

An FA spokesman said: “The Community Shield take place at the traditional time at a prestigious stadium in England.” This makes Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground the favourite, since its last Olympic game is the men’s semi-final on Tuesday, August 7.

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Related Discussion: FA Community Shield – by Michael Cunnah

 

The first-ever  Southeast Asian (SEA) Swimming Championships will be broadcast on major regional television and online video streaming channels under an agreement with World Sport Group, recipe the company which has been appointed as the exclusive media rights partner for the 2012, advice 2014 and 2016 editions of the event.

This FINA-sanctioned regional event will be held in Singapore from May 28th to June 17th, and features four aquatic disciplines – swimming, water polo, synchronized swimming and diving. 

Live coverage of the swimming competition finals which will also serve as the final qualifiers for the 2012 London Games will begin on June 13th on leading video streaming websites UStream and YouTube, as well as on StarHub (Singapore), Astro (Malaysia), Skynet (Myanmar) and ONEWorldSports (USA), with other broadcasters to be confirmed.

Highlights clips of the water polo, synchronized swimming, diving and swimming competitions will be available on YouTube and UStream from May 28^th.

“The inaugural SEA Swimming Championships is not only staging its first appearance but it is also setting a benchmark for a regional aquatic event in providing comprehensive coverage and multiple avenues to engage fans from all over the world. Fans can follow their favourite Southeast Asian athletes on television or via popular online media platforms, all delivered via the help and expertise of our exclusive media rights partner, World Sport Group. As a swimming fan, I am certainly very excited and looking forward to the start of the SEA Swimming Championships,” said Jeffrey Leow, Chairman of the Organising Committee of the SEA Swimming Championships 2012.

Mark Hardess, President, ASEAN and Australia, World Sport Group, said: “We are delighted to be a part of the first-ever SEA Swimming Championships, a milestone for aquatic sports in the region.   Coverage on some of the world’s most popular video streaming and social media sites, along with television broadcast will ensure that the competition will be available to a wide audience in the region and beyond.” said Mark Hardess, President, ASEAN and Australia, World Sport Group.

English Premier League soccer giants Manchester United are set to become the first ever club in the league’s history to break the £100m (US$161.24m) mark for commercial revenue.

It has been revealed that the club’s revenue has risen up to $38.7m over the first quarter of the accounting year with media reports suggesting that the second quarter will be just as strong. The last annual figures put the club’s commercial income to $130.5m, a growth of 16 per cent.

A new ‘territory specific’ approach to commercial opportunities implemented by Ricahrd Arnold, United’s commercial director, and agreed with the Glazer family, has allowed the club to rapidly expand that area of revenue.

Chief executive David Gill said: “One of the strengths of this club compared to others is that we get income from all revenue streams.

“Our match day revenue is around 40 per cent of our overall turnover, we are part of a great competition in the Premier League that continues to grow and the commercial sector has gone up from 20 per cent to 30 per cent. They are all high margins and will continue to give us the money Sir Alex Ferguson needs to keep the club at the top.

“That will stand us in very good stead. They are all high margins and will continue to give us the money Sir Alex Ferguson needs to keep the club at the top. There is a strong desire within our great supporter base for that to happen.”

The Nigerian Olympic Committee (NOC) has secured for the first time the broadcast rights to the London 2012 Olympics

According to the NOC the worth of the rights is estimated at N80 million ($499,219) , while the total marketing worth of the NOC is put at N250 million ($1.56m).

The president of the NOC, Engineer Sanni Ndanusa, said the rights was purchased from South Africa base Octagon Africa which is the original custodian of the rights from theIOC.

He stressed that for the first time, three electronic broadcast outfits, the Nigerian Television Authority, African Independent Television and Radio Nigeria are the three channels through which broadcast feeds will get to the living rooms of Nigerian within the African hub in keeping with the free to air concept of international broadcast.

Ndanusa who regretted that Nigeria did not get this kind of window during the last FIFAU-17 World Championship, which it hosted in 2009 out of ignorance, however vowed that the country was going to make the most out of this project as the benefit is going beyond sports.

”Nigeria’s participation in the London 2012 Olympics is going beyond sports as cultural and economic investment potential of the country will all showcased. The countdown has just begun and Nigeria is good to go,” he said.

Shedding more light on the development, NOC head of marketing, Patrick Ukah said: ”We will for the first time be broadcasting the Olympics by a Nigerian radio live from London . There is going to be live and delayed broadcast.

According to Ukah, the current executive of the NOC wants to create a new and healthy perception of the NOC to the world. All prospective media and marketing partners are expected to leverage their advertising deals through the NOC irrespective of their status in whatever category of business they are operating within the continent and the country.

Switzerland and in particular, Zurich’s best-known soccer side, Grasshopper-Club may be forced to leave the nation’s capital, home to the likes of FIFA and the IOC, after a major disagreement with the city’s authorities.

The club, who have been inhabitant’s of the city since being founded 125 years ago, are considering a provisional move to ground-share with league rivals Aarau.

Grasshopper have been Swiss champions on 27 occasions and cup winners on 18, but president Urs Linsi stated: “Better for the club to live in Aarau than die in Zurich. We have no alternative but to move out.”

The falling out has come with regards to rental costs that the club has to pay for its Letzigrund stadium, almost US$900,000 per season, as well as policing costs of nearly $867,000 for match days.

The Football League highlights will remain on the BBC after a new three-year deal was secured.

The programme first aired in 2009 but its future had been in doubt due to the high costs involved with recording and editing highlights each Saturday. The new deal will see the programme continue until 2015.

The BBC will also continue to show highlights of Carling Cup and JPT Trophy games with BBC Radio 5 live and 5 live Sports Extra continuing to have non-exclusive rights to all league games, no rx league cup and play-off games.

Football League Commercial Officer Richard Heaselgrave said: “In a short period of time The Football League Show has become an institution amongst supporters of our 72 clubs, unhealthy more than a million of whom tune in every week for the comprehensive coverage the show delivers. We are therefore delighted that we will be continuing for a further three years.”

Barbara Slater, BBC Director of Sport added: “Football is a core part of our sports rights portfolio and BBC Sport is delighted to be continuing our relationship with the Football League, bringing games to our audience on both TV and radio.”

According to Sportradar chief executive and expert witness at a soccer match-fixing tribunal in Bochum, see Germany, generic Carsten Koerl, 24 European countries have been affected by match-fixing and up to 100 games have been manipulated in the past five months alone.

Koerl, whose company tracks betting patterns and works with FIFA and UEFA, claimed that the issue of match-fixing within soccer was definitely on the rise, stating: “Manipulations are increasing.”

He added: “In the past five months, we assume that between 70 and 100 games in Europe were manipulated.”

Despite this, he clarified that given the tens of thousands of games being played each year, the number of affected matches represented only a very small percentage, continuing: “There is a clear development in this [betting activity] given that nowadays there are many more possibilities to earn money from this.”

Although Koerl did not say which countries were involved or what leagues were affected, four suspects are on trial after a 2009 German police operation unearthed a European match-fixing ring which fixed or tried to fix about 200 matches across the continent, including three in the Champions League.

According to Deloitte’s figures, Real Madrid have topped the league table of the world’s 20 richest soccer clubs for the sixth consecutive year.

Deloitte’s Football Money League, based on season 2009-10, also said the combined revenues of the 20 clubs had passed 4bn euros (US$5.45bn) for the first time.

Real’s arch-rivals Barcelona retained second spot in the list, ahead of Manchester United who remain third. Despite the two Spanish giants topping the sports rich list, there is still a strong involvement in the world’s top 20 clubs from England with 7 teams represented.

Mega-money spending Manchester City were perhaps unsurprisingly the biggest climbers in the rankings, but despite the money being pumped into the club, expenditures on players over the past year failed to see them break into the top 10. The Eastlands outfit rise up from 20th to 11th.

Premier League quartet Manchester United (3rd), Arsenal (5th), Chelsea (6th) and Liverpool (8th) all claim places in the top 10, with Tottenham Hotspur (12th) and Aston Villa (20th) joining them in the top 20.

Full Top 10 List:

• 1. Real Madrid: $597.2m
• 2. Barcelona: $541.8m
• 3. Man Utd: $476m
• 4. Bayern Munich: $439.6m
• 5. Arsenal: $373m
• 6. Chelsea: $348.2m
• 7. AC Milan: $320.9m
• 8. Liverpool: $306.6m
• 9. Inter Milan $305.9m
• 10. Juventus: $279m

 

Middle East network, Al-Jazeera, says it is launching two sports channels in the United States in August.

The Qatar-based broadcaster says it plans to show league soccer from Spain, France and Italy as well as the Copa America and South American qualifying matches for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

The network will be called beIN Sports USA.

BeIN Sports managing director Youssef Mohammad al-Obaidly says the channels will be “a new way of watching sports, a better way.”

He says the network is in “the last stages of negotiation with different providers, having secured two major deals so far that will bring the channel to subscribers’ homes on August 1.”