Sportswear brand K-Swiss has announced that South Korea-based fashion and retail company E.Land World will acquire all of the outstanding common stock of K-Swiss for US$4.75 per share in cash, or a total equity value of approximately US$170M.

The offer price is a 49 percent premium to K-Swiss’ closing stock price of US$3.19 Wednesday on the over-the-counter market.

The agreement will see K-Swiss stockholders receive US$4.75 in cash for each outstanding Class A and Class B share of the company’s common stock they own. The deal is expected to close during the second quarter of 2013.

K-Swiss is probably best known for tennis shoes. The company hired Anna Kournikova as a brand ambassador in February 2007 shortly before she retired from professional tennis having never won a major tournament. Kournikova was replaced by fictional baseball player Kenny Powers in 2010.{jcomments on}

Several officials from Major League Baseball met at AT&T Park in San Francisco Tuesday afternoon to announce the venues and format for the 2013 World Baseball Classic, cheap which begins on March 2. Now in its third iteration, the four-round international tournament will be played by 16 teams in seven cities around the world.

The first round, which consists of four pools of four teams playing in a round-robin format, will be played in Phoenix, Arizona; Fukuoka, Japan; Taichung, Taiwan; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. For the second round teams will fly to either Miami or Tokyo to take part in a simple double-elimination format, while the semi-finals and finals will take place in San Francisco.

A major-league venue will play host to games in each round: Chase Field for the first round and Marlins Park for the second. AT&T Park will play host to the semi-finals and finals.

The top 12 teams from the 2009 WBC automatically qualified for the tournament, with another 16 competing for four spots in qualifying rounds that began last week. Spain and Canada have already taken two of the four available spots, while the final two will be determined in November. The 28-man rosters for each squad must be finalized by December to give players ample time to prepare for the tournament.

The FEI has announced that five countries are confirmed as bidders to stage the FEI World Equestrian Games in 2018. 

The five bid cities that have now taken on Official Candidate status are Rabat (MAR); Bromont (CAN); Budapest (HUN); Vienna (AUT) and Wellington (USA). 

Under the new bidding process put in place last year by the FEI for the FEI World Equestrian Games, there eight signed Expression of Interest documents were received from the National Federations of Australia, ailment Austria, erectile Canada, Hungary, Morocco, Sweden, Russia and the USA in November 2011. 

The Australian, Russian and Swedish applications were withdrawn prior to the start of the official Candidate Phase earlier this year, but the five remaining applicants have moved ahead with their bids. 

The five Candidate cities all met the 30 April deadline for receipt of the official Applicant Questionnaire. The five Bid Applications and Questionnaires have now been validated by FEI Headquarters. Details of the five bid cities were formally presented to the FEI Bureau at its meeting in Lausanne (SUI) last week. 

An FEI World Equestrian Games 2018 presentation will be made to the five Candidates at FEI Headquarters in Lausanne on 11 July to explain the FEI’s expectations and procedures concerning the Games. Legal Documentation will also be given to Candidates during that meeting. Completed Legal Documentation, including a signed Host Agreement, must be submitted to the FEI by 15 December 2012. 

“It is fantastic to have five really strong bids for hosting the FEI World Equestrian Games in 2018 and there could be no better endorsement of the FEI’s flagship event”, FEI Secretary General Ingmar de Vos said. “The new bidding process that we put in place last year for the FEI World Equestrian Games has generated a huge amount of interest and we now look forward to welcoming the 2018 bidders to FEI Headquarters next month.” 

As the final stage in the bidding process, the Candidates will formally present their bids to the FEI Bureau at its Spring 2013 meeting, after which the official announcement of the host organisers of the FEI World Equestrian Games 2018 will be made.

The World Boxing Council (WBC) layed down a warning Friday, by stating they would expel “any person or institution” that is involved in staging the controversial fight between British heavyweights David Haye and Dereck Chisora.

The July 14 fight in London, which was licensed by the Luxembourg Boxing Federation, was scheduled after the pair’s infamous brawl at the news conference that followed Chisora’s loss to Vitali Klitschko in Germany in February.

Chisora, who also slapped the Ukrainian heavyweight prior to a defeat in the WBC title fight, was stripped of his British license following the controversies. He appealed the decision and will have his case heard in July.

Haye surrendered his British license when he announced his retirement last October in the wake of a humbling defeat to Vladimir Klitschko.

But the fighters’ moves to face off in the ring led to wide criticism of both men, along with fury at the Luxembourg federation for sanctioning the bout in the absence of British authorization.

The WBC warning placed the council firmly in support of the British Boxing Board of Control, which earlier issued a warning that anyone helping Haye or Chisora put the fight on would be assumed to have handed in their British licenses.

“We will expel Luxembourg from our organization … as well as any person or institution that has relations with them,” WBC president Jose Sulaiman confirmed in a letter to the BBBC, published Friday by the British board.

“We will not condone such a disgraceful behavior [from Chisora] after seeing that this boxer has no idea of what good behavior is, by accepting to participate in the intent to [threaten] and embarrass the organization of boxing with such an act,” Sulaiman said.

“I am sure the European Boxing Union is on the verge of a strong position against Luxembourg; I am also furious with the promoter who is trying to blast the ethics, honesty and seriousness of the sport of boxing,” he added.

Is the WBC justified in their threats? Tell us here>>

The Centre for Social Justice has released a report claiming that the London 2012 Olympics will struggle to keep its promise to help the UK’s most disadvantaged young people, saying that the pledge to provide a sporting legacy would be a “highly effective sales pitch that was never fully realised”.

A £135m initiative, funded by the National Lottery, was launched to encourage mass participation in November as the government said it was committed to “delivering a lasting legacy”, with Olympics minister Hugh Robertson stating that improving facilities is a top priority.

Robertson also launched an initiative to offer young people six weeks of coaching in the sport of their choice but the think tank’s report says: “The scale of the challenge that the Olympic organisers have set themselves is too high for the relatively limited amounts of funding and the programmes that have been promised, to deliver successfully.”

The report claimed that improved sporting facilities would not raise participation in sport and taster coaching courses had failed to engage disadvantaged groups, adding: “Limited available funding and the tendency to direct what there is into capital spending and short-term programming mean that it is difficult to see how the money allocated to this can be expected to produce greater benefits for disadvantaged young people.

“The participation target was intrinsically flawed from the outset, not just because it was more convincing as a sales pitch than a policy objective, but also because engaging any number of additional people in some unspecified sporting activity is not the same thing as a serious, targeted work aimed at transforming the lives of Britain’s neediest people.”

A spokeswoman for the Department for Culture Media and Sport said they had not seen the full report but that the government and Olympic organisers were “committed to delivering a lasting legacy from the 2012 Games”.

She added: “We are investing hundreds of millions of pounds to create better facilities and give people more opportunities to play sport. It is nonsense to suggest that there is no link between British sporting success and participation.”

The report, More Than A Game: Harnessing The Power Of Sport To Transform The Lives Of Disadvantaged Young People, will be launched tomorrow, May 24.

The UK’s Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt admitted to being “very puzzled” by the row that developed between the British Olympic Association (BOA) and London 2012 regarding surplus from the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The dispute regards the fact that the BOA are due 20 per cent of any surplus after the Games, however they claim that the cost of staging the Paralympics should not be taken into account when calculating that surplus.

A decision was taken by the BOA to temporarily suspend their earlier notion to take the row to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), instead deciding to reopen talks with London 2012.

While Hunt is confident that an amicable solution to the dispute will be found, he stated that he found the BOA’s actions rather perplexing, saying: “I was very puzzled by what has happened [between the BOA and London 2012].

“This was not the right argument for us to be having so close to having the London 2012 Games.

“However I am confident that we’re working our way through a solution on this and I’m very hopeful that we’ll be able to go back to business as normal in the near future.

“So its fingers crossed.”

Hunt, who was formerly Shadow Minister for Disabled People, met with London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe yesterday to discuss the issue, who added: “The Paralympics means an awful lot to me.

“I never ever thought of myself going uniquely to win a bid to win an Olympic Games back [at the International Olympic Committee Session] in Singapore in 2005.

“I saw the legacy value of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games in equal measure and I continue to see just that.”

Shirt sponsors of La Liga soccer giant Real Madrid, Austrian online gaming firm Bwin has said revenues were up 15.2 per cent to US$723m in 2010.

The firm has over 20 million customers in 25 core markets and offers sports betting, poker and casino games, having established itself as one of the leading poker providers in France and a top three player in Italy in the last financial quarter.

Bwin also confirmed that the scheduled merger with Partygaming was on track to complete by April after the firms revealed plans to merge in a deal to create the world’s largest online gaming business last year.

The firm said it would continue to seek out similar long-term alliances to that of their sponsorship with a number of soccer clubs including the Spanish side, stating: “Bwin’s brand has become synonymous with sport through its sponsorship of some of the world’s biggest names in sport, such as Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.

“Its long-standing co-operation with soccer clubs like these and the Italian and Portuguese soccer leagues testify to the company’s continuing commitment to top soccer.”

The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) has promised to have a security plan in place before sending athletes to the Pan American Games this year in Guadalajara, which is engulfed in a deepening drug war.

Guadalajara’s ability to host thousands of athletes and tens of thousands of fans from across the Americas at the October 14-30 Pan American Games has been thrown into doubt over fears with regards to the violence in Mexico‘s second biggest city.

Scott Blackmun, the USOC’s chief executive, told reporters at the end of a board meeting on Tuesday, March 15: “We talked a lot about the Pan Am Games.

“Everyone is quite aware of the violence, we’re obviously concerned about it but at the end of the day we will have a good security plan in place to protect our athletes.”

The buildup to the Pan Am Games has been marred by violence as drug cartels battle for control of the host city.

Guadalajara has been the scene of escalating fighting with gangs attacking bars, police stations, hijacking cars and blocking major roads and highways.

USOC Chairman Larry Probst added: “On Thursday I am headed to Guadalajara for a two-day meeting and I am sure that security will be one of the significant issues that will be discussed. At that meeting we will hear from the Pan Am Games organizing committee what their plans are.”

Investec, an international specialist bank and asset manager, has extended its partnership with Epsom Downs beyond the Derby to include sponsorship of the racecourse’s Spring Meeting for the next three years.

Investec sponsored the Derby at Epsom for the first time in 2010, held over the first weekend in June, and has now added the entirety of the Spring Meeting on 20th April to its sponsorship portfolio.

The financial services firm will sponsor the entire day’s race card which features the first of the official Derby Trials, which Investec also lent its name to last year. 

Chairman of Epsom Downs, Anthony Cane said: ‘We are thrilled that Investec have agreed to continue their sponsorship of the Spring Meeting for the next three years. We work together in a true spirit of partnership – this agreement allows us to further build this relationship through our annual launch six weeks before the Derby Festival’.