Miami, USA has been named as the fifth venue of the 2013 ISAF Sailing World Cup.

Set to be held at US Sailing Center Miami from 26 January to 2 February 2013, the regatta will form part of the ISAF Sailing World Cup until 2016 and will be the second stop in the 2012-2013 series following on from Melbourne, Australia and preceding Palma, Spain and Hyeres, France.

Following a bid process, an ISAF appointed evaluation panel advised the Executive Committee on the bids received on factors including sailing conditions, venue infrastructure and facilities, organisation and financial resources.

ISAF Sailing World Cup Manager Antonio González de la Madrid said, “US Sailing’s experience of hosting the ISAF Sailing World Cup in Miami, USA made it a clear choice for the American stop of the international series. With regattas in Australia, China, France and Spain already announced, the ISAF Sailing World Cup will be a truly global affair bringing in the best sailors in the world.”

US Sailing President Gary Jobson said, “When we established the US Sailing Center on the Florida coastline our goal was to run top-notch sailing events and become known as the North America’s best location for sailors looking to build an Olympic or Paralympic campaign. Since 1990, US Sailing’s Miami OCR has drawn the world’s elite sailors, including Olympic and Paralympic medalists and hopefuls. We are honored to include Miami in the list of world-class venues, and look forward to welcoming the world’s best to Biscayne Bay.”

The ISAF Sailing World Cup was launched in December 2008 and brings together the world’s leading Olympic and Paralympic sailors. Today’s news marks another step in the ISAF Sailing World Cup’s development on its way to becoming a world circuit of events.

Paciolan, a leading provider of ticketing and marketing solutions for more than 500 live entertainment organizations, today announced its new partnership with IMG Tickets, a ticketing services provider to some of the world’s most successful sports and entertainment events. 

IMG Tickets will be leveraging Paciolan’s industry-leading Access Management and Access scanning system, its digital ticketing/print-at-home solutions, and popular eVenue online ticketing system.

IMG Tickets distributes more than 500,000 tickets every year through its marquee events, including the Sony Open, Bank of the West Classic, BB&T Open, New Haven Open, Deutsche Bank Championship, Travelers Championship, Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival, Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival and Festival of the Arts.

“Paciolan provides the best of breed ticketing and marketing solutions for our growing regional ticketing business, which will allow us to provide even greater world class services to our customer venues to support their various events,” said Bill Pierce, vice president of ticketing for IMG Tickets. “Paciolan provides the customer support and flexibility we need to support our many different types of venues, each with unique requirements.”

Paciolan’s eVenue online ticketing system will provide completely branded and hosted sites for each of IMG Tickets’ venues to efficiently sell tickets in real-time, while managing their individual brand and enhancing the customer experience. They’ll also be able to customize the look and feel of their online ticketing pages for the ticket selling process and seamlessly cross-sell and up-sell other events and services to increase online sales. eVenue also integrates Facebook sharing into the ticketing pages for enhanced customer engagement and venue promotional opportunities.

“It’s very important that each of our venues’ ticketing sites have their own distinguished look and feel to attract customers and brand their specific businesses,” added Pierce. “With Paciolan’s eVenue, we get this functionality and other benefits that we believe will help us increase customer interest and overall ticket sales.”

Leveraging Paciolan’s Access Management scanning will enable IMG Tickets to efficiently scan tickets at all events, and its Access Scanning kits accommodates the ticketing needs of IMG’s more remote/mobile events. For major tournaments and events, delivering digital ticketing and customer print-at-home capabilities eliminates the cost and distribution of tickets and makes it convenient for fans to instantly receive tickets via e-mail.

“We’ve received strong interest in ticket scanning from our customers and are very excited to be able to provide this important service to them through our Paciolan partnership,” continued Pierce. “Also, some of our remotely operated venues have special requirements, and Paciolan’s Access Scanning will help support these needs and ensure a more efficient ticket entry process.”

Additionally, IMG Tickets will be using Paciolan’s venue enablement ticketing services, which will allow its regional ticketing venues and organizations to better control their brand, manage the customer experiences, and build lifelong customer relationships, all while maximizing revenue streams.

Several IMG owned events, including the Sony Open Tennis tournament in Miami and the Bank of the West Classic in Palo Alto, will also be implementing Paciolan’s PACMail e-mail marketing system. PACMail provides instant communication regarding ticket pre-sales, promotions and upcoming events.

“We’re honored to be partnering with such a major regional ticketing provider as IMG Tickets, which supports many major, marquee events throughout the world,” said Dave Butler, chief executive officer of Paciolan. “Leveraging our eVenue solution and Access Management scanning system, we hope to help them grow their regional ticketing and achieve continued success.”

Collective bargaining negotiations between the National Hockey League (NHL) and NHL Players’ Association were postponed on Friday, leaving the sport on course for its fourth work stoppage in the past two decades.

With a Sept. 15 deadline looming for a lockout, the sides have a sizable gap to make up and no scheduled meetings.

“We’ll be prepared to resume when they are,” said Donald Fehr, the NHLPA’s executive director. “Hopefully, that won’t be too long.”

Gary Bettman made it clear that he believes it is up to the union to make the next move. The NHL commissioner was expecting Fehr to table a counter-proposal on Friday, but instead was presented with a series of alternative options that could be applied to the fourth year of the NHLPA’s original offer.

That prompted Bettman to conclude that a week which began with promise ended in “disappointment.”

On Tuesday, the NHL presented a proposal for a six-year deal that would see players receive 46 per cent of revenues — a US$460-million improvement from its initial offer of 43 per cent. However, the union argued that negotiations should instead be measured from the current position of 57 per cent.

Bettman felt the NHLPA had “stonewalled” the process by failing to produce a counter-proposal and indicated that they would need to be ready to do that for talks to resume.

“Somebody needs to be in a position to offer or say something new,” said Bettman. “And considering that we made such a large move on Tuesday, to have gotten the response that we got is disappointing.

“We’re not in a position to go back and offer more and negotiate against ourselves.”

Fehr said either side could restart talks and that he expected neither “would stand on ceremony.” He and other NHLPA staff plan to remain in New York for the next two weeks in the event bargaining sessions resume.

If a new deal isn’t reached by Sept. 15, the league will lock out the players — something it did in 1994 and again in 2004-05, when it became the first North American sports league to lose an entire season to a labour dispute. The NHLPA staged a 10-day strike prior to the 1992 playoffs.

Both Fehr and Bettman referenced the sport’s troubled history on Friday while making strong statements about the status of the current talks.

“We’re looking for labour peace, we don’t like going through this process,” said Bettman. “It’s not fun for anybody.”

The sides have been unable to find agreement on the amount of money players will be paid next season. The owners want to see an immediate reduction — the NHL’s latest offer would result in 19 per cent less being paid out — while the players are unwilling to have the overall pool drop from the $1.87 billion they received in 2011-12.

With the league currently posting record revenues, Fehr said “the players’ overall feeling is they are not prepared to, and don’t feel it’s appropriate to, see an absolute further reduction in their aggregate salaries.”

Beyond those fundamental economic issues, there is a struggle to find common ground on the process.

The league is pushing for a longer-term agreement while the union favours a short one. Bettman also remains steadfast about the fact they must settle the financial framework before other topics are tackled. However, Fehr requested Friday that talks continue on secondary issues even with the main discussion now on hiatus.

With so little agreement to be found — and time beginning to run short — Bettman suggested that the union might be intentionally slowing down the process as a negotiating tactic.

“Maybe the strategy was to get the world mad at us because (we’ve said) there’s going to be a lockout (without a new deal by Sept. 15),” said Bettman.

The NHLPA’s proposal includes a lower share of revenue for players over the first three years of the offer and a return to the current level of 57 per cent in the fourth. On Friday, it attempted to engage the league on discussions about ways to make that final year more attractive.

The union is also pushing for greater revenue sharing to help out less financially sound teams — an issue Bettman called a “distraction” because he believes the sides aren’t far apart on it.

Talks had tentatively been scheduled for next week in New York, but now appear unlikely to happen. 

 

Forty former National Football League players have brought a suit against the League seeking damages for the painful and debilitating injuries they suffered from repetitive head traumas during their play in National Football League games as well as in practice and training.

Attorney Wendy Fleishman of the national plaintiffs’ law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, sale LLP brought the suit on behalf of the players and some of their spouses.

The plaintiffs include former Atlanta Falcons running back William Andrews, viagra order Cincinnati Bengals running back Rudi Johnson, Baltimore Ravens cornerback Chris McAllister, New York Giants and Carolina Panthers running back Joseph Montgomery, Buffalo Bills wide receiver Andre Reed, and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Larry Roberts.

“The former players who are bringing this suit all suffered repeated concussions and blows to the head, causing them cognitive difficulties, memory loss, depression, and neurological disorders, leaving them at an increased risk of latent brain disease,” stated Fleishman. “Throughout their careers, the complaint charges that the NFL misrepresented the true risks of repeated blows to the head and failed to take appropriate action to prevent such impacts and mitigate the risk of the players developing neurodegenerative disorders and diseases.”

The complaint seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the plaintiffs’ injuries. The complaint further seeks to recover fair compensation for the spouses of certain players due to the loss of companionship, affection, and support the spouses have suffered due to their husbands’ injuries.

“As alleged in the complaint, for decades deception and denial characterized the NFL’s response to retired players who raised concerns about the concussions and head impacts they experienced during their professional careers. Had the NFL told players, team physicians, coaches, and trainers that repetitive head injury would cause terrible lifelong consequences, the players would not have suffered the injuries which plague them today,” Fleishman stated. “Further delay is unacceptable. The NFL must accept full responsibility for the injuries to the players and provide them just compensation, including covering the cost of their medical care today and in the future.”

abortion helvetica,sans-serif;”>Former Major League Baseball slugger Barry Bonds will appeal his conviction and sentence of two years’ probation for obstructing a grand jury’s doping investigation by of steroid use in professional sports.

A seven-time Most Valuable Player who set the single-season and career home run records during his 22-year career, Bonds, 47, was found guilty of obstruction in April for what prosecutors called his evasive response in 2003. When asked whether his trainer Greg Anderson ever injected him with a syringe, instead of answering the question, Bonds spoke about being a “celebrity child” who preferred not “get into other people’s business.”

Despite prosecutors demanding a 15month jail sentence, the former San Francisco Giants outfielder was sentenced to two years probation, one month under house arrest, a $4,000 fine and 250 hours of community service by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.

The fact that other athletes previously convicted of the same offence as Bonds only received probation, such as cyclist Tammy Thomas and former professional football player Dana Strubblefield, ensured that Bonds would also face no jail time.

Scottish Football Association chief executive Stewart Regan is confident that there will be no repeat of the referees’ strike.

Category one officials withdrew their labour at the weekend.

And Regan told BBC Radio 5 live: “We have recognised that we do need to support referees more and we have made a certain number of offers to do that.

“If we can put those measures in place, we can satisfy the referees that we are taking their point seriously.”

On Saturday, all four Scottish Premier League matches went ahead with foreign officials in charge but 10 Scottish Football League games were called off.

“Our understanding is it’s one weekend to make a point. Hopefully they’ll be back next week,” Regan added.

Scottish referees have already made it clear that they will be working as usual next weekend.

They are unhappy that their integrity is being continually questioned and, despite assurances from the SFA that it would take a firm line with critical clubs, the officials refused to call off their strike at the weekend.

And Regan is determined to push ahead with the promises made to the disgruntled match officials.

“We will be very tough on any player who challenges or abuses referees in a way that is unacceptable,” he continued.

“There is a process in place already for dealing with anybody from any club that steps out of line. Those individuals are dealt with through the various committees that operate within the SFA and that will continue.

“But obviously we will take a much tougher stance, going forward.

“I came out last week and said that I sympathised with the position referees have found themselves in.

“Over a period of weeks they have taken an awful lot of stick in the press. Their integrity had been challenged, lots of questions had been asked about them.

“A number of them had received threats, which is really not on.

“As a governing body, we met with the referees and proposed a number of areas of improvement but, unfortunately, they wished to have a weekend of action to make a point, which I personally didn’t agree with.

“That’s why we had to go elsewhere to bring in referees.”

Referee John McKendrick told BBC Radio Scotland: “It was always our intention to take a time out, have a moment of reflection, then get back to normal next Saturday.

“We’ve had an understanding response from everybody involved in football.

“Hopefully, next weekend there will be a different atmosphere towards referees and we’ll move away from referees being the centre of attention.

“We’ve had a check on the ridiculous over-the-top criticism, which is based on nothing to do with points of play.

“Things won’t change overnight. We have to work towards a climate where we can have an open discussion with clubs and players.”

(Source: BBC): Leaders of England’s 2018 World Cup bid have written to Fifa distancing themselves from corruption allegations made against football’s world governing body by the British media.

England officials have also pleaded with Fifa’s executive committee to base its decision on the merits of their bid.

The letter, signed by chairman Geoff Thompson and international president David Dein, is the latest attempt to put England’s campaign back on track ahead of the vote on 2 December.

England are facing defeat after a backlash from Fifa members in response to an investigation by the Sunday Times into alleged corruption in the bidding process.

Two executive committee members, Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti, face a Fifa ethics committee hearing this week into the newspaper’s claims that they were willing to offer their support in return for money for football projects.

Both men have denied any wrongdoing and will fight the allegations during the three-day hearing.

England 2018 also fear they could be damaged by an upcoming BBC Panorama investigation into Fifa, due to be screened on 29 November – only three days before the vote.

Thompson and Dein wrote: “In recent weeks, the role of the British media and its relationship with both Fifa as an organisation and the individual members of the Fifa Executive Committee has come under the spotlight and there has been significant speculation as to the effect that this might have on our bid.”

“It has been a difficult time for Fifa and as a member of the football family we naturally feel solidarity with you and your colleagues.”

“We hope England’s bid will not be judged negatively due to the activities of individual media organisations, regardless of one’s view of their conduct. We hope you appreciate that we have no control over the British media.”

If Fifa’s ethics committee gives weight to the Sunday Times claims by getting tough with the two members currently suspended and there is a good response to the letter and the inspection report, then England may feel they can still get back into the race.

Source: Reuters – Switzerland is considering closing a loophole for sporting bodies in its anti-corruption law following allegations of bribery among FIFA officials for World Cup bids.

Social Democrat Anita Thanei, who heads the Swiss Parliament’s legal committee, said she would launch a parliamentary initiative for the anti-corruption laws to be amended.

“I expect the measure will find broad support,” she said on Tuesday.

“International sporting bodies are acting in the public interest, which is why the public is legitimately bothered when such cases are not punished.”

Defence minister Ueli Maurer, who also oversees sport, said the justice ministry would look into the matter.

“It’s about corruption, it’s possibly about money laundering, it’s about fixing bets, touches doping too,” he told Swiss television news late on Monday.

Since the accusations surfaced last week, soccer’s world governing body FIFA has promised a zero tolerance approach to unethical behaviour in the contest to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Officials from international sport organisations are not currently covered by Switzerland’s anti-corruption statutes.

But politicians have called for action following news last week that two members of FIFA’s executive committee were provisionally suspended on suspicion of selling their votes.

Switzerland is home to dozens of international sport organisations who choose it as a base for its favourable legal framework and tax regime.

In addition to FIFA, European soccer confederation UEFA which is based in Nyon and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), housed in Lausanne and which was tainted by a vote-selling scandal involving the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, are also located there.

Russia officially pulled out of the race to host the 2022 World Cup finals, impotent with the aim of solely concentrating on their bid for 2018.

“Russia is setting its sights exclusively on being awarded the right to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup and has formally withdrawn its bid for the 2022 edition of the world’s biggest and most important single sports event, abortion ” the Russian bid committee said in a statement.

“We hope to be entrusted with the hosting of FIFA’s flagship event and are ready to inspire the global football family in 2018, sale ” the statement quoted Russia’s bid chairman and the country’s Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko as saying.

Russia and England are bidding to stage the 2018 World Cup along with joint bids from Spain/Portugal and Belgium/Netherlands while Japan, South Korea, Qatar, United States and Australia are candidates for 2022.

Last week, England officially withdrew from bidding for the 2022 tournament after the United States had pulled out of the running for the 2018 event, making certain it would be held in Europe. FIFA rules prohibit successive World Cups being staged on the same continent.

Soccer’s governing body is due to announce the winning bids in Zurich on Dec. 2.

The bidding process has been overshadowed by allegations of vote-selling, with two members of FIFA’s executive committee, Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti, being provisionally suspended for 30 days. — Reuters

ESPN Star Sports has signed up Bollywood film star Amitabh Bachchan to help promote cricket’s Champions League Twenty20 tournament in South Africa this September.

Bachchan wrote on his blog: “I have been signed on to endorse ESPN for the Champions League cricket T20 tournament to be held in South Africa in September. And because of paucity of time, we had to shoot all the promotional films and stills for print and short seconders for TV and dub it by the evening in order so they are able to release the publicity soon.

“Thankfully it has all gone off well and I have just completed the dub for what we shot in the morning. But the rush and the speed with which it all had to be done was some kind of a marvel.”

The Champions League Twenty20 brings together domestic league team from countries all over the world.