Williams F1 Deputy Team Principal Claire Williams has insisted she is “happy” with the Oxfordshire based team’s budget for 2014.

Her comments come amid reports many teams on the grid, like Sauber and even the title-charging Lotus, are struggling to survive.

Williams, referring to the Grove team’s listing on the Frankfurt stock exchange, told Brazil’s Totalrace: “Our finances are open for everyone to see.”

“We have a healthy budget and have done a good job on the business side to ensure that we are in as competitive a situation as possible for next year.”

The daughter of team founder and boss Sir Frank Williams, however, said the fact Williams is in a healthy situation does not mean F1 should not do more to level the playing field.

“Williams has always embraced controls in spending,” said Williams, “since they began to be implemented in 2009.

“It is very important for the sport.

“We are an independent team and so we can’t afford to see costs increase when there is already such discrepancy in terms of (team) budgets.

“We must ensure that we can all compete more equally,” she added.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is optimistic that the Falcons will get a new retractable roof stadium to replace the Georgia Dome.

“There is a recognition that it’s the right thing to do and they are going through a very healthy process to find a solution that is going to work for all parties, medicine ” Goodell said after speaking to the Rotary Club of Atlanta on Monday.

Goodell met with fans before the Falcons played the Dallas Cowboys at the Georgia Dome on Sunday.

He also met with Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on Monday morning to discuss the stadium issue.

The NFL and the Falcons are interested in a public-private partnership that would help the Falcons generate additional revenues through a new stadium.

Goodell said new stadiums built for the Cowboys and the New York Jets and Giants are state of the art and have essentially made the 20-year old Georgia Dome obsolete.

He also acknowledged that personal seat licenses have been a great way for teams to raise part of the revenue needed to fund the new stadiums. He did note that some stadiums have sections of seats that are not subject to a seat license.

“When you are going to approach a complex project like this, there is always a lot about what is the right thing and the wrong thing,” Goodell said. “What should be the participation level in the public-private partnership? Where to build it? What to build?”

Goodell’s optimism is based on the meetings he had with several of the involved parties, including Deal and Reed.

“I think their process over a long period of time has been very healthy,” Goodell said. “There is a good opportunity and the NFL wants to be a part of creating something very special. We want to be a part of this community for a long time. We hope that wherever they put the stadium, they make it a bigger and better place.”

Goodell has been the commissioner of the NFL since 2006. Under his administration the league has negotiated a 10-year labor agreement with the players, recently settled an eight-year agreement with the officials and has negotiated multi-billion dollar television deals with their media partners.

“We now are in a better position to be able to provide league-wide funding to help Arthur Blank’s private contribution,” Goodell said. “That will be coming from 31 other owners, which is unique to football.”

 

Philip Beard, denture Chief Executive Officer, ed Queens Park Rangers Football Club is the final panellist to sign up to iSportconnect Directors’ Club London taking place on 3^rd October.

Beard will join other high profile speakers Roger Draper, Chief Executive of the Lawn Tennis Association, Barry Hearn, Chairman of Matchroom Sport, the Professional Darts Corporation, World Snooker and Leyton Orient Football Club and Geoff Cousins, Jaguar Global Director, Sponsorships and Brand Partners.

The event, in partnership with Generate Sponsorship and Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP, returns to London following the successful inaugural event in February, with the Directors’ Club also returning to Munich on 17^th October and New York for the first time on 5^th November.

Founder and CEO of iSportconnect, Sree Varma, said, ‘We’re delighted that Phillip is able to join us as our final panellist.  We have secured some of the most high profile leaders in the industry for this second Directors’ Club event across both rights holders and brands. This interesting mix of panellists should provide guests with a great Question Time debate.”

Attendees are able to post questions for the panel in advance as well as arrange meetings via the iSportconnect Directors’ Club London networking tool, adding further value to the delegate experience.  The Networking Tool will be live from Monday 24^th September at isportconnect.com/directorsclublondon

The event is now full but people can contact xavier@isportconnect.com to register interest for future events.

 

The Asian Tennis Federation(ATF) has outlined several developmental projects in the next few years to boost junior tennis in Asia, buy cialis including the introduction in 2013 of an Under-16 Asian Tour for International Tennis Federation events and the creation of an Under-18 regional team championship.

ATF President Anil Khanna has also announced special grants to the Tennis Federation of Cambodia and Lao Tennis Federation for conducting Asian Under-14 series non-hospitality events this year.

Some of the ATF’s new initiatives include the revival of Asian Championship, strengthening and expansion of the Asian Under-14 series, making ITF Junior events in Asia part of an exclusive Asian Tour and holding an Asian Under-18 Team championship, along with putting the Asian Tennis Centre to greater use for junior programmes.{jcomments on}

English Football League Two team Port Vale Football Club are feeling the heat after being sued by its own shirt sponsor over the repayment of a £125,000 loan.

Papers filed with the High Court yesterday show Harlequin Property first demanded repayment of the loan in December.

Now Harlequin is suing Vale for breach of contract for failure to repay the loan and said it has refused the chance to renew its shirt sponsorship at the end of the season as a result of the dispute.

The papers state Harlequin agreed the £125,000 loan with former chairman Bill Bratt to assist “cash flow and purchase players for the team”.

Harlequin says it agreed the loan would become repayable, and interest would begin to accrue, if control of the club’s board changed.

Mr Bratt resigned in October with Perry Deakin and Peter Miller appointed in the same month.

Harlequin acknowledges it owes Vale £51,000 as part of the sponsorship agreement and has deducted the sum from its claim. Therefore Harlequin says it is owed £74,000, plus £1,926 in interest since the board changes in October.

The papers also reveal Harlequin paid £5,000 towards the players’ Christmas party, but is not seeking that back.

If the court judges that Harlequin is properly owed the sum it would allow the company to instruct bailiffs to recover assets from the club or issue a winding up petition.

That would leave Vale with the option to repay the cash or, if the court judged the club to be insolvent and unable to pay, it could have to appoint administrators to avoid liquidation.

It comes a week after it emerged the cash-strapped club missed the January 31 deadline to pay last month’s loan payment of £19,616 to Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

The club has already twice breached the terms of the £2.25 million council deal by taking out a mortgage worth £277,000 against Vale Park and missing a deadline to file company accounts.

A spokesman for Harlequin confirmed the legal action, but said: “We are not prepared to comment on the details of the claim.

“It was hoped that discussions with the club would lead to an amicable resolution, but this was not possible.

“As a result of the current situation, Harlequin Property has declined to renew the shirt sponsorship agreement at the end of this season.”

Port Vale director Perry Deakin, said: “This is a loan that the former chairman took out quite a while ago and we’re in the process of trying to clarify exactly what the terms were.

“We’re in dialogue with Harlequin. I fully expect the matter to be resolved within 14 days.

“It will be resolved amiably, without question.”

by Ismail Uddin

Germany’s national anti-doping agency (NADA) will investigate 28 athletes to see whether they received blood transfusions from a doctor at the center of a doping scandal.

NADA said Monday it will review the court documents from an ongoing case against Dr. Andreas Franke, symptoms who worked at a training center run by the German Olympic Sports Confederation for top-level athletes in Erfurt, purchase central Germany.

NADA president Andrea Gotzmann said she hopes the documents will help the body “decide which athletes we proceed with” in the investigation.

Franke is suspected of treating athletes’ blood with UV light before re-injecting it back into the same athlete, a procedure banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Public broadcaster ARD said Sunday it had a list of the 28 names implicated in the scandal, including former Olympic speedskating champion Claudia Pechstein, former 800-meter Olympic champion Nils Schumann, rising German cycling star Marcel Kittel and Jamaican long jumper James Beckford.

It did not reveal all the names but said some athletes were minors when they received transfusions at the state-funded center.

“Of course we will use due diligence to look into each case … regardless of whether we’re dealing with Olympic champions or young athletes,” Gotzmann said Monday.

Authorities searched Franke’s clinic and the training center for evidence last April, and NADA said it was pushing the investigation into possible doping offenses “as quickly and intensively as legally possible.”

NADA already had brought two cases before the German Institution of Arbitration, including that of the 22-year-old cyclist Jakob Steigmiller, whose blood allegedly was treated by Franke following an infection.

“Jakob informed NADA openly and honestly what happened, when and how,” Thueringer Energie Team manager Joerg Werner told the dapd news agency.

“He asked the doctor if the treatment was permitted,” Werner said. “Names are being burned without it being certain what actually happened.”

USA Cycling and Visit Bend have announced a one-year extension to their event hosting agreement to include the 2013 USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships.

The decision will make 2013 the third consecutive year Bend will host the event, abortion scheduled for September 4-8. Dates for the 2012 USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships are scheduled for September 5-9, cheap 2012.

In 2011, unhealthy the event attracted a total attendance of over 3,000 people for an average length-of-stay of 8 nights. The estimated economic impact of the five-day event exceeded $1 million dollars in direct consumer spending.

In addition to the USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships, Bend will host the 2012 USA Cycling Mountain Bike Marathon National Championships. That event is scheduled for September 15, 2012.

Seven people have been killed in a stampede at a football stadium in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, officials say. reports BBC.

The crush happened as a crowd tried to enter Nyayo National Stadium to watch a match between two of Kenya’s most popular teams. Six people died at the stadium while another person died later in hospital, a Kenyan Red Cross official said. The Premier League match between Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards continued despite the deaths.

Jack Oguda, head of the Kenya Premier League, was reported as saying an inquiry would be launched to establish why fans could not access the stadium, which he said was not full.

The BBC’s Will Ross in Nairobi says that the game was stopped only for a few minutes after the stampede, and that most people inside the stadium were probably not aware of what was happening outside.

This same stadium was banned by world federation FIFA from hosting World Cup qualifying matches after a crowd stampede at a game against Morocco in June 2005 when a crowd forced down gates before the game, killing a 15-year-old supporter and injuring 15 other fans.

FIFA disciplinary committee ordered Kenya to play their next against Tunisia behind closed doors and imposed a fine of $19,000.

The deal kicks off with the first round draw this weekend (24 October) and will run throughout the 2010/2011 domestic football season.

Broadcast sponsorship will appear on ITV1, ITV1HD and ITV4 across all coverage including live replays and highlights programmes, with online sponsorship at ITV.com and sponsorship across ITV’s interactive and mobile platforms.

The sponsorshop idents include three characters: Keith, Ian and Andy, who travel to FA Cup games in a Kia Sportage. The idents have been created by Innocean Worldwide.

The ITV’s previous FA Cup sponsor was online betting service bet365.

Formula One veteran Patrick Tambay has reacted to F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s comments that the Monaco Grand Prix would not be a loss if it was replaced on the calendar.

Earlier this week, Ecclestone suggested that Monaco, along with some other European GPs, would need to raise its game financially to compete with countries eager to join the race calendar.

He said: “The Europeans are going to have to pay more money or we will have to go somewhere else. We can do without Monaco [if] they don’t pay enough.”

But now Tambay has responded, saying that dropping Monaco would be a risky move.

He said: “It is the highlight of the season and of the grand prix, with which partners and sponsors from around the world want to be involved.

“There are things that probably need to be put straight, and there are clearly plenty of candidates who want to organise new grands prix, while the other pay fees that may need to be revised upwards, but all of this is a matter of negotiations that Bernie Ecclestone is currently conducting with the Automobile Club de Monaco.”

India is due to join the F1 schedule next year, with the USA and Russia both expected to join the calendar in the next few seasons too.