The Global Rallycross (GRC) series will return to Charlotte Motor Speedway Sunday, Sept. 22 to show fans a combination of the energy of motorsports and the attitude of action sports.

“We’re looking forward to bringing the excitement of the Global Rallycross series to the Dirt Track at Charlotte,” said Marcus Smith, president and general manager of Charlotte Motor Speedway. “These action sports stars really know how to put on a high-flying thrill show, and the combination of racing, drifting and jumps is sure to wow the fans at one of the world’s premier racing facilities.”

The series will compete on a custom-built course at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in conjunction with the final day of the Charlotte AutoFair. Regular Global Rallycross competitors include extreme sports stars Tanner Foust, Brian Deegan, Ken Block and Dave Mirra.

“What a difference a year makes. It’s amazing to see the growth of GRC in only its third year,” said Foust. “Last year we broke new ground with the (Speedway Motorsports, Inc.) partnership, and now international X Games and The Dirt Track at Charlotte. Who can imagine a better playground for these amazing rallycross cars?”

The special event, GRC’s eighth race of the 2013 season, will be televised live on ABC. It’s also the final race in the Sylvania Silverstar zXe GRC mini-series, in which drivers face off in a four-race points battle at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway. The points leader at the end of the four-race series will be awarded $20,000.

“Everyone at Sylvania Automotive is so happy to team with Charlotte Motor Speedway and GRC to bring these high performance cars and skilled drivers to the fans,” said Joe Verbanic, Sylvania Automotive Marketing Manager. “Nothing matches the edge-of-your-seat GRC racing for full course action, and our customers really encouraged us to be a part of GRC again this year. Charlotte becomes an extra-special event as we will award $20,000 to the driver racking up the most points in the Sylvania Silverstar zXe GRC mini-series.”

The 600-horsepower, all-wheel drive, turbocharged compact cars go from 0 to 60 in less than two seconds as drivers steer through hairpin turns, across jumps, over walls and through a series of chicanes and water features designed to test every driver’s focus and control. Each event features timed heats to set the lineup for a final winner-take-all feature race.

“Global Rallycross is excited to be racing in Charlotte at The Dirt Track,” said Colin Dyne, Global Rallycross CEO. “It is going to make for an exciting show for the fans as we continue to build on the momentum of Global Rallycross.”

At last year’s season-opening event at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Marcus Gronholm ran away with the victory over Foust.

“Charlotte is one of the few GRC venues we are coming back to this year so I’m looking forward to bringing Rallycross back for all the new fans we made last year,” Foust said.

KPMG Golf Business Advisory is compiling a study on the economic impact of golf in Scotland, which will be presented at the 10th annual Golf Business Forum in St Andrews on June 3-5, 2013.

Turkey remains the favourite to plug the hole on the Formula One 2013 calendar according to Bernie Ecclestone despite Red Bull putting forward a revised Austrian GP.

With the inaugural New Jersey grand prix having previously been put back 12 months to 2014, the FIA revealed last week that an unnamed European event had been pencilled in to take its place on next season’s schedule, with the German GP moved forward by a week to the start of July to accommodate what would be the 20th event.

Although this was initially expected to be the return of the Turkish GP at Istanbul Park, those hopes appeared to take a blow when the country’s sports minister denied the government was set to provide funds to stage the race.

An alternative solution, however, appeared when Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko told the Austrian press that the energy drinks company had offered their own circuit, the former A1 Ring, to the FIA to take the 20th event.

However, speaking to the local media himself on Wednesday, Ecclestone claimed talk of a return to Austria had come as news to him.

“I have as of today spoken to no one about it,” he told Kleine Zeitung.

“At the moment I’m thinking more on Turkey and a return to Istanbul.”

The F1 supremo added that the hotel situation in surrounding Spielberg remained a “disaster” since the sport’s last visit there in 2003.

In any case, Ecclestone suggested that as things stood 19 races was looking more likely anyway.

“Right now I’m thinking that next year we will go with only 19 races. That wouldn’t be a big problem for Formula 1,” he said.

The 82-year-old added that he expected a final decision on whether or not a 20th race would be held “by the beginning of next week”.

The NBA has signed a three-year exclusive broadcasting deal in India with MSM’s sports channel Sony Six, which launched in April.

ESPN Star Sports was the NBA’s broadcast partner in India until 2010. After that agreement expired, the NBA split the rights between Taj Television’s Ten Sports and MSM’s Sony Pix.

Under the terms of the new agreement, Sony Six will broadcast live games on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, with 72 season games and 18 playoffs being aired, as well as the Eastern and Western Conference Finals, the NBA Finals and NBA All-Star events, including the All-Star Game, All-Star Saturday Night and the Rising Stars competition.

NBA and Sony Six will also produce India-specific programming and host local basketball tournaments.{jcomments on}

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has ensured that news from the ICC World Twenty20 Sri Lanka 2012 will reach every corner of the globe by signing Sports News Television (SNTV), pills PERFORM and Reuters News as distributors for the event.

These deals guarantee news broadcasters around the world will have access to news highlights from matches, order press conferences, drugs player interviews and event-related stories providing up-to-the-minute information to more than a billion viewers across the world.

“The ICC already has a long-standing relationship with SNTV and Reuters News,” said Campbell Jamieson, ICC General Manager – Commercial.

“We are glad to have them on board for the next exciting instalment of the ICC World T20 as they have an excellent distribution, global reach and have previously provided great support to all ICC events including those that form part of the Pepsi ICC Development Programme.

“We also welcome PERFORM as an ICC news access licensee for the first time at one of our major events. Their inclusion will further add to the distribution and reach of the event via OMNISPORT, their multi-platform daily sports news service.”

“These partnerships will ensure that news broadcasters and, through them, cricket fans around the world will have access to match highlights and other event news.”

SNTV Managing Editor Andy Parkinson said: “SNTV is delighted to once again be working closely with the ICC and look forward to supplying our clients with the best action from the ICC Wold Twenty20.”

Claire Watson Global TV Sports Editor, Reuters News added: “Interest in sport crosses geographic borders and media platforms, so it is important to us to provide action highlights across all broadcast and online platforms globally, and with the ICC deal we can do this.”

Jamie Rice, Managing Director, OMNISPORT said: “We are very pleased to be supporting the ICC in their ambitions to bring the ICC World Twenty20 2012 to a global audience. Our unique perspective to distributing content in any format across any platform and localised to each market will ensure the ICC reaches global audiences through both traditional and new media channels.”

SNTV is the world’s leading sports video news agency supplying top quality sports highlights, features and breaking news both to traditional television stations and a growing band of digital outlets. Through its clients, SNTV’s material can be seen in more than a billion households worldwide in more than 180 territories.

Reuters News, the world’s largest international news agency, is a leading provider of real-time, high-impact, multimedia news and information services to newspapers, television and cable networks, and websites around the globe, reaching more than one billion people a day.

Reuters powers the world’s newsrooms with a global network of television journalists and camera crews delivering timely, quality video coverage to more than 1,000 TV channels

OMNISPORT is a progressive sports news services which enables multi-platform broadcasters to feed ready, formatted and cleared global sports news content across their TV, online and mobile services more easily and effectively than ever before. OMNISPORT is owned and powered by digital sports media group PERFORM.

The Elite Football League of India (EFLI) has announced it has retained Madison Street Capital, herbal a leading provider of corporate finance and mergers and acquisition (M&A) advisory services, medicine to raise capital and explore equity finance opportunities for the EFLI.

The first season for the EFLI kicks off on August 9 in Sri Lanka, featuring teams from India and Pakistan competing in American-style football.

“On behalf of the EFLI, I applaud the dynamic and sophisticated foresight of Madison Street Capital in working with us to develop the potential for the league both financially and philanthropically,” said EFLI founder Sunday Zeller.

“The world will witness two countries entrenched in political opposition face each other on a field of peaceful play. The world will recognize the impact of sport and monetary support in countries so desperate for relief socially and financially. The goal of the EFLI is to create the opportunity to see children walk out of poverty and into a home fit for growth and healthy human sustenance. We believe Madison Street Capital will relish the opportunity to change so many lives as all of us involved with the EFLI do, for this is the driving force behind the league and our people. We welcome Madison Street Capital aboard and I am personally honored and proud to make this announcement.”

“We are excited to be partnering with a highly experienced management team in media/entertainment who raised the initial equity and secured the global partnerships that will produce a successful first season launch,” said Barry Petersen, Senior Managing Director of the Capital Markets Group at Madison Street Capital.

The EFLI will use the same model as the IPL, which recently received $(US)2 billion for a 10-year broadcasting contract, using a single stadium as the venue.{jcomments on}

A US federal judge has denied Barry Bonds’ plea to dismiss or retry his conviction for obstruction of justice, upholding a jury’s verdict and setting up a possible sentencing hearing for the former superstar slugger.

Judge Susan Illston issued a 20-page order Friday night that explained in detail why she was denying the motion to vacate the verdict, the only conviction against Bonds while three charges of making false declarations wound up in mistrial in his April trial before Illston in U.S. District Court.

The judge’s document did not include a sentencing date. It’s possible now that the Bonds defense team will appeal the conviction. Also, the government has yet to announce whether it will retry any of the charges that wound up in a hung jury.

A seven-time Most Valuable Player who set the single-season and career home run records during his 22-year career, Bonds was convicted of obstruction by a jury of eight women and four men, but the jury could not come to a consensus on any of three counts of making false declarations in a trial that ended April 13. The charges are based on Bonds’ 2003 testimony before the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) grand jury, in which he denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.

The obstruction charge centers on one statement of four from that grand-jury testimony for which the government indicted him. It was called Statement C in the indictment, and it involved Bonds being asked whether he had received injections from trainer Greg Anderson or anyone other than his doctor. After saying that he and Anderson didn’t discuss each other’s business and then talking about being a “celebrity child” as the son of late Giants star Bobby Bonds in what defense said was 75 seconds of “rambling,” Bonds eventually answered no four times to the question.

In a Thursday hearing at the same San Francisco courtroom where his trial was held, Illston heard arguments from Dennis Riordan for the defense team and Merry Chan from the U.S. Attorney’s office for about a half-hour, before saying she would get back to them with her written opinion.

At the hearing, the government contended that the trial jury correctly found that Bonds’ non-responsive answer was intended to steer the interview away from a question he didn’t want to answer.

Chan said: “It’s rambling that the jury found was done to evade giving the grand jury truthful testimony. It’s rambling that was corruptly intended to evade, mislead and to provide false testimony.”

Illston’s opinion included mention that all the individuals in the original BALCO investigation, including Anderson, pled guilty and that Bonds entered his grand-jury testimony with immunity as long as he told the truth. As she said at Thursday’s hearing, she weighed the totality of the trial evidence in making her decision. The defense had argued that was not a specific instruction she had given the jury.

In the documents filed Friday, Illston discussed the materiality of what Bonds was being asked, which suggests that he was being evasive on something that was material to the investigation for which he was being interviewed. She said, however, she did not deny the motion based on the government’s assertion that what Bonds eventually said was false.

The next steps include possible sentencing, a possible appeal from the defense and the announcement by the prosecution of whether it will attempt to retry the three counts of making false declaration.

At trial, two of the three charges of making false declarations were voted by the jury in favor of acquittal, but one count was 11-1 in favor of conviction. That was Count Two, which like the obstruction conviction had to do with questions surrounding whether Bonds received injections from Anderson. Childhood friend Kathy Hoskins provided eyewitness testimony that she had seen Anderson inject Bonds while doing her job packing Bonds’ clothes before a Giants road trip in 2002.

The maximum sentence for the obstruction charge is five years in prison, but federal sentencing guidelines and previous BALCO sentences suggest Bonds would be given house arrest and for far less time than that.

Organisers of The brmb Grass Roots Football Show have moved quickly to confirm the dates for the 2012 event.

Following a highly successful staging in 2011, Britain’s premier football show will be held at the NEC from Friday May 25 – Sunday May 27 2012.

The Show will be the prelude to a busy summer of football in 2012 with the European Championships due to kick off in June.

Joanna Burns, Director of The brmb Grass Roots Football Show said; “Our ability to confirm the dates of next year’s event so quickly reflects the positive feedback we have enjoyed from exhibitors, customers and the general football family.

“The Grass Roots Football Show has established itself as the undisputed number one football show in the UK.

“The NEC is a great venue for us and we are already working on additional expansion for the 2012 event.

“Exhibitor feedback was extremely positive and over the coming weeks and months we will be outlining our thoughts and plans for next year’s event to them.

“The passion and appetite for this event is plain to see with around 11,000 people attending over the three days of the show in 2011 and we are working hard to keep moving grass roots football forward.”

Chris Hartley, Business Development Director for the NEC, said; “We are delighted to have confirmed dates for next year’s brmb Grass Roots Football Show at the NEC.

“The vision of the Grass Roots Football Show team is obviously something that the public have bought into and we look forward to 2012 with great anticipation.”

Show ambassadors including Graham Taylor, Chris Hughton, Iain Dowie, Robbie Savage and Dion Dublin all attracted sell-out coaching clinics and seminars at the event.

Show ambassador Robbie Savage said; “I thoroughly enjoyed my debut at The brmb Grass Roots Football Show this year.

“It is a fantastic platform to discuss some of the key issues that affect the game at all levels and just shows there is a massive appetite for the game in the UK.

“For professionals to be able to mix with coaches, players, officials and everybody involved in grass roots football for three days at the NEC was an unbelievable experience and I can’t wait to return next year.”

A range of leading brands and exhibitors have already signed up and confirmed their support for the 2012 event.

The London 2012 ‘London Prepares’ sports testing programme starting this summer has launched ticket sales on a first come, first served basis to the general public via Ticketmaster.

The series was organised in order to test key aspects of the operations ahead of next year’s Games – such as results, scoring and timing systems, the fields of play, the venues and the people who will be working to ensure the Games run smoothly.

There are tickets available for some of the events offering the public a great opportunity to be among the first to experience world-class sporting action at a London 2012 venue, including;

– Hadleigh Farm Mountain Bike International: 31 July 2011, Hadleigh Farm, Essex.

– Visa FIVB Beach Volleyball International: 9-14 August 2011, Horse Guards Parade, London.

– London International Basketball Invitational: 16-21 August 2011, Basketball Arena, Olympic Park.

– UCI BMX Supercross World Cup 2011 – London: 19-20 August 2011, BMX Track, Olympic Park.

Tickets are now on sale, priced between US$8 and $57 using Visa cards only.

London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe said: “These events provide us with vital opportunities to test our venues, but also test our staff, our technologies and planning assumptions.

“They will also provide people with a fantastic opportunity to see some world class sport in these venues ahead of the Games – a snapshot of what is to come next year.

“These events are a huge stepping stone for us, helping us to prepare for and iron out any creases ahead of the greatest show on earth next year.”