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GENEVA (AP & Staff) — FIFA finished its bumper week of World Cup business with broadcast deals worth $1.85 billion for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, the governing body announced Thursday. The deals include an estimated $1.2 billion from United States broadcast right sales to Fox, Telemundo and Futbol de Primera Radio. Those deals were confirmed Friday. FIFA said it also sold rights to SBS in Australia, Bell Media in Canada and IMC across the Caribbean. Bell Media, which includes the channels CTV, TSN and RDS, took rights to soccer’s biggest asset away from incumbent holder public broadcaster CBC. “FIFA is delighted with the progress of our media rights sales to date which, coming amid austere economic times, more than confirm the strength and appeal of our competitions,” FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said. The deals also confirm the lure and enduring value of FIFA’s signature event after a year of financial and election scandals and negative headlines. FIFA also came under pressure about how the 2018 and 2022 tournaments came to be awarded to Russia and Qatar last December. FIFA said it also chose Swiss-based agency Infront Sports and Media in a tender process to handle sales across 26 Asian territories including China and India. “Infront offered the best package for this important and very complex project both in financial as well as marketing aspects,” Niclas Ericson, FIFA’s director of television, said in a statement released by Infront. Infront has long been scrutinized by FIFA’s critics. The Zug-based agency has close connections to FIFA’s discredited former marketing partner ISL, which went bankrupt in 2001 and is once more at the center of allegations regarding kickbacks paid to senior FIFA officials in the 1990s. Infront has been led since 2006 by Philippe Blatter, now its president and chief executive, who is a nephew of FIFA President Sepp Blatter. FIFA is marketing the 2018 and 2022 tournaments in a package, after concluding two-tournament deals for the 2010-2014 finals in South Africa and Brazil. In March, FIFA said a first wave of 2018-2022 sales raised $1.7 billion from the Middle East and parts of Asia and Latin America. Those deals earned 90 percent more than their 2010-2014 value. FIFA’s final accounts for the four-year financial cycle linked to the 2010 World Cup showed $2.4 billionin broadcast sales worldwide.
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ZURICH (AP & Staff) — United States goalkeeper Hope Solo and forward Abby Wambach were nominated on Tuesday for the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year award, competing with five-time winner Marta of Brazil. Japan, the 2011 Women’s World Cup winner, has Homare Sawa, the player of the tournament and top scorer in Germany, and Aya Miyama on the shortlist of 10 candidates. U.S. forward Alex Morgan is the third member of the World Cup runner-up team to be nominated. France playmaker Louisa Necib also made the list chosen by FIFA officials and journalists selected by France Football magazine. Marta, who helped the Western New York Flash win the Women’s Professional Soccer title last season, is seeking to win the FIFA award for a sixth straight year. She is the only player selected from the Brazil squad eliminated by the U.S. in the World Cup quarterfinals. Japan coach Norio Sasaki and the U.S. team’s Swedish coach Pia Sundhage are among 10 candidates for the best coach of a women’s team in 2011. Sasaki is one of seven men on the list. Award organizers FIFA and France Football magazine will reveal the final three candidates on Dec. 5. FIFA will announce the 10-candidate lists next Tuesday for the men’s Golden Ball and best coach awards The winners will be announced Jan. 9 at the FIFA Gala in Zurich. Voting is by national team coaches and captains plus selected journalists.
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ZURICH (AP & Staff) — FIFA cashed in on a $1.2 billion bonanza from United States broadcasters Friday, striking World Cup deals with Fox, Telemundo and Spanish language radio. Fox won the English-language U.S. television rights for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, outbidding incumbent ESPN and NBC for soccer’s showpiece tournament. Fox agreed to pay around $425 million for the two-tournament package, a person familiar with the bidding told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the figure was not made public. It also secured English-language radio rights. ESPN paid $100 million to show the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and the 2014 event in Brazil. The World Cup will be held in Russia in 2018 and in Qatar in 2022. Telemundo paid around $600 million for the Spanish-language deal, the person said. Telemundo, which is owned by NBC Universal, also defeated a rights holder, Univision, which had paid $325 million for the 2010-2014 package. Spanish-language radio rights went to Futbol de Primera Radio for more than $100 million. The deals were agreed to on an important day for FIFA President Sepp Blatter. He revealed the first steps in a wide-ranging reform program he initiated after a troubled year that was peppered with scandals implicating some of his most senior colleagues within world soccer’s ruling body. “We are happy because we are moving forward,” Blatter said, after signing off on the U.S. deals during a meeting of his executive committee. “Before the end of the year a big chunk of the concerns we had in the past … will be set behind us.” The American contracts cover tournament finals in all FIFA competitions from 2015-22, also giving Fox the Women’s World Cup in 2015 and ’19. “The FIFA World Cup and Women’s World Cup are two of the world’s biggest competitions,” Fox chairman David Hill said in a statement. “It is our privilege to be entrusted with these rights in the United States.” The deal was welcome news on a day when News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch was criticized by disgruntled shareholders Friday at the company’s annual shareholders meeting. News Corp. is the parent company of the Fox networks. Fox adds soccer’s biggest event to a portfolio of rights that includes the UEFA Champions League, the English Premier League and Italy’s Serie A. The network is expected to televise the final and some top matches on its [...]
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ZURICH (AP & Staff) — FIFA President Sepp Blatter promised Friday to release the files from a 10-year-old corruption scandal that could name senior officials who took millions of dollars in kickbacks. FIFA has previously stopped a Swiss court from releasing documents identifying who received payments from the former ISL marketing agency, which collapsed in 2001. On Friday, Blatter said his executive committee — including members implicated in the case — will reopen the ISL dossier at a Dec. 16-17 meeting in Tokyo. “We will give this file to an independent organization outside of FIFA so they can delve into this file and extract its conclusions and present them to us,” Blatter said after a two-day session of his executive panel. Dealing with the ISL allegations became a test of Blatter’s promised willingness to reform FIFA and world soccer after a slew of scandals involving bribery, vote-rigging and ticket scams. Blatter announced an overhaul Friday of FIFA’s investigative and legal structures that he expects will take two years to complete — defining his fourth and final presidential term. Three new task forces will report to Blatter’s previously announced “solutions committee,” which aims to promote good governance. Up to 18 members, drawn from politics and soccer, will be announced in Tokyo, but will not include former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as previously suggested by Blatter. “I think we have been ambitious in our road map,” Blatter said, insisting FIFA as an institution is “not corrupt.” Pressure to act built after four members of Blatter’s high command, including three continental presidents, were implicated in corruption scandals and banned or resigned in the past year. FIFA banned his former election rival Mohamed bin Hammam for life for allegedly bribing voters. One task force announced Friday will create a two-chamber ethics court with separate, independent investigation and prosecution units. It will be led by Swiss ethics committee chairman Claudio Sulser. German executive committee member Theo Zwanziger will steer proposed reforms of FIFA’s statute book. A transparency task force will examine how FIFA should run the bidding for future World Cups after 2018 host Russia and 2022 host Qatar won contests last year that were surrounded by recriminations. The panel, chaired by Frank van Hattum of New Zealand and Paraguay’s Juan Angel Napout, will write a code of conduct for officials, consider how FIFA vets committee members and include clubs, leagues and players [...]
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PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (AP & Staff) — Disgraced former FIFA vice president Jack Warner has threatened to release a “tsunami” of corruption allegations against FIFA President Sepp Blatter. Warner said Tuesday he will make the allegations after former presidential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam completes his appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport against a life ban for bribery. “I have promised in the past a tsunami that would hit the FIFA, and indeed, it will come,” Warner, a member of FIFA’s ruling executive committee for 28 years, wrote in a letter to a newspaper in his native Trinidad. A verdict in bin Hammam’s appeal to CAS is not expected for several months. The bribery scandal ended Warner’s career in soccer when he resigned in June to avoid investigation of his role in arranging $40,000 payments for Caribbean voters during bin Hammam’s election challenge to Blatter. Warner’s 1,300-word missive published by the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian stated that he and bin Hammam helped Blatter win “bitter” and “brutal” elections in 1998 and 2002. He said his revelations would make FIFA’s sponsors — which include Adidas, Coca-Cola, Sony and Visa — “cringe with painful surprise.” The threats were published three days before Blatter will announce details of an anti-corruption drive promised when FIFA member nations gave the 75-year-old Swiss official a final four-year term unopposed in June. “Blatter now suddenly sees the need to reform the FIFA from within in his last term of office and in the sunset of his days,” Warner wrote. “This is hypocritical to say the least for it is public knowledge that his four terms of office have been dogged with controversy and allegations of corruption to which he has never responded.” Warner said he and bin Hammam backed Blatter’s first campaign in 1998 and to secure re-election four years later, when the governing body was mired in a financial scandal. “We took (Blatter) on a worldwide crusade through Africa and Asia begging for support for him, and he won!” Warner recalled his first meeting with Petrus Damaseb, who chaired the FIFA ethics panel that expelled bin Hammam in July. He implied that Damaseb, then Namibia soccer federation president, accepted a payment in 1998. FIFA introduced an ethics code in 2006 that prohibited cash gifts. “I will tell the world what gift Bin Hammam gave to (Damaseb) which was not a bribe then as he [...]
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LONDON (AP & Staff) — Some of the Premier League’s foreign owners want to abolish the relegation and promotion system, a senior English soccer executive said Monday. With half the Premier League’s 20 clubs under foreign ownership, League Managers’ Association chief executive Richard Bevan said if more teams are sold to overseas investors they could force a dramatic change to the rules. “There are a number of overseas-owned clubs already talking about bringing about the avoidance of promotion and relegation in the Premier League,” Bevan said at the Professional Players Federation conference in London. “If we have four or five more new owners, that could happen.” Forcing any change requires support from 14 of the league’s 20 clubs. Even then, The Football Association must approve. League rules state the FA’s consent is needed for “the making and adoption of or any amendment to … promotion to and relegation from the league.” “Certainly you’ll find that with American owners and you’ll find that with some of the Asian owners (they have been talking about scrapping relegation),” Bevan said on the sidelines of the conference. Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Manchester United and Sunderland are owned by Americans, while Blackburn is under Indian ownership and Queens Park Rangers has Malaysian backers. Under the current system, the three bottom clubs are relegated each season from the top tier to the second-tier Championship, while three clubs are promoted from the Championship to the Premier League. “If you look at sports all around the world and you lot at sports owners trying to work out how to invest to make money, you will find that most of them like the idea of franchises,” Bevan said. “If you take particularly American owners, without doubt, there have been a number of them looking at having more of a franchise situation and that would mean no promotion or relegation. “Obviously if I was an American owner and I owned a football club or I was an Indian owner I might be thinking I would like to see no promotion or relegation, my investment is going to be safer and my shares are going to go up in value.” The issue has not been publicly raised at a meeting of clubs since 2009 when Bolton chairman Phil Gartside proposed a 38-team Premier League split into two divisions. If Premier League owners tried to abolish the ability of lower-tier teams to [...]
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LIVERPOOL, England (AP & Staff) — Substitute Javier Hernandez scored on a header in the 81st minute to help Manchester United draw 1-1 at Liverpool on Saturday and maintain its unbeaten start to the Premier League season. Steven Gerrard opened the scoring for Liverpool, curling in a free kick in the 68th minute. He was making his first start in seven months. “The free kick wasn’t the best,” Gerrard said. “The intention was to get it over the wall.” United, which began the game with leading scorer Wayne Rooney on the bench, has 20 points from eight games while Liverpool is fifth with 14 points. “It’s a real indication when you get in the dressing room afterwards and the players are all disappointed that they have drawn 1-1 with Manchester United,” Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish said. “That tells you how far they have come and we’re delighted they’re disappointed.” Among those in the capacity crowd of 45,065 at Anfield was LeBron James. The Miami Heat star watched Liverpool play live for the first time since becoming a minority owner of the club.
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NYON, Switzerland (AP & Staff) — Wayne Rooney will miss the entire group stage of the 2012 European Championship after receiving a three-game ban Thursday for kicking a player during England’s final qualifier. European soccer’s governing body cited him for his actions against Montenegro defender Miodrag Dzudovic during a qualifying game last Friday. UEFA’s rule book calls for three-game bans in cases judged to be assault, rather than the mandatory one-match ban for a red card. Rooney, who did not attend the hearing, can appear in his own defense at an appeal hearing. England’s Football Association said it would study the disciplinary committee’s decision before deciding whether to appeal. The expected appeal is likely to be heard before England finds out its Euro 2012 opponents on Dec. 2 when the draw is made in Kiev. Ukraine is co-hosting next year’s tournament with Poland. Rooney and England’s FA wrote letters of mitigation to the 10-man UEFA panel, which also considered the report by German referee Wolfgang Stark. Stark had praised Rooney for showing no dissent after his dismissal, and England hoped UEFA would see the offense as resulting from frustration rather than malice. England and Rooney also hoped UEFA would impose the same two-match ban it gave Russia forward Andrei Arshavin ahead of Euro 2008. Arshavin was sent off for violent conduct in the 84th minute of a decisive qualifier against Andorra in November 2007. Russia won 1-0 to advance ahead of England. Arshavin sat out Russia’s first two matches before leading the team to the semifinals.
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BRUSSELS (AP & Staff) — Soccer fans should be allowed to pick the cheapest way to watch games on television regardless of exclusive national broadcasting agreements, the European Union’s highest court ruled Tuesday. The decision against England’s Premier League — the world’s richest soccer league — could have profound implications for how sports and other entertainment TV rights are sold in Europe. Experts warn however it could be a short-lived Pyrrhic victory for European consumers, as the Premier League and other highly coveted leagues could push through pan-European packages at high rates, hurting fans in smaller markets. They said it also could force a drastic revision in how TV programs are distributed throughout Europe’s lucrative market of over 500 million people. The European Court of Justice said it is “contrary to EU law” for rights holders to set up exclusive contracts for each EU nation and to seek to prohibit viewers from watching those games in another nation with a cheap decoder card. Karen Murphy, landlady of The Red White & Blue pub in Portsmouth, England, started showing soccer games to her patrons using a Greek decoder, which cost her about one-tenth of the price she would have had to pay the Sky broadcasting network, which holds the British rights. After an initial conviction, a British high court sought EU advice and the Luxembourg-based tribunal said in a statement that “national legislation which prohibits the import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards is contrary to the freedom to provide services and cannot be justified.” The Premier League did not immediately react to the ruling. The decision could force through pan-European contracts as the business model, a sea change compared with the compartmentalized, national way of contracting now. “It could have a dramatic impact on the marketing of sports rights,” said Munich sports law expert Peter Duvinage. Major rights holders like the Premier League might now look at the future and weigh the limited added value of a contract in Greece with the threat it now poses to its core home market in the U.K. “If I am doing Premier League, then of course, why risk the prices in Greece becoming the prices in Britain. I will make sure that I do one deal,” said Nick Bitel, the chairman of the Sports Rights Owners Coalition in London. “Consumers will find that they will have less choice.” Since the EU advice [...]
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BRUSSELS (AP & Staff) — Soccer fans should be allowed to pick the cheapest way to watch games on television regardless of exclusive national broadcasting agreements, the European Union’s highest court ruled Tuesday. The decision against England’s Premier League — the world’s richest soccer league — could have profound implications for how sports and other entertainment TV rights are sold in Europe. Experts warn however it could be a short-lived Pyrrhic victory for European consumers, as the Premier League and other highly coveted leagues could push through pan-European packages at high rates, hurting fans in smaller markets. They said it also could force a drastic revision in how TV programs are distributed throughout Europe’s lucrative market of over 500 million people. The European Court of Justice said it is “contrary to EU law” for rights holders to set up exclusive contracts for each EU nation and to seek to prohibit viewers from watching those games in another nation with a cheap decoder card. Karen Murphy, landlady of The Red White & Blue pub in Portsmouth, England, started showing soccer games to her patrons using a Greek decoder, which cost her about one-tenth of the price she would have had to pay the Sky broadcasting network, which holds the British rights. After an initial conviction, a British high court sought EU advice and the Luxembourg-based tribunal said in a statement that “national legislation which prohibits the import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards is contrary to the freedom to provide services and cannot be justified.” The Premier League did not immediately react to the ruling. The decision could force through pan-European contracts as the business model, a sea change compared with the compartmentalized, national way of contracting now. “It could have a dramatic impact on the marketing of sports rights,” said Munich sports law expert Peter Duvinage. Major rights holders like the Premier League might now look at the future and weigh the limited added value of a contract in Greece with the threat it now poses to its core home market in the U.K. “If I am doing Premier League, then of course, why risk the prices in Greece becoming the prices in Britain. I will make sure that I do one deal,” said Nick Bitel, the chairman of the Sports Rights Owners Coalition in London. “Consumers will find that they will have less choice.” Since the EU advice [...]
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Eastern Conference Standings GP W L T Pts GF GA Sporting KC 31 11 9 11 44 46 39 Philadelphia 30 10 7 13 43 40 33 Houston 31 10 9 12 42 39 39 Columbus 31 11 12 8 41 36 40 New York 30 8 7 15 39 46 41 DC United 29 9 9 11 38 45 44 Chicago 30 7 8 15 36 39 39 Toronto FC 31 6 13 12 30 32 55 New England 30 5 13 12 27 34 49 Western Conference Standings GP W L T Pts GF GA x-Los Angeles 30 17 3 10 61 44 22 x-Seattle 30 15 6 9 54 49 32 x-Real Salt Lake 30 15 9 6 51 42 30 FC Dallas 30 13 10 7 46 36 33 Colorado 31 10 9 12 42 41 40 Portland 30 10 13 7 37 37 44 Chivas USA 31 8 12 11 35 39 38 San Jose 30 6 11 13 31 32 39 Vancouver 29 4 15 10 22 29 49
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