News round-up

Media
Tottenham Hotspur has commissioned Input Media to produce a weekly three-hour programme for the international market to be distributed by Pitch International. Input Media also produce the Club TV Channels for Arsenal FC and Chelsea FC.

AMI has secured the exclusive new media mobile and internet clip rights to the Premier League. The three-year deal covers a range of territories within central and Eastern Europe and central Asian broadcast territories.

Rugby website Scrum.com has become the latest acquisition by ESPN as it looks to push outside its North American boundaries. Earlier this year, ESPN took control of cricket site Cricinfo.com.

Made Up Media (MUM), a publisher of online sports magazines, is launching a rugby website called scrumoftheearath.com ahead of the Rugby World Cup, reports Marketing magazine. MUM was set up earlier this year by the team behind GolfPunk magazine.

Inside Media, specialist in action sports cross-media content has signed an exclusive worldwide agreement with the ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals) for rights to the WQS European Pro Surf Tour 2007.

Simply Media has bought a majority stake in GolfBug.tv parent, BrandLive. The relaunched GolfBug.tv site will have a new design and layout and offer exclusive webTV coverage of The European Tour and footage from the Royal & Ancient archive.

Heineken is to sponsor a celebration of Rugby World Cup history – the Rugby reUnion - to be screened on ITV 1 on September 6. Heineken is the Official Beer of Rugby World Cup 2007.

Marketing
Organisers of the London 2012 Olympic Games have added a new category to its sponsorship programme. ‘Clothing and homeware’ has been added to the tier one categories, bringing the total to six. The existing categories are: telecoms, automotive, airline, sportswear and oil & gas.

George Gillett, co-owner with Tom Hicks of Liverpool FC, believes that the Liverpool FC brand is more valuable internationally than the collective Premier League. “We are discovering the fan base of Liverpool is much more global than we realised - probably the second biggest in the world,” he told the Daily Mail. “We are not sure if the Premiership plays collectively that well. On the other hand, the four top clubs definitely do”

Diageo Great Britain, owners of the Guinness brand, is to invest more than £6milllion in rugby union related advertising and promotional campaigns this autumn. According to talkingretail.com, the campaign includes new rugby themed advertising and Guinness-branded point-of-sale kits.

Hi-Tec Sports has been announced as title sponsor of the Hi-Tec Men's and Women's World Squash Championships which will take place in Manchester in October 2008. Hi-Tec produced the breakthrough design and development of the first ever shoe designed for the sport in 1974.

Events
NBA franchises based in Europe, and, in particular, Britain, remain the long-term goal of the US basketball league, according to the head of the league's new London office. Sophie Goldschmidt, the NBA's vice-president of marketing partnerships and business development for Europe, said Britain held a great deal of potential for the NBA.

The Horseracing Sponsors Association and Cheltenham Racecourse will host a seminar October 18-19 to showcase jump racing to sponsors and potential investors. Areas of interest to property holders and all other parties involved in jump racing sponsorship and hospitality will also be included.

Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain's most successful Paralympian, will officially open the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Roadshow at Stoke Mandeville Stadium in Buckinghamshire on August 29.

Blackpool will host the first-ever floodlit international beach volleyball tournament to be held in the UK, September 14-15. Leading players from the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Greece and Spain will compete in Blackpool International Beach Volleyball 2007.

Qatar has named Vero Communications among its bidding team for the Gulf state’s formal bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games in the capital Doha.

Finance
Mike Ashley, billionaire owner of Newcastle United, has discussed the sale of the club to an Icelandic entrepreneur, according to press reports. The Times understands that Palmi Haraldsson has held talks about paying more than £135 million to buy the club.

SPL club Hearts has unveiled an ambitious £51m stadium redevelopment. The club says the plans include a new 10,000-seat main stand, hotel, office space, conference and banqueting facilities, plus additional residential and commercial units.

Recruitment
Lee Daley, Manchester United’s commercial director, has left the club just four months into his new role, reports Marketing magazine. The club said that Daley’s departure was ‘by mutual consent’. Daley had been appointed with a brief to increase United’s annual revenue by 51 per cent by 2010.

The former head of sports sponsorship at the Daily Telegraph, James Mann, has joined Manchester sports agency Fuse, where he will rejoin his former Telegraph colleague Mark Dixon who was previously marketing director at the newspaper before he founded Fuse.