Japan
Business

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has made a formal appeal to FIFA, and to the presidents of the five other soccer confederations, for the 2006 World Cup finals to be awarded to Africa.

Organisers of the 2002 soccer World Cup - to be jointly staged in South Korea and Japan - say they are confident a compromise can be reached to avoid Asia's threatened boycott of the tournament's qualifying rounds.

The president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, Yushiro Yagi, has died aged 72.
Business

Television distributor Venevision International has been chosen by satellite broadcaster DirecTV to sub-license the rights to the 2002 soccer World Cup in a number of Latin American nations.
Business

Osaka is not ready to throw in the towel in the race to stage the 2008 summer Olympic Games, bid officials have said.
Business

French media giants Vivendi Universal will pay ISMM?s worldwide salaries while it works to take over the troubled Swiss marketing firm, a leaked ISMM memo obtained by sportbusiness.com reveals.
Business

ISL?s parent company, the ISMM Group, has admitted for the first time it is in dire financial straits and is on the verge of bankruptcy ? with its future now in the hands of a Swiss court.
Events

South Korean soccer fans have applied for more than one million tickets for the 2002 World Cup finals, four times the number of seats offered in the first round of sales, organisers said on Thursday.
Business

China has sentenced an activist to two years in a labour camp for urging the International Olympic Committee to use Beijing's bid for the 2008 Games to press Chinese authorities to free jailed democracy activists.
Media

The troubled Millennium Cup soccer tournament has suffered a fresh setback with officials canceling a third-place playoff to cut losses.
Events

International sports agency Prisma will meet with UK free-to-air broadcasters ITV and the BBC next month in an effort to break the deadlock over negotiations for the UK rights to the 2002 World Cup.

Chicago Cubs star Slammin? Sammy Sosa has been enlisted by Major League Baseball International to help raise baseball?s profile in Europe
Events

New Zealand pay-television operator, Sky Network Television Ltd., has won rights to broadcast six of New Zealand's national rugby team?s tour matches in Europe and Japan later this year.
Events

Thailand has said it would pursue its dream of hosting the Olympics despite rejection of its bid for the 2008 Summer Games.
Business

FIFA president Sepp Blatter emerged triumphantly from his organisation's biennial Congress on Saturday only to find the fragile unity of world soccer's governing body crumbling badly around him.
Media

The FIFA Executive Committee has unveiled a new system designed to allocate tickets for the 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan.
Events

BSkyB has offered #250million for exclusive UK television rights to the World Cup 2002, according to The Observer newspaper.
Events

The 2000 NBA All-Star Game, taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area, February 11- 13, will be shown in 205 countries, with a potential audience of 750million households.