Liga Portugal go back to school with FBA partnership
September 12 – The Football Business Academy and Liga Portugal have entered an agreement that will see the organisation become the lead educational partner of Portugal’s top division.
News
Concacaf names female refs to Gold Cup officiating teams as VAR debuts
July 6 – Concacaf have broken new ground with their officiating teams and is introducing VAR – it debuted in the Preliminary Qualifying rounds last weekend – for the first time.
Warner settles defamation case to focus on avoiding long arm of US justice
By Andrew Warshaw
July 25 – Disgraced former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has agreed to pay Trinidad $375,000 (US$56,000) to a fellow Caribbean politician to end a long-running local feud unconnected with the widespread bribery allegations hanging over him.
US World Cup stars dominate first FIFPro Women’s World XI selections
February 19 – FIFPro have unveiled their first ever Women’s World XI. While women have award parity with the men in terms of the Ballon d’Or World Player of the Year awards, until now (and unlike the men) a World XI selected by female players worldwide had never been attempted.
USL goes to 30 teams as MLS’s Sporting KC enters a reserve team
By Ben Nicholson
October 28 – Sporting KC (Kansas City) has announced the formation of its new reserve team in the USL, the third tier of professional US soccer, called Swope Park Rangers.
Governing bodies join the line up for FITS Forum in Geneva
August 21 – The Financial Integrity and Transparency in Sport (FITS) Forum being held in Geneva on 3-4 September has announced more speakers to its already heavyweight line-up.
Dow Jones to expand Risk & Compliance business into sport
By David Owen
June 15 – The news and business information group Dow Jones is moving to exploit the drive for better corporate governance in the sports sector by launching Dow Jones Sports Intelligence, a new offshoot of its existing due diligence business, Dow Jones Risk & Compliance.
ICSS to hold special session on financial integrity and transparency
June 8 – With the international spotlight focused on corruption and money-laundering at FIFA and doping claims in athletics, the Qatar-based International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) is laying on a specialist session in Geneva in September to explore how sport, governments and the wider stakeholder community can tackle the issues and come up with ideas for robust reform.
Europol links with Sportradar to take the war to match-fixers
June 5 – The battle against betting related match fixing is seeing a rapid uptake in stakeholders looking for ways to combine resource and intelligence to control what is probably the biggest threat to the sporting integrity of the game. The latest information sharing agreement is between the European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol, have linked up with Sportradar’s betting security division.
MATCH exec Whelan is back in the game, bruised but not battered
By Andrew Warshaw
May 8 – Ray Whelan, the British director who was arrested and detained in Brazil after being wrongly accused of selling VIP World Cup tickets at inflated prices, is back working as a consultant for Match Services, FIFA’s official marketing partner, and is planning to write a book about the entire experience.
Beware the cyber warriors, they are coming to ruin you
By Andrew Warshaw
May 6 – One of the world’s leading sports security experts has warned that cyber attacks are the biggest growing threat to major football tournaments as well as other key sporting events.
STATS swoops to add Prozone to its growing global power play
By Paul Nicholson
May 6 – US sports data specialists STATS LLC has continued on the acquisition trail with the addition of UK-based Prozone, specialists in game and player performance tracking. Last September STATS acquired Bloomberg Sports. The enhanced capabilities of the group will lead to new product, and potentially real time stats for football clubs, ‘moneyball’ style.
Aussie police open gateway to more match-fixing data with Sportradar hook-up
May 4 – The Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Sportradar have the signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that is intended to beef up the co-operation and information sharing in the war on match-fixing.
Bodies call for co-operation and tougher laws in battle against match-fixing
April 17 – As the scourge of global match-fixing shows little sign of diminishing, fresh calls have been made for governments to introduce legislation that recognises it as a global crime.
Elite sport doping ‘likely’ to be between 14 -39%, finds new Dutch report
By David Owen
March 3 – New Dutch analysis has estimated that the prevalence of doping in elite sport is “likely” to be between 14 and 39% – far above the level of adverse analytical findings turned up by anti-doping tests. But the analysis also concludes that, while the tools to obtain a far more accurate gauge of true doping levels exist, published studies on the subject are “scarce”.