My Sports News Digest

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – The IOC awarded Japanese broadcast rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics to a national consortium on Friday in a deal worth 36 billion yen ($ 472 million).

The Japan Consortium includes state broadcaster NHK and the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters of Japan.

Four years ago, the same group paid 32.5 billion yen (worth $ 426 million at today’s rates) for rights to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games and 2012 London Olympics.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said in a statement that the IOC is “delighted to continue our long-term relationship with the Japan Consortium.”

The 2014 Winter Games will be held in Sochi, Russia. Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Summer Games.

ROME – The Italian government must take into account the country’s financial crisis when it decides whether Italy can afford to host the 2020 Olympics in Rome, the sports minister said Thursday.

“The dream of a sports minister is to bring the Olympics to his country, allowing everyone to pull together for a purpose,” Tourism and Sports Minister Piero Gnudi told reporters. “That said, the financial commitment is very heavy, above all in this moment.”

Earlier in the day, bid promoters including Rome’s mayor, presented Premier Mario Monti with a study that contends that the costs of readying the event will be largely compensated by the creation of thousands of jobs and by additional tax revenue.

“There is no risk to the adventure,” Mayor Gianni Alemanno told reporters at a news conference to talk up study. Hosting the Olympics would be a “great opportunity at almost zero cost,” he said told a news conference.

However, Gnudi said that Monti’s new government, intent on slashing spending as the country’s debt spirals upwards amid nervous financial markets, would have to calculate carefully before deciding whether to come up with the funds for the games.

Italy’s spiraling debt costs have added another challenge to the economic woes of the country, which is mired in a recession. “With one point of spread, you can hold three Olympics,” joked Gnudi, referring to the difference between the interest rates on Italy’s debt compared to much lower, benchmark German rates, known as the “spread.”

“There is enthusiasm, but there are financial problems. The government will have to take this into account, it cannot make mistakes,” said the minister, part of Monti’s Cabinet of technocrats who took office in November with the daunting task of trying to tame Italy’s debt while spurring economic growth.

Gnudi noted that both the government and Parliament, which would have to approve funding, will have to decide. “If it depended on me, the (yes) answer would be a given. The government must keep its feet on the ground, because the moment is difficult.”

The International Olympic Committee requires bid cities to provide government financial guarantees for the games. For 2020, the cities must submit their detailed bid files to the IOC by Feb. 15. The IOC executive board will then decide in May whether to reduce the list of candidates.

Rome is competing against Madrid; Tokyo; Istanbul, Turkey; Doha, Qatar; and Baku, Azerbaijan.

The bid promoters’ report predicts that the Olympics would create 29,000 jobs in 2020 as well as 12,000 in the run-up.

Including €1.6 billion ($ 2 billion) to expand Rome’s main airport, spending to prepare the city for the Games would amount to €9.8 billion ($ 12.5 billion), the report said. But considering the expected revenue from sponsors, media rights, ticket sales and other factors, the public spending costs would be much less, or €4.7 billion ($ 5.8 billion). And, the promoters insisted that investment would be practically covered by expected increased tax revenues on a bigger GDP.

Gianni Letta, longtime top aide to Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul and former premier, and among the bid’s promoters, promised the Games could bring a kind of rebirth to Italy as it struggles to regain its footing economically, just as the 1960 Olympics that the city last hosted helped set the country on its way to its economic “boom” following the end of World War II.

“We hope that 60 years later to repeat that miracle for a country” struggling with the current economic crisis, Letta said.

Madrid’s bid is also affected by the financial crisis in Spain.

The full IOC will select the host city by secret ballot in Buenos Aires in September 2013.

a runner passes a giant billboard advertising the Qatar bid for the FIFA soccer World Cup 2022 in Doha, Qatar. A year after Qatar became the first Arab country to win the right to host the World Cup, the tiny but wealthy Persian Gulf nation is immersed in efforts to make history again by bringing the Olympics to the Middle East in 2020.

DOHA, Qatar – A year after Qatar became the first Arab country to win the right to host the World Cup, the tiny but wealthy Persian Gulf nation is immersed in efforts to make more history by bringing the Olympics to the Middle East in 2020.

Flush with billions of dollars from oil and gas sales, Qatar hopes to build on its surprise victory in winning the right to host the 2022 World Cup. Stuck between powerful Mideast rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, Qatar also aims to capitalize on its role as a peacemaker after a year of enormous political upheaval in the region.

It was a tough year for Qatar, a small Muslim nation that has gained influence in international diplomacy and sports over the past decade. The country has never qualified for the World Cup and was criticized for spending lavishly to defeat countries such as the United States and Australia for the 2022 bid. Skeptics were particularly harsh after the downfall of Qatar’s top soccer official and former Asian federation president, Mohammed bin Hammam.

Just months after bin Hammam helped his country clinch the World Cup, FIFA banned him from soccer for life for allegedly paying bribes in his unsuccessful campaign against Sepp Blatter to become the organisation’s president.

In interviews with The Associated Press, Qatari sports officials said the country has moved on from the World Cup controversy and is fully focused on the Olympics.

“The World Cup file is closed,” said Sheik Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the secretary general of Qatar’s Olympic Committee. “We are thinking ahead and planning for the future, bidding for Olympic Games and maybe other events.”

Over the past decade, Qatar has been targeting sports as a vehicle to showcase its global aspirations. Doha successfully hosted major sporting events such as the Asian Games in 2006 and annual tennis tournaments featuring many of the world’s top-ranked players. This year alone, the capital hosted Asia’s continental soccer tournament in January and the opening Diamond League track meet in May.

Doha is vying for the 2020 Olympics with Baku, Azerbaijan; Istanbul, Turkey; Tokyo; Madrid and Rome. The candidate cities must submit their plans for the games to the International Olympic Committee by February. The IOC executive board will meet in May to decide whether to keep all candidates or reduce the list. The IOC will select the host city in September 2013.

The meeting in May is key for Doha. The Gulf city was eliminated early from the campaign for the 2016 Olympics after the IOC board rejected Doha’s request to stage the games outside the preferred July-August time slot, saying it would conflict with the international sporting calendar.

It was the soaring summer heat that quelled Qatar’s first Olympic campaign four years ago. Since then, the desert country where temperatures can reach 122 degrees in June and July won the right to host the 2022 World Cup based on a plan to cool the stadiums with innovative design and air-conditioning systems.

Soccer officials such as UEFA President Michel Platini have since indicated they’d be happy to reschedule European league schedules to allow the World Cup in Qatar to be played in the winter.

During several meetings with the IOC to see if the board would be able to accommodate Doha’s request to stage the games later in the year, Saoud said his city received a nod to hosting the Olympics between Sept. 20 and Oct. 20 if it submits the bid.

“We’ve learnt from the previous bid,” said Saoud, who is a member Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family. “We wanted to show that we are a strong, reliable partner. We are in love with sports and we want to work together to bring the Olympics to Doha and share our passion with the region.”

The message the 2020 officials are trying to get across is not much different from the one they used four years ago.

In Doha, everybody from the conflict-prone region can get along and the city can show the world a Middle East different than they perceive it to be. However, bid officials said the similarities to the previous bid for the 2016 Games end there.

“We are in a much stronger position than we were four years ago,” said Noora al-Mannai, the CEO of the Doha 2020 bid.

Major infrastructure projects have been completed in the recent years and sporting venues have been upgraded. The airport has been expanded and more hotels have been built. Doha’s road network has grown to ease crippling traffic around the capital and a national-wide metro system that will be able to carry 45,000 commuters an hour by 2020 was commissioned earlier this year.

Qatar also has hosted talks to ease conflicts around the region, including in Lebanon and Sudan’s Darfur region, and in the 1990s broke ranks with Gulf neighbors and allowed an Israeli trade office to open in Doha.

Last month, the Gulf nation staged a 21st-century spin on pingpong diplomacy to raise the emirate’s profile by promoting peace between rival nations through a one-day table tennis tournament, pairing rival nations such as North Korea and South Korea.

And over the past year of the Arab Spring, Qatar contributed war planes to NATO airstrikes in Gadhafi-ruled Libya, tried to negotiate an exit for Yemen’s protest-battered president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and has taken the lead in Arab countries pressuring Syria’s Bashar Assad.

Qatar also has toned down the Gulf way of bragging about what it can do with its vast resources. It has infused its ambitions with a dose of modesty. It even appears to be learning how to be a better loser after losing the bid for 2017 track worlds last month to London.

“We will win some, lose other, but we’ll learn from both,” Saoud said.

With a population of only 300,000 and substantial oil and gas reserves, Qatar has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world. It is set to be wealthy for a long time and can easily outspend all of its rivals in the bidding process for any sporting event.

But important lessons have been learned from both, the failed Olympic bid in 2008 and the successful World Cup campaign last year. Also, the IOC has shortened the international campaign phase of the bid process for the 2020 contest in an effort to cut spending. The six cities will only be able to start international lobbying nine months before the vote instead of previous 16 months.

“Yes, we have money and it’s good to have it, but it all depends how we spend it,” al-Mannai said. “We choose to invest our money into making Qatar the leader of positive change.

“We believe that bringing the Olympics to the region is a big part of that effort.”

MADRID – The Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) will slash the cost of its bid to host the 2020 Olympics by up to 40 percent compared to its spending on a failed attempt to get the 2016 Games.

Though the COE did not release figures, committee head Alejandro Blanco said Tuesday the bid plans to cut 30 to 40 percent from the previous €37.8 million ($ 50.4 million) budget, leaving it somewhere between €22.7 million ($ 30.2 million) and €26.5 million ($ 35.3 million).

Blanco did not say how the budget would be split between the public and private sectors in one of the largest debt-strapped eurozone nations.

With 21.5 percent unemployment and a troubled economy, Blanco believes that finally landing the Summer Games at the third attempt would provide Spain with a vital boost.

“We need the Games,” Blanco was quoted as telling Spanish media. “This country, with its current political and economic situation, needs a project such as this. The Games mean a lot to all countries but, for Spain, it means a lot more.”

On Tuesday, the mayor’s office founded the Madrid 2020 Society, which will manage a bid that is up against: Tokyo; Rome; Istanbul; Doha, Qatar; and Baku, Azerbaijan.

Madrid failed to land the 2012 or 2016 Games, which subsequently went to London and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, respectively.

The current bid has gone low-profile with Spain in a pinch financially as it is desperate to meet deficit-reduction targets amid the continuing eurozone debt crisis.

A new conservative government will take power on Dec. 22 and austerity and reforms will begin to take power.

With 78 percent of infrastructure already completed, Blanco said no money would be spent on the bid – apart from the sum for the organizing committee – until 2013.