FOOTBALL
NFL leads on attendances
The NFL beat out Bundesliga soccer for the honor of being the best attended professional sports league in the world, Sportingintelligence.com reported on Friday. The NFL took the top spot with an average of 67,591 fans per game last year, an increase from 67,394 a year earlier. Germany’s Bundesliga came in second with 45,116 average fans per game in the 2011-2012 season — the highest average ever for that league — up from 42,673 from the season before. The English Premier League (34,602) took third place, surpassing Australia’s Aussie Rules football, which saw a season-on-season decline from 36,428 to 32,748. The NHL attracts the largest crowds of the indoor sports, with an average attendance of 17,455 in 2011-2012, finishing just ahead of the NBA (17,274). Two sports that have seen increases in average attendance year-on-year are Major League Baseball and the Canadian Football League (CFL). MLB came in fifth with an average attendance of 30,895, up from 30,366 a year earlier. The CFL sits seventh with an average of 27,882, compared with 27,192 previously.
SOCCER
Owen heading for Glory?
Former England striker Michael Owen is reported to be interested in playing for Perth Glory in the A-League. A story in the West Australian newspaper quoted a team spokesman as saying the club was interested in signing the Stoke City player, who has scored 40 goals in 89 internationals for England. It said Owen’s agent had been in contact with the team, but that negotiations were in their early stages. “Michael Owen’s agent has enquired about Michael playing in the A-League,” the spokesman told the newspaper. “Perth Glory are interested, but are yet to find out Michael’s terms and conditions. Until these are known, Perth Glory will not enter any further negotiations.”
GOLF
Weather hits season opener
High winds and driving rain wiped out Friday’s round of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Hawaii, giving players a weekend restart in the PGA Tour’s season-opening tournament. The cancellation means all participants, weather permitting, were due to have to play 36 holes yesterday at the Plantation Course at Kapalua. Of the 30 players in the field on Friday, 20 had played at least one hole and some more. However, officials felt that the six who had yet to tee off would be given an unfair advantage because they did not have to deal with the wind and rain that forced two delays on Friday before the round was called off.
SOCCER
Spurs swoop for Holtby
Tottenham have agreed a deal to sign Germany midfielder Lewis Holtby from Schalke 04 at the end of the season. Holtby had recently confirmed he would be leaving Schalke and Tottenham announced on Friday that the 22-year-old will move to White Hart Lane when his contract with the German club expires in June. The 22-year-old midfielder had also been linked with Arsenal and Liverpool, but Andre Villas-Boas’ side have won the race for the highly rated playmaker. A Spurs statement read: “We are delighted to announce that we have reached agreement with Germany Under-21 captain Lewis Holtby to join the club in July from Bundesliga side Schalke, subject to a medical.” Germany-born Holtby, who has a German mother, was eligible to play for England through his father, a former soldier in the British army, but opted to represent his country of birth. He has three full caps for the senior national side.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier