With some 11,000 athletes due to arrive in Japan in around five months’ time, one would have assumed that the Tokyo 2020 organising committee would be intent on avoiding the avoidable wherever possible.
Turns out no one told that to Yoshiro Mori, who sparked national and global outrage last week when he made some ill-advised remarks about women. More than 110,000 people have now put their name to a petition calling for the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) to take action against the Tokyo 2020 president after he whined that meetings with more female board members “take so much time” because women talk too much.
“When you increase the number of female executive members, if their speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, which is annoying,” Mori said, as told by an AFP translation of an Asahi Shimbun story.
It is not lost on the Tip-Off that Mori was complaining about lengthy decision-making processes while helming an organising committee that ummed and ahhed its way to Olympic postponement nearly a year ago.
The former Japanese prime minister has since publicly refused to resign over the sexist comments, although it has also been reported that he was persuaded not to step down from his post by colleagues, the majority of whom are – you guessed it – men.
Boxing’s dark underbelly
While boxing’s numerous sanctioning bodies have reveled in the glitz and glamour of top fights, we have been given a cruel reminder of the sport’s illicit links.
A BBC production team involved in the programme ‘Boxing and the Mob’ were threatened after it aired, with police warning about an unspecified threat from unnamed criminal elements in relation to the documentary
The programme, which was shown on 1st February, investigated the role played in boxing by Daniel Kinahan, named in the Irish courts as the head of one of Europe’s biggest drug cartels.
Kinahan’s involvement in the sport was covered in a June edition of the Tip-Off, back when world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury publicly thanked him for setting up a unification fight with Anthony Joshua.
That bout has yet to be officially confirmed and though it was announced Kinahan would step away from boxing, the BBC programme revealed the crime boss was still advising fighters.
Boxing’s ties with the mob date back to the introduction of the Queensberry Rules over 150 years ago. Sadly, Kinahan’s heavyweight involvement only highlights the sport’s light touch when it comes to governance.
LeBron’s shutout
The National Basketball Association (NBA) looks to be pressing ahead with its All-Star Game this year, but the league’s most influential player isn’t keen to play ball.
ESPN reports that the game is set to be held on 7th March at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Yet, the prospect of elongating a campaign that began after a shortened off-season has only left LeBron James irked.
“I have zero energy and zero excitement about an All-Star Game,” he said. “I am not happy about it. If I am selected I will be there physically but not mentally.”
James added: “We came off a short off-season of 71 days and then coming into the season we were told we were not going to have an All-Star Game so we would have a nice little break. Then they throw an All-Star Game on us like this.
“It is pretty much a slap in the face. We are still dealing with pandemic and we are going to bring the whole league into a city that is open.”
Ah man, Ahmad
Ahmad Ahmad is proving harder to shake than Fifa might have anticipated.
The disgraced Confederation of African Football (Caf) president was remarkably able to return to work recently as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) decided to freeze a five-year ban handed down to him by soccer’s global governing body, paving the way for him to stand for reelection in March.
Thankfully, though, just before any dying embers of faith in sports governance could burn out, Caf’s executive committee issued a statement describing the recommendation of its own governance committee to restore Ahmad as a presidential candidate as ‘inappropriate’, ruling over the weekend that Fifa should have the final say on Ahmad’s eligibility instead.
One would be forgiven for thinking that this might finally draw the curtain on Ahmad’s controversial tenure, but if recent events are anything to go by it would not be a surprise to see another twist in the tale.
Dubbin is the new black
Eagle-eyed soccer fans might have noticed a growing trend among elite stars in this unusual European season: blacked-out boots.
The daubing-over of branding and logos is usually taken as a sign that a player is between footwear endorsement deals and, according to The Athletic, a higher-than-normal number are in that position right now. The churn is thought to be highest at Nike, which saw Paris Saint-German's Neymar defect to Puma for a more prominent billing last year, and which has also been shrinking its roster to focus on a core, campaign-led cohort.
The Athletic believes Nike departures to include Thiago, Raphael Varane, Sergio Ramos, Marco Asensio, Raheem Sterling, Bukayo Saka, Leroy Sane and Robert Lewandoswki. But elsewhere in the sector, pandemic-related supply chain and personal contact issues are thought to have affected lower-tier deals, while companies have also been looking for budgetary efficiencies.
A boy named who?
“He’s a humble boy who’s never complained, not even when he didn’t play for two years. I like him. He’s not a seasoned player yet, but he looks promising.
“The burdensome surname? I’ve never spoken to his parents, and the only thing that matters is whether a player deserves to play. Nothing else.”
Mauro Bianchessi, youth team manager at Serie A soccer club Lazio, plays down controversy over the latest recruit to the U19 squad: right-back Romano Florian Mussolini.
The professedly apolitical 18-year-old St George British School student is the son of former European parliamentarian Alessandra Mussolini and the great-grandson of yes-that Benito Mussolini. Some commentators are concerned that lineage will be too much for some of the Roman club’s ‘ultras’ – notorious for signalling their fascist leanings in the past – to resist.
‘It’s just a matter of time,’ argued an editorial in Il Fatto Quotidiano, ‘before someone starts exalting the Duce.’
Data war heads to court
The market for sports betting data is undoubtedly heating up, and so too is a long-running spat between two of the sector’s biggest players, Genius Sports Group and Sportradar.
On 5th February, in the latest twist of a months-long courtroom battle in the UK, Genius sued Sportradar amid claims it had sent so-called “data scouts” to nab data from professional soccer matches without having acquired official rights to do so. The lawsuit followed a separate case in which Sportradar sued Genius and Football DataCo (FDC) - a licensing company owned by the Premier League, English Football League (EFL) and Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) - for allegedly violating competition laws.
“We are disappointed but unsurprised that we have to take this legal action,” Genius Sports general counsel Tom Russell told Sportico. “Sportradar has a long history of using clandestine tactics to enter venues and collect data without consent. Given Sportradar’s cynical promotion of itself as a partner to the global sports community, we are continuously astounded at its willingness to exploit sporting events while undermining the vital funding of sport.”
While it will be for the British courts to determine a resolution, the ongoing litigation has raised important questions around exclusivity arrangements, which in turn has cast doubt over the very definition of data rights ownership. Whatever the outcome, the related cases are sure to have far-reaching implications for sports betting data providers the world over.
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