Australian volleyball start-up wants to ride Games’ tide

A new professional beach volleyball league is gearing up for launch in Australia, hoping to catch the momentum of the Sydney Olympic Games. Investors in the Beach Volleyball League of Australia include 1960s distance runner Ron Clarke and Steve Anderson, coach of the Australian beach volleyball team. James Bunn's Television Programming Ltd. has just come aboard as television producer-distributor.

LIVERPOOL PLANS: Liverpool, one of England's leading soccer clubs, hopes to build a new stadium that will hold 70,000 across the street from its current home, Anfield, which seats 45,000. The process of winning approval from local authorities is in the early stages. The new stadium is expected to cost $150 million. If the idea goes ahead, the club would hope to be in its new home in three years.

NOURISHMENT: Britain's Department of Culture, Media and Sport confirmed that the Football Foundation (formerly the Football Trust) has been chosen to distribute 5 percent of the $2.5 billion from the Premier League's three-year television deal to the sport's grass roots. The contribution, amounting to $125 million, was volunteered by the Premier League after a Restrictive Practices Court case brought by the Office of Fair Trading against BSkyB and the Premier League regarding the current television contract, a case that the pay-TV group and the league won.

FINANCIAL AID: An English First Division team, Burnley Football Club in Lancashire, is opening its own branded financial services shop. Burnley has teamed with financial groups Alliance & Leicester, MBNA Bank and Allied Dunbar to offer products.

THAT MANY? The International Olympic Committee reports there are more than 12,000 Olympic-themed Web sites in development and in operation, the vast majority of which are not officially associated with the Olympics. The IOC is concerned that the proliferation of unofficial sites leaves its sponsors open to ambush advertising by companies not aligned with the Games.

— Jay Stuart