By Nick Harris 14 September 2010 Football is the world’s truly global game but where do passions run highest? Which clubs inspire not just the most support, per se, but the biggest share of the local (domestic) support? According to new research by sportingintelligence, the five football teams with the biggest share of their populations […]

By Nick Harris 14 September 2010 Manchester United’s official Facebook fan page has become the fastest growing of any sports team in the world, registering almost 2.4m fans within two months of being set up. The club, relatively slow to embrace Facebook as a platform for interaction with supporters compared to some of their major […]

By Nick Harris 14 September 2010 Football’s status as the most popular team game in the world by some margin is supported by all kinds of data from participation numbers to crowd levels to TV rights sales to the popularity of the World Cup, which is the biggest single-sport tournament in the calendar. Many nations […]

By Nick Harris 14 September 2010 Read a version of this article in Turkish The most popular sports team in the world at the moment, according to the number of fans on official Facebook sites, is Galatasaray, with almost 4.5m fans. This is thanks in part to the long-term efforts of the club’s business development manager, […]

By Brian Sears 10 September 2010 The first Premier League match of the weekend, tomorrow lunchtime, features two of the teams ‘ever present’ in the League since it began in 1992, with Everton hosting Manchester United. Only seven sides have been ‘ever present’, that pair plus Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Tottenham. Thus 42 […]

By Brian Sears 9 September 2010 After all the talk last season that Chelsea had an old team in need of freshening up, they won the title, scoring record numbers of goals in the process. So just as “you’ll win nothing with kids” turned out to be off the mark, a mature side shouldn’t be […]

By Pete Wilson 8 September 2010 A parliamentary debate on football ownership today in Westminster Hall heard praise for the Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST), which had lobbied so effectively that 632 MPs (97 per cent of the total of 650 MPs) had received letters from their United-supporting constituents in recent days. (Which must say something […]

8 September 2010 There follows, in full, the ruling made today by Ian Mill QC in relation to the John Higgins ‘match fix’ case. We are also running a news story. But in short, Higgins has been cleared of the most serious charges of fixing or intent to fix matches (charges dropped), but has been […]

By Nick Harris 8 September 2010 The world No1 snooker player John Higgins will be free to resume his playing career in November after being cleared today of the most serious charges laid against him relating to allegations of match-fixing. Two charges were dropped: 1) agreeing or offering to accept a bribe, bribes or other […]

By Alexandra Willis 8 September 2010 . Martina Hingis has given the clearest indication yet that she may return to professional tennis, corroborating rumours that have been circling internet forums since her career was cut short by a drugs suspension in 2007. In an exclusive interview with ACE Tennis Magazine at Wimbledon, as reported by […]