Firstly Rugby League...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/nickbryant/
I guess League is really only played in Australia & UK (although other countries do play it without the exposure) and it has been suffering ever since Rugby Union went professional 20 years ago or so. The idea of 'capping' the players wages is a good one in what is really a minority sport. It means that even small franchises can still be financially viable and stops an excessively rich owner coming into the sport & dominating it with the cheque book. The richer clubs do not particularly like being dictated to & there has been a couple of breaches & punishments over the years, both in Aus & England. This is a real bomb shell though - the club were even keeping a duplicate set of books as in the good old Mafia business days.
It always amazes me how people think they can get away with it (although Storm managed for quite a while). Even at the lowest level sports clubs (of all hues) are always locked in deadly infighting within the management/organisation ranks. It is always just a matter of time that someone gets the 'heave-ho' & so turns into a whistle blower to get his own back.
Secondly Cricket and the IPL.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8638958.stm
20/20 cricket has burst onto the sporting scene in a quite amazing fashion. It is dragging paying customers through the gates in a remarkable way. So much so that (in Australia at least, which is a good barometer for these things) a 20/20 game between two 'county' sides will attract a larger crowd than a 1 day international.
India is a cricket mad nation in a way that someone like me, brought up on a huge range of sporting options to watch or play, finds a little difficult to understand. However that is the way of things in the world's largest democracy. But India is still a developing nation with all the opportunities to create a little extract wealth by ignoring the rules. this is even quite damming by those sets of rules though!!.
Correspondents say the allegations of sleaze, illegal betting, favouritism and money laundering have gripped the nation in recent days.
