June 2007

Baseball
The New York Yankees signed Chinese amateur players pitcher Kai Liu and catcher Zhenwang Zhang to minor-league contracts. Lui (age 19) had been playing in the Chinese Baseball League with the Guangdong Leopards and was chosen to participate as a member of China's National Team. Zhang (age 19) helped lead the Tianjin Lions to the league championship in three of the past five seasons and played in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. (CBS Sportsline.com, 6/18/07)

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Basketball
Infront Sports & Media, the exclusive marketing partner to the China Basketball Association and China's national basketball team, has signed a deal with Excel Sports Management to develop an athlete representation basketball business in China. Excel currently represents NBA players Jason Kidd, Paul Pierce, Lamar Odom, among others. (Sportbusiness.com, 6/20/07)

Golf
Korean male K.J. Choi shot a final round 7-under 65 enroute to winning the Memorial Tournament at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. The win was Choi's 5th career victory on the PGA Tour, and earned him $1.08 million. (Yahoo!Sports, 6/3/07)

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Other Sports
The Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee has hired Aramark to provide food services in the athletes village, media villages, international broadcast center and main press center during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China. (Sports Business Journal, 6/10/07)

ESPN is buying Cric-info.com, the worlds largest specialist cricket website from British publishing company Wisden Group. Cric-info.com was founded in 1993 and has more than 7 million users each month. (Los Angeles Times, 6/12/07)

Yahoo! announced that it will acquire online college and high school sports site Rivals.com, which offers editorial content, college message boards, and extensive recruitment news on a network of more than 150 websites attracting over a combined 2 million unique visitors per month. (Digital Media Wire, 6/21/07)

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China
Google and Sina, the operator of China's most visited web portal, announced plans to cooperate on search services and advertising, giving the US-based search giant an ally as it seeks to wrest market share in China from local search leader Baidu.com. (Wall Street Journal, 6/12/07)