Word: soccers
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...science degree from Alrafdean University in Baghdad. Freed from the torturous reign of Iraq's former Olympic CEO, Uday Hussein, and spurred by a trickle of private investment in sports, several other Iraqis will join Ali as unlikely Olympians this summer. For the first time since 1988, Iraq's soccer team has qualified for the Olympics. Iraqi women's sports--destroyed under Uday's rule because athletes feared he would rape them--are recovering. A female sprinter, Al'aa Hikmet, will make the trip to Athens. Some 30 Iraqis will march in the Aug. 13 opening ceremonies. During...
...Iraq (N.O.C.I.). Al-Samarrai saw that the N.O.C.I. had to alter its business strategy. Drawing on oil revenues and Saddam Hussein's seized assets, the CPA granted the N.O.C.I. a $10 million operating budget this year and a $3 million capital budget earmarked for a renovation of the national soccer stadium in Baghdad. The N.O.C.I. estimates that it needs $25 million to keep sports going and an additional $98 million to renovate gyms and soccer fields. The Iraqis are used to such shortfalls; Uday diverted Olympic money to his palaces and planes. But in the post-Saddam era, the N.O.C.I...
...sponsorship strategy has yielded a few early successes. For the soccer team, the N.O.C.I. has inked two-year deals with LG Electronics, a South Korean company; Iraqna, a subsidiary of Egyptian conglomerate Orascom; and Bestseller, a Danish apparel company. Each contract is worth between $300,000 and $550,000. The N.O.C.I. has reached out to U.S. companies with less success. A delegation met with Nike and Motorola in April. "It was the pitch from hell," says Hayder al-Fekaiki, director of IraqiSport, a London-based start-up that the N.O.C.I. hired to help negotiate its sponsorship deals. He cited...
...daily shootings and car bombings, such investment carries great risks and for some companies little reward. "We're trying to sell Nike rights that have no value," says N.O.C.I. adviser Mark Clark. "Let's be realistic--these [companies] have to run a business." So for now donations (54,000 soccer balls from the U.S. State Department) and a sort of international buddy system (Ali is sparring in the U.S.; the weight lifters have trained in Romania) are picking up the slack. With Najah Ali now fearing a hard-charging coach named Termite rather than a psychopath named Uday, come August...
...room for growth, Vegas has responded with a flurry of U.K. deals. The MGM Mirage plans to build a handful of midsize casinos, Harrah's seeks to sprinkle 8 to 10 smaller facilities throughout the country, and the Sands wants to install spiffy entertainment complexes at a few British soccer stadiums. But Britain's most sought-after locale, London's Millennium Dome, went to Kerzner International, best known for the coral-pink Atlantis resort in the Bahamas and South Africa's Sun City. Two weeks ago, the company - which has plans for casinos in Manchester and Glasgow - announced that...