• The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has announced that the tender of the commercial rights to all its competitions from 2021 to 2028 will be overseen by external auditors Deloitte, as well a body it calls the Independent Monitoring Group (IMG). The AFC said that the the IMG ‘will consist of a member from each of the AFC Audit and Compliance Committee, the AFC Finance Committee and, also, the AFC Marketing Committee’. The commercial rights tender involves two separate tenders, firstly for the agencies seeking to market the AFC’s commercial rights and, secondly, for audiovisual rights companies interested in the AFC’s media rights. The deadline for expressions of interest is 29 March.

• Over 500 urine and blood samples have been collected from Russian footballers ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia and all have been negative, Eduard Bezuglov, head of the Russian Football Union’s (RFU) Medical Committee told TASS. The international federation of football associations (FIFA) recently confirmed that it is still investigating whether samples from 34 footballers may have been manipulated, as alleged by Richard McLaren in his Reports into Russian doping for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

• Marc Tarabella, co-Chairman of the European Parliament’s Sports Intergroup, has called for more countries to ratify the Macolin Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions. The Convention was adopted in 2014, but to date has only been signed by three countries. Five signatory countries are needed for the Convention to enter into force.

• Jorge Polanco, Shortstop for Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise Minnesota Twins, has been suspended for 80 games for a violation of the MLB Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Programme.