The wave of huge spending is China's latest step in its bid to become a global soccer power. With the backing of President Xi Jinping, an avowed soccer fan, and no shortage of investment money, the country has the political will and naked ambition to propel soccer into a starring role on the world stage.

Other sports have created global appeal before. The NFL, for one, has been playing regular-season games before sold-out crowds in London since 2007. [...] But Ranadive envisions basketball as the world sport of the 21st century, calling his globalization plan “NBA 3.0."

French Minister of Urban Affairs, Youth and Sport Patrick Kanner, visited Seoul in mid-February to bolster cooperation for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games in Korea. Kanner, who was accompanied by a delegation of French companies [...] met Korean athletes and sports institutions in tennis, taekwondo and mountain climbing during a reception at the French Embassy in Seoul on Feb. 19.

The North Korean women’s soccer team arrived in Japan on Thursday for Olympic qualifying matches in what Tokyo called “an exception” to its entry ban imposed over Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear weapons test and a rocket launch.

The Ethiopian Football Federation and representatives of one of America's leading professional women's soccer teams, the Seattle Reign, met today in Addis Adaba and took the first steps in forging a strategic partnership aimed at forging international linkages and strengthening Ethiopian women's soccer. 

As Chinese New Year is celebrated across the globe, it is increasingly clear that the 2015-16 transfer window, closed in Europe but still open in China, marks the emergence onto the world stage of a major new football superpower. 

India’s Rural Olympics, formally known as the Kila Raipur Sports Festival, is held annually each winter in Kila Raipur on the outskirts of Ludhiana, Punjab. The festival has been running since 1933. The four-day festival is a celebration of, well, rural Indian culture. 

It wouldn't be senate estimates without senior Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials having to justify the presence of a $6300 ping-pong table in the 'InnovationXchange' ideas hub.[...]  "Senator you call it a ping pong table, I call it a meeting table," he said. "It is used all day for meeting and not for ping pong. It is actively used throughout the day and sits 10 or 12 people around it."