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Even as the Mark Clattenburg controversy was building up a head of steam and threatening to mire the Premier League in another poisonous race row, the competition's cash registers were ringing to the sound of yet more foreign television cash.

A day after announcing a ground-breaking deal with chief executive Richard Scudamore was in Beijing on Tuesday morning to reveal a six-year extension to its current deal with Chinese TV partner Super Sport.

Having secured a staggering £3bn for the League's domestic TV rights for the three years between 2013 and 2016, Scudamore is now seeking to beat the existing overseas rights deal, which is worth another £1bn. He told me from China that although the League has only concluded one fifth of its new overseas deals, he is confident of raising more income this time around.

Rather than turning foreign broadcasters off, the unseemly soap opera which provides a backdrop to football in this country just seems to add to the attraction.

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In Geneva

Pat McQuaid, president of world cycling's governing body the UCI, described it as the biggest crisis in cycling's history.

Stripping Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and telling him he had no place in cycling, McQuaid nevertheless insisted the sport had a bright future.

But while the UCI may feel it has drawn a line under the affair by rubber stamping the United States Anti Doping Agency's (Usada) incendiary report on Armstrong, McQuaid and the UCI still have some searching questions to answer.

Alongside its verdict on the Usada case, the UCI delivered a bulging pack of rebuttals which attempted to clarify some of the other issues raised in the two-year investigation.

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