The new season starts with home advantage taken apart

The referee gets less room to decide alone

The Premier League season begins within days, with Arsenal hosting Coventry City, under a set of laws carried over from this summer’s World Cup [1]. A player treated on the pitch must now leave it for at least a minute, up from 30 seconds [1]. Throw-ins and goal kicks carry a five-second countdown, started only once the referee judges a player is stalling [1]. A substituted player has ten seconds to get off, or his replacement waits [1].

The larger change is to VAR. That is the video assistant referee: a second official watching replays who can tell the referee on the pitch to look again. It will now review a second yellow card shown in error, and a card given to the wrong player [1]. Both are narrow checks of fact. Neither touches a judgement call [1].

The narrowing is deliberate, and it comes from above. Roberto Rosetti, UEFA’s refereeing chief, spent the week telling Europe’s leagues to intervene less, not more. “It’s football, not PlayStation,” he said [2]. Any review running past 90 seconds, he argued, costs the whole system credibility [2]. A referee sent to the pitchside monitor will now be shown a freeze-frame, then half-speed, then full speed - a fixed order meant to end the endless replay [2].

The numbers show how differently the same laws already get read from country to country. Last season the Premier League used VAR 0.29 times a game, the lowest rate in Europe. The Champions League ran at 0.47 [2]. Handball splits wider still. The Premier League awarded a handball penalty once every 17.27 games; the Champions League, once every seven [2].

What the job costs the person in the middle

Anthony Taylor retired last month at 47, after 668 matches in the English professional game and 163 internationals [3]. It is the first English season in 20 years he has not worked [3]. Asked why he stopped, he listed what wears a referee down: “Fear of making mistakes, external opinion, spectators, managers, parents, media, colleagues” [3]. His family had already stopped attending his matches because of the abuse they received [3]. He has taken a job running elite refereeing in Turkey, where a five-year investigation found 371 of 571 match officials held betting accounts [3].

Spectators are first on that list of pressures. They are also the only item on it standing inside the ground, and in a league match they are overwhelmingly on one side.

Four clubs, four different kinds of home

Rayo Vallecano will play its first home game of the Spanish season somewhere else. The regional government of Madrid ruled the club’s Vallecas ground unusable after an audit found health and fire safety problems. Rayo now host Alaves at Butarque, the home of second-tier Leganes, on 20 August [4].

Buffalo went the other way. The Bills opened a 2.2bn-dollar Highmark Stadium after three years of building, drawing 51,807 to a training-camp practice - a record for that event by more than 12,000 people [5][6]. Fans complained at once about obstructed seats in the upper deck and small videoboards. The club said fewer than 1% of its seat-licence holders had raised sightline issues. It has six weeks to the 17 September opener to fix what it can [5]. One choice was made on purpose. The Bills did not build a dome. An awning covers about two-thirds of the seats, and the rest is left open to Western New York’s late-season cold, which the club treats as an asset worth keeping [5]. The first game in the building, a preseason win over Carolina on Saturday, finished 29-14 [7].

The Community Shield, English football’s curtain-raiser, is being played today in Cardiff rather than at Wembley. A clash in the London stadium’s calendar has sent Arsenal and Manchester City to a neutral ground in another country [8].

And in Birmingham the European Athletics Championships have run in front of visible gaps. Seb Coe, the World Athletics president, blamed a Monday-morning start, the mid-summer date, the heat and a stadium with little cover. He said the last four days were close to a sell-out [9]. European Athletics pointed to BBC audiences peaking above two million and a 20% market share [9].

The most expensive week anyone has had

The Los Angeles Lakers agreed to sell a controlling stake to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at a 12.5bn-dollar valuation, the highest ever put on a sports team [10][11][12]. What makes it strange is the seller. Mark Walter set the previous record himself. He paid 10bn dollars for the Lakers in a deal that closed only last October, after the Buss family sold up following 46 years in charge [10]. He is selling at a 25% mark-up inside a year, while federal regulators examine his wider financial empire [11].

The rest of 2026 has run the same way. An investor group led by Vinod Khosla agreed to buy the Seattle Seahawks for 9.6bn dollars. The Feliciano family agreed in May to buy the San Diego Padres for 3.9bn [10]. Until last year the records were the Boston Celtics at 6.1bn and the Washington Commanders at 6.05bn [10].

Football joined in on Friday. Fenway Sports Group sold 30% of Liverpool for 1.65bn pounds, valuing the club at 5.5bn pounds, or just over 7bn dollars [13][14]. The buyer is 1892 Holdings, led by Amit Bhatia, who becomes vice-chair. It is funded by the Mittal family trusts, the Saverins’ family office, and K5 Sports, where Jeff Bezos is lead investor [13][14]. Bezos is a passive investor and takes no board seat [13][14]. It is his first known investment in a sports team [15]. FSG keeps control and majority ownership, having bought the club in 2010 for 300m pounds [13][14]. It is a record valuation for an investment in a football club, ahead of Jim Ratcliffe’s 2024 Manchester United stake at around 5.8bn dollars [14]. The deal needs regulatory approval, which can take 90 days, and does not change Liverpool’s transfer budget this summer [13][14].

Bezos has been talked about as an NFL owner for years. He did not bid for the Commanders or the Seahawks, and people around the league see little near-term prospect of him running a franchise [16].

He would have been buying into a rising market. Sportico put the average NFL club at 9.34bn dollars, up 31% in a year [17]. That is the biggest one-year gain since it started valuing the league in 2020, and 141% over five years [17]. The Cowboys lead at 15.5bn for a seventh straight year [17]. The least valuable club, Cincinnati, is worth 7.4bn, and all 32 teams sit inside the world’s 40 most valuable sports franchises [17]. Baseball had its own moment. Apollo Sports Capital put 2.6bn dollars into the Yankees’ parent company, valuing the team close to 10bn [18]. Players and owners are heading toward a lockout that could reach the 2027 season [18].

The same money, further down the pyramid

Leicester City is for sale for more than 200m pounds, with King Power leaving after 16 years [19]. Citigroup produced an eight-page brochure called Project Lineup. It lists the men’s and women’s teams, the 32,000-seat King Power Stadium, the Seagrave training ground valued at 121m pounds, and the club’s Belgian sister side OH Leuven [19]. The pitch leans on the academy, whose graduates have been sold for more than 250m pounds in five years, and on the 5,000-1 title of 2016 [19][20]. The club is now in League One after back-to-back relegations [19].

West Ham, relegated in May, broke the EFL transfer record to sign the Belgium midfielder Arne Engels from Celtic for 22m pounds [21]. That beats the 17.5m Ipswich paid a year ago for Sindre Walle Egeli [21]. It is West Ham’s first second-tier season since 2012 [21].

The money for pictures keeps moving too. Apple has held early talks with the R and A about US rights to the Open, whose NBC deal runs to 2028 [22]. Apple’s 2.5bn-dollar Major League Soccer deal ended three years early after weak viewing figures. Its 750m-dollar five-year deal for Formula One in the US did not [22].