Sports · Sunday, 23 August 2026

01 · Briefing · what happened

Mexico shut the trapdoor for good. Across sport, a place in the league is becoming property.

Sports 2 min 18 sources

Liga MX has ruled out ever restoring promotion and relegation, MLS is drafting playoffs for 20 of its clubs, and the Falcons sold a stake at over $10bn after eight straight seasons out of the playoffs. Take away the drop and results stop setting the price.

seasons the Falcons have missed the playoffs

and a tenth of the club still sold above $10bn [4]

$12.5bn

agreed price for the Lakers

the club sold for $16m in 1979 and was valued at $1bn in 2013 [5]

$2bn

fee agreed for an NHL place

paid for the right to exist as a 33rd club, before a puck is dropped [3]

85m

pounds of spare cash a Premier League club must clear

a cushion the league says hedges the impact of going down [11]

At a glance

Liga MX has ruled out ever bringing back promotion and relegation, six years after suspending it as a pandemic saving. [1]
Mexico's second-tier clubs took the fight to sport's top court, lost, and have now been told the matter is closed. [1]
The Atlanta Falcons have missed the playoffs eight years running and just agreed to sell a tenth of the club above a $10bn valuation. [4]
Three big sales landed inside eight days: the Lakers at a record $12.5bn, the Padres at a baseball record $3.9bn, the Timberwolves at $4.5bn. [5][7][10]
MLS is planning playoffs with as many as 20 teams and a round where a top side can lose once and stay alive. [2]
The NHL is on track to sell a 33rd place to a Texas group that has already agreed a $2bn entry fee. [3]
England kept the trapdoor: Sheffield United risk a 12-point deduction after a former parent company was wound up in a London court. [12]
Premier League clubs must now hold a cash cushion the league itself describes as hedging against relegation. [11]

Forces in play

Closing the trapdoor High↑

Liga MX has ruled out bringing relegation back and handed league decisions to a committee of 18 owners [1]

Outside money arriving High↑

a private investment firm is taking 10 per cent of the Falcons, and three clubs changed hands for $12.5bn, $4.5bn and $3.9bn inside eight days [4][5][9][7]

Jeopardy priced, not removed Building↑

England still sends three clubs down a year, but now makes them hold 85m pounds spare against it, and Sheffield United face 12 points off [11][12]

Money spread wider Easing↑

Uefa and Concacaf are drafting a joint tournament for all 96 of their nations with much of the revenue pooled, which would carry more to small federations [16]

In play Liga MX and the Mexican federation — shut the door on promotion and relegation for good Liga Expansion clubs — invested, won titles, and now have nowhere to go up to Arctos Partners — buying a tenth of the Falcons; already holds stakes in more than 30 clubs The Premier League — kept relegation and rewrote its rules so clubs carry cash against it

How it unfolded

2020 Mexico suspends promotion and relegation to save money in the pandemic [1]
May 2025 ten second-division clubs take the case to sport's top court, and lose [1]
Last week the Lakers agree a record $12.5bn sale [5]
Thursday Liga MX unveils a franchise-driven model with no route up [1]
Friday the Timberwolves and Lynx change hands at $4.5bn [10]
Next the NHL board could approve a Texas club by the end of the year [3]

Where this points

Watch whether English football's new spending rules stay a check on clubs or start reading as protection for the ones already in, because that is how a trapdoor closes quietly. [11]

Full briefing

Two things happened in the same week, and they are the same thing.

Liga MX, Mexico’s top division, confirmed it will never bring back promotion and relegation [1]. Suspended in 2020 as a pandemic saving, the trapdoor is now shut by design [1]. Meanwhile the Atlanta Falcons agreed to sell 10 per cent of the club to Arctos Partners, at a valuation just above $10bn [4]. They have missed the playoffs for eight straight seasons [4].

The link is that a bad season can no longer damage the second club, and Mexico has decided it will no longer damage the first.

That is what the money is buying. Asked why investors want in, the writer Pablo Torre answered scarcity: there are only 30 NBA teams, and only so many of these things to own [6]. Scarcity holds only while the number is fixed and nobody can fall out of it. So the price stops tracking the team. San Diego had gone 58 years without a title, in baseball’s smallest television market, and sold at a record $3.9bn [7][8].

England is the control case, and it cuts the other way. The Premier League still relegates three clubs a year, and its new rulebook treats that as a financial hazard to be provisioned against. Clubs must now hold liquid assets above their liabilities plus 85m pounds, which the league describes as hedging the impact of going down [11]. Sheffield United may lose 12 points because a holding company two steps above the team was wound up in a London court [12]. At Chelsea, two co-owners are in talks to sell their 12.8 per cent stakes to the majority owner, a private investment firm, at a reported 5bn pound valuation [15]. Jeopardy in England has not been abolished. It has been turned into a balance-sheet item, and its cost lands on supporters who chose none of it.

Two figures for Liverpool are circulating and we cite both. The Athletic’s headline says the Bezos-backed consortium bought “close to 40 per cent”; its own text puts the shareholding at around 38 per cent [14]. The BBC carries the 40 per cent framing [18]. Either way it attaches roughly 5.5bn pounds to the club [13].

What the tiles cannot show is that none of this needs a villain. MLS’s incoming commissioner, Larry Berg, says the jeopardy in promotion and relegation is “quite severe”, and that you cannot get stadiums or training grounds built under it [1][2]. He is describing a real problem. A club that might lose most of its income in May is hard to lend to and hard to sell a slice of. Everyone here is behaving sensibly. The rules got tighter this weekend where you can see them, with five seconds to take a goal kick or it becomes a corner [17]. The result is still that the part fans pay for, the possibility of disaster, is being underwritten out of the sport by people whose job is removing risk.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

Why a club that keeps losing can keep getting more valuable

Take away the chance of falling out, and a place in a league stops being a result and becomes a possession.

How it works

A place in the league can be lost on the pitch
So the club's income might halve any May
Money that needs a steady return marks that risk down
The rules change: no drop, wider playoffs, second chances
The place becomes property, bought and borrowed against
Results stop setting the price

The twist

The thing fans pay for is the possibility of disaster, and it is exactly the thing an investor is paid to remove.

Where you've seen this

Taxi licences

the plate, not the car, held the value, and only while no more were issued

Banks the state will not let fail

a promise of rescue makes borrowing cheap whatever the results say

A job for life

security makes the post worth more than the work anyone does in it

The catch

Safety builds things. Stadiums and training grounds get financed because the income is certain, so the closed model is a trade, not a theft.

Full lesson

Two announcements, one idea

In one week, Mexico’s top division said promotion and relegation are never coming back. And a National Football League club that has missed the playoffs eight seasons running agreed to sell a tenth of itself at over ten billion dollars.

Read them apart and they are a governance row and a finance story. Read them together and they are the same sentence, said twice.

The number a buyer is really looking at

When someone buys a slice of a club, they do not price the good year. They price the bad one.

Every business has a ceiling and a floor. The ceiling is what it earns when things go well. The floor is what it earns when things go badly. Lenders, funds and anyone borrowing money to buy in care almost entirely about the floor, because the floor is what has to cover the debt.

In an open league the floor has a hole in it. Finish in the bottom three and most of the central money stops. One bad spring can cut a club’s income in half. That is not a small risk to be smoothed away in a spreadsheet. It is the risk.

So a league that removes the drop has not made its clubs better. It has raised their floor. And raising the floor is the single most valuable thing you can do to an asset someone wants to borrow against.

Then the price stops being about the team

Once the floor is fixed, results still decide trophies. They stop deciding worth.

That is why a club can be bad for eight straight years and be worth more than ever. It is why a team in the smallest television market in baseball, with no title in fifty-eight years, just sold for the highest price the sport has seen. The buyers are not paying for the last decade of football or baseball. They are paying for a permanent, countable share of a league that only ever has so many members.

Asked why investors want in, one writer answered with a single word: scarcity. There are only thirty clubs in the National Basketball Association. Scarcity only works if the number is fixed, and if nobody can fall out of it.

The same force, in a league that kept the trapdoor

England did not close its door. It priced it.

The Premier League still sends three clubs down every year. But its new rulebook now asks clubs to hold a large cushion of spare cash. The league says plainly that the cushion is there to absorb the shock of going down. Relegation has been turned into a line in the accounts, a hazard to be provisioned for, like a bad debt or a flood.

That is worth sitting with. Jeopardy has not been abolished in England. It has been converted into a number, which is the last step before someone decides it is cheaper to remove it.

Who is holding the other end of this

None of this happens to nobody.

In Mexico, second-division owners spent real money and won real titles, and have been told the ladder is gone. One of them said a system had been built to kill his league off. Meanwhile in England, a club may lose twelve points because a holding company two steps above the team was wound up in a London court. Not one supporter voted for that structure, and every one of them will play the season short.

And the money doing the buying is not exotic. It is pension money, insurance money, fund money, the slow institutional savings of people who mostly do not follow sport at all. Their pensions want a floor. Fans want a cliff. The same pound is asking for both.

Nobody in one seat sees all of it

The argument for closing the door is not stupid, and it is not made in bad faith. The incoming head of Major League Soccer put it flatly: you cannot get stadiums and training grounds financed when a club might lose half its income in May. That is true. Certainty builds things, and plenty of what fans enjoy was built on it.

So this is a trade, not a theft. Something real is bought and something real is given up.

What makes it hard to see is that nobody along the chain is doing anything strange. The owner wants a stable asset. The lender wants a floor. The league wants investment. The fund manager wants a return for a teacher’s pension. Each seat is reasonable. And the thing being quietly removed at the end of the chain, the possibility that it all goes wrong, is the thing everyone bought a ticket for.

03 · Lab · your turn

Set the League's Rules

Choose whether clubs can be relegated and see what certainty buys an owner, and what it costs the season.

04 · Hope · carry this

Every rule here was written by people in a room, which is the only reason it can be rewritten. The clubs shut out in Mexico are still arguing, and settled questions never sound like that.