Saudi Arabia put more than $6bn into LIV Golf. The league filed for bankruptcy, and its biggest signings are now creditors.

The rest of the day

27 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

1. 02

   College football starts a clock with ESPN

   The College Football Playoff, which decides the champion of American university football, told the broadcaster ESPN on Tuesday that it is opening a 30-day exclusive window to discuss expanding from 12 teams to 24. [2][4] ESPN already pays $7.8bn over six years for a playoff of up to 14 teams, so anything larger is new material it gets first refusal on. [2] A first round would delete the four conference championship games, which ESPN sources value at $200m or more. [5] The Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference, the two groups with a veto, must agree by 1 December. [3]

   Why it matters — ESPN owns three of the four conference championship games that expansion would erase, so the network is being asked to put a price on the games that would replace its own. [2][6] If the two sides cannot agree inside 30 days, the playoff can offer the extra games to other broadcasters. [3]

2. 03

   Cricket Australia opens the Big Bash to buyers

   Cricket Australia's board agreed on Monday to let states sell stakes in their Big Bash League clubs, the country's main short-format cricket competition. [7] The merchant bank Raine Group will run the valuations, and Melbourne Renegades, already separated from Cricket Victoria, will be sold outright, possibly by the end of the year. [8] Cricket Australia had hoped to raise up to AUS$600m, about $433m, and its chief executive Todd Greenberg now calls it a billion-dollar opportunity. [7] Each state decides for itself whether to sell; New South Wales has been against it. [8]

   Why it matters — England's cricket board sold stakes in The Hundred two years ago and raised more than 500m pounds, and the Indian Premier League is valued at about $20bn. [7] Australia's players' association says no sale should go ahead until a new pay deal reflects the money coming in, and both sides admit they are far apart. [8]

3. 04

   The SEC sets a vote on expelling LSU

   The Southeastern Conference, one of the biggest groups of American university sports teams, told a federal court on Tuesday that its university heads will meet on 10 September to decide whether to throw out Louisiana State University. [9][11] The fight began when a Louisiana judge cleared about 40 former college players who had signed professional contracts to return to college teams, two of them wanted by LSU's coach Lane Kiffin. [9] Expulsion needs 11 of the 16 schools to vote yes. [10] Hours later, LSU dropped the plan and filled its last two roster places with returning players. [10][12]

   Why it matters — The Athletic calls the meeting an extraordinary rebuke of one of the conference's biggest names, and the SEC disclosed it in a public court filing rather than settling privately. [9] With LSU backing down, it is unclear whether Thursday's vote happens at all. [10]

4. 05

   Liverpool sell their shirt front to Turkish Airlines

   Liverpool announced a five-year deal on Tuesday making Turkish Airlines the sponsor whose name sits across the front of the shirt from the 2027-28 season. [13] It will be only the sixth such sponsor in the club's history, after Hitachi, Crown Paints, Candy, Carlsberg and Standard Chartered. [13] The figure is not published, but The Athletic reports it is unlikely to be beaten anywhere in the Premier League, and puts Manchester United's deal with the chipmaker Qualcomm at around 60m pounds a year for comparison. [13]

   Why it matters — Aston Villa's record shirt deal is worth up to 20m pounds a year, and Chelsea started a fourth straight season without a shirt sponsor last month before signing a one-year deal with Circle Internet Group. [13] The same piece of cloth is worth several times more at one English club than at another, and that gap is most of why the same six clubs stay on top.

5. 06

   Baker Mayfield gets $165m after all

   The Tampa Bay Buccaneers agreed a three-year extension with their quarterback Baker Mayfield on Tuesday worth $165m, an average of $55m a season. [15][16] In July Mayfield said he felt disrespected and undervalued, and that he would not restart talks until after the season. [15] The deal ties him with Joe Burrow and Josh Allen as the third-highest-paid quarterback in American football, and makes him the best-paid player in his club's history. [15] He is signed through 2029 and would otherwise have been free to leave next spring. [16][17]

   Why it matters — The same club also gave the defensive tackle Vita Vea a one-year, $30m extension after he asked to be traded, so both of its public standoffs this summer ended with the player getting the raise. [15]

6. 07

   Europe's leagues accuse FIFA over the women's calendar

   European Leagues, which represents 35 men's and eight women's domestic competitions, widened its complaint to the European Commission on Tuesday. It accuses FIFA, football's world governing body, of abusive conduct over the four-year international match calendar for women. [18] The leagues say FIFA uses its power as the rule-writer to protect its own tournaments and their commercial value, and pointed to FIFA's abandoned plan to sell stakes in competitions including the World Cup. [18] FIFA said it had not been formally notified and that the calendar followed research and consultation. [18]

   Why it matters — FIFA decides when countries may call players away from their clubs, and it also sells its own tournaments, which need those same dates. [18] The players' union FIFPRO Europe left the original 2024 complaint after signing a cooperation deal with FIFA in June, so the leagues are now pursuing it alone. [18]

7. 08

   American football clubs are worth three times more

   The average National Football League club is now valued at $9.34bn, three times the figure Sportico first calculated in 2020, and all 32 clubs are among the 40 most valuable sports teams in the world. [19] The Khosla family bought the Seattle Seahawks last month for $9.612bn, 48 times what Paul Allen paid in 1997. [19] Each club received more than $450m last year from league-wide deals, mostly from $125bn of media contracts. [19]

   Why it matters — Scarcity is doing as much work as the money. Only four NFL clubs have changed hands in ten years, against 13 in basketball, and the average owner has held on for 42 years, so each rare sale sets the price for everyone. [19]

8. 09

   Tennis Australia floats shorter Grand Slam matches

   Andrew Abdo, who became chief executive of Tennis Australia last month, said at a conference on Monday that the four Grand Slam tournaments may have to shorten matches to hold a younger audience. [20] He suggested not playing best-of-five sets all the way through, and possibly changing how points are scored. [20] He said purists would object, but that sports which do not modernise get left behind. [20] Baseball added a pitch clock in 2023 and cut about 30 minutes from the average game. [20]

   Why it matters — At this year's US Open a match between Venus Williams and Sofia Kenin started at 12.13am and finished after 2am, the latest start in the tournament's history. [20] Wimbledon avoids that with an 11pm curfew; the American and Australian tournaments sell night sessions instead. [20]

9. 10

   Clubs keep buying wingers who cannot score

   ESPN's analysis argues English clubs are still paying top prices for wide players who beat a defender and then cross the ball. [21] Crosses are turned into goals somewhere between 1% and 3% of the time, while an average shot is scored about 10% of the time. [21] That is the change Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo made to the position: the same speed and skill, aimed at the goal instead of at a teammate. [21] With Mohamed Salah gone from England, the piece finds clubs drifting back to the older, weaker version. [21]

   Why it matters — A transfer fee is set by what scouts and fans can see, and what everyone watches is the winger beating his marker. [21] The numbers say the part after that, the cross, is the part that almost never leads to a goal. [21]

10. 11

    Cherry juice is the Premier League's new supplement

    Most top English clubs now give players tart cherry juice, which is what Liverpool's Florian Wirtz was drinking after a match. [22] Researchers at Northumbria University found in 2010 that Montmorency cherries are rich in compounds called anthocyanins, which blunt the muscle damage caused by hard exercise. [22] In their trial, 20 marathon runners were split into two groups and recovered at measurably different rates. [22] The rule of thumb is to drink it during competition and avoid it in training, because the soreness it dulls is also the signal that tells muscles to grow. [22]

    Why it matters — Cycling teams have used it for years, and the Great Britain Olympic team and the New Zealand rugby side are among the adopters. [22] It is one of the cheapest edges available in a sport where the other ones cost 100m pounds.

11. 12

    New Orleans clear salary to sign a scorer

    The New Orleans Pelicans traded the guard Jordan Hawkins to the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday in a four-player deal that brought back AJ Johnson and the 41-year-old Taj Gibson. [23][24] The move saves New Orleans $5.7m in salary and frees the room to sign Bennedict Mathurin to a two-year, $16m contract. [23] Hawkins, picked 14th in the 2023 draft, played only 13.6 minutes a game last season in a crowded backcourt. [23] Memphis collected draft picks and now has more guaranteed contracts than the 15 roster places allowed. [23]

    Why it matters — Basketball's spending rules mean a club often has to move a salary out before it can pay one in, so a trade like this is a bookkeeping step before a signing, not a judgement on either player. [23]

12. 13

    Denver could not sell the player everyone expected

    The Denver Nuggets spent the summer trying to trade Cameron Johnson, a 30-year-old shooter on an expiring $23.1m contract, and gave up. [25] Rival clubs could read Denver's salary sheet and knew it wanted to get under the second apron, a spending line in the NBA's rules that brings heavy penalties. [25] So they asked Denver to add draft picks to any deal for Johnson. [25] Denver refused and kept him, sending Peyton Watson to Cleveland instead for a future first-round and a second-round pick. [25]

    Why it matters — Every club's payroll is public, so rivals can see exactly how badly a team needs to shed a contract. [25] That visibility is what turned a routine trade into a demand for compensation. [25]

13. 14

    Ben Simmons signs a one-year deal in Sacramento

    The Sacramento Kings signed Ben Simmons on a one-year, $3.5m contract. [26] Simmons was the first pick of the 2016 draft and a three-time All-Star, but has not been one for more than five years and did not play at all last season. [26] Sacramento is his fourth club. [26] The Athletic's writer argues he should not also be asked to mentor the club's 19-year-old rookie point guard Darius Acuff Jr, because a player trying to win back a rotation place does not need that job on top. [26]

    Why it matters — A near-minimum contract for a former first pick is the cheapest bet in basketball: if it works the club has found a starter, and if it does not, the cost is one rotation place for one season. [26]

14. 15

    The Ballon d'Or leaves Paris for London

    The Ballon d'Or, football's best-known individual award, will be presented on 26 October at the London Palladium instead of in Paris, where the French magazine France Football has staged it for most of its 70 years. [27] Organisers said the move marks the anniversary and honours Stanley Matthews, the England forward who won the very first award at the age of 41. [27] A jury of 100 journalists picks the winner from a 30-player shortlist that this year includes Jude Bellingham and the 19-year-old Barcelona defender Pau Cubarsi. [27]

    Why it matters — The prize belongs to a magazine, not to football's governing bodies, and the sport treats it as the game's official individual honour anyway. [27] That is why the choice of city is news at all.

15. 16

    Haaland scores twice as the Champions League restarts

    The Champions League, Europe's main club competition, restarted on Tuesday. [29] Erling Haaland scored both goals in Manchester City's 2-0 win at FC Porto, taking him to 167 goals for the club and level with Sergio Aguero as City's leading scorer in the competition on 36. [28] His 59 Champions League goals in total move him past Thomas Muller into seventh on the all-time list. [28] Aston Villa led 3-1 at Club Brugge at half-time, two of the goals coming from errors by the goalkeeper Yann Sommer. [29]

    Why it matters — Haaland has five goals in City's first five games of the season, and ESPN's report argues the club has no second answer ready if those goals stop under its new manager Enzo Maresca. [28]

16. 17

    An ice hockey club puts 85 games on free TV

    The Nashville Predators said their games will be shown by Scripps Sports in seven more television markets this season, the first year of a multi-year rights deal. [30] Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Jackson in Tennessee, Louisville and Lexington in Kentucky, and Huntsville in Alabama were added. [30] Scripps will carry 85 games in all, 81 regular-season and four pre-season. [30]

    Why it matters — The club picked free over-the-air stations owned by Gray Media and Scripps rather than a paid sports channel, so anyone in those seven cities with an aerial can watch. [30] The trade is a smaller fee for a much larger audience.

17. 18

    A Peruvian club sold its shirt in 1,000 squares

    Deportivo Municipal, a four-time Peruvian champion that has fallen down the country's divisions, lost its main shirt sponsor and could not find a replacement. [31] Instead of one company it found a thousand: the club redesigned the shirt as a grid of 1,000 small black-and-white squares and sold them one by one to local businesses and supporters at $60 each. [31] All 1,000 sold, raising about $75,000. [31] A former head of sponsorship at Coca-Cola and Visa told The Athletic the buyers get almost no visibility from it. [31]

    Why it matters — Second-division women's clubs face the same problem: a shirt front is only worth money if enough people see it, and below a certain level nobody is buying. [31]

18. 19

    Ten new women's leagues since 2024

    Ten new professional women's leagues have launched in the United States since 2024, in ice hockey, softball, volleyball, basketball, lacrosse and rugby, with a flag football league backed by the National Football League due next year. [32] Women's professional baseball returned in August after about 70 years, with a four-team league whose opening day was played in Springfield, Illinois. [32] The New York Times reports money flowing into the start-ups and television audiences following it. [32]

    Why it matters — All ten are chasing the same fans, sponsors and television slots. [32] The test is not how many launch but how many are still playing in five years.

19. 20

    The search for the WNBA's next boss starts this month

    The process of picking a new commissioner for the WNBA, the top women's basketball league in the United States, begins later this month, according to memos the NBA commissioner Adam Silver sent to league stakeholders. [33] Cathy Engelbert announced on Friday that she will leave at the end of the year, after seven and a half years, and her contract expires then. [33][34] Her position had been weakened since last autumn, when the Minnesota Lynx player Napheesa Collier publicly criticised her leadership. [33]

    Why it matters — The NBA holds a large ownership stake in the WNBA, so the men's league is running the search for the women's league's next boss. [34]

20. 21

    Three penalties will now cost a player a game

    The National Football League and the players' union agreed in the final week of pre-season that any player who commits three offences from a listed set of safety penalties will be suspended for one game. [35] Every player starts this season with a clean slate, but violations carry forward into later seasons, and a player who commits only one gets half his fine back at the end of the year. [35] Four other rule changes approved in March also take effect. [35]

    Why it matters — Fines alone did not deter the players who could afford them. The Pittsburgh Steelers receiver DK Metcalf, fined more than $59,000 across two seasons, told The Athletic the money goes to charity so he does not mind, and that he will not conform to a soft league. [43]

21. 22

    American football pay is climbing with the cap

    Player contracts in American football jumped again this year. Patrick Mahomes is on $64m a season, the edge rusher Will Anderson Jr on $50m, and five defensive tackles have signed deals worth at least $30m a year since June. [36] The salary cap, the total each club may spend on players, has risen 44.7% in four years, from $208.2m in 2022 to $301.2m now. [36] The four-year rise before that was 17.4%. [36]

    Why it matters — Some clubs privately complain about the cost of building a team around one huge contract, but the cap is rising because league income is, so the deals are tracking the money rather than running ahead of it. [36]

22. 23

    Dallas rewrote three contracts to free trade money

    The Dallas Cowboys converted the base salaries of three players, Clark, Bland and Ferguson, into signing bonuses. [38] That lowers this season's salary-cap charge and pushes the cost into later years: Clark's 2027 cap number rises by $1.5m, Bland's by $2.15m and Ferguson's by $1.2m across the rest of their deals. [38] On Tuesday the club's owner Jerry Jones said Dallas has serious room to make a trade, and that any move would be to strengthen the defence. [37] The trade deadline is 10 November. [37]

    Why it matters — Restructuring does not create money. It borrows it from future seasons, which is how a club already at the spending limit can still buy a player in October. [38]

23. 24

    A video board that moved the goalposts

    Ryan Paganetti, a former analytics staffer at the Philadelphia Eagles, posted evidence that the New England Patriots used their own stadium's video board against visiting kickers. [39] When an opposing kicker lined up at Gillette Stadium, the board showed a reversed view of the kick, putting a second, off-centre set of yellow posts behind the real ones. [39] The stadium opened in 2002 but the screens only went in during 2010, and Bill Belichick's time as head coach ended in 2023. [39] The Athletic's writer could find no rule against it. [39]

    Why it matters — It cost nothing and broke no rule, and it worked on the one moment in American football where a player has to line himself up by eye. [39]

24. 25

    One owner's teams played on 311 days

    Stan Kroenke's agreement to buy the Los Angeles Angels baseball club for $4bn would make him the first person to control teams in all five major American men's leagues at once. [40] Sportico values his clubs, which include the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rapids and Arsenal's men's and women's sides, at more than $28bn. [40] Had he owned the Angels from January, his teams would have played on at least 311 of the 365 days of 2026: 508 games, with one run of 34 days in a row. [40]

    Why it matters — Seasons in different sports barely overlap, so owning across five leagues is a way of owning the year rather than a sport. [40] Only one day in April this year had no Kroenke team playing. [40]

25. 26

    Newcastle's start is ahead of their numbers

    Newcastle United are unbeaten in four games and have five points from three Premier League matches, but the numbers underneath are unusual. [41] No side let opponents have more shots in the season's first two rounds than Newcastle's 44, and Bournemouth added 17 more. [41] Newcastle have had four shots on target in their last two games and scored with all four. [41] They are running well ahead of their expected goals, a measure of how good the chances they create actually are. [41]

    Why it matters — The club spent the summer signing only players aged 24 and under, and the head coach Jaissle has asked for patience. [41] Three matches is a small sample, and The Athletic's piece says Newcastle are winning points their shooting numbers do not yet support. [41]

26. 27

    A tank top upstages the US Open

    Carlos Alcaraz, the defending men's champion at the US Open, played his first-round match in a brown-and-white tank top made with the rapper Travis Scott's Cactus Jack label and his clothing sponsor Nike. [42] Cut closer to a wrestling singlet than the vests he usually wears, it kept shifting as he played. [42] By the third round he had added a white layer underneath, and joked at a press conference that he had been seeing his own nipple too much lately. [42]

    Why it matters — Clothing sponsors now design one-off outfits for single tournaments, which is why a shirt can get discussed as much as a scoreline. [42]

27. 28

    Liverpool hunt a football boss as owners sell a stake

    Liverpool are looking for a new sporting director, the person who runs recruitment and squad planning, after Richard Hughes left. [14] It is the fourth change in that job since 2022. [14] The club appointed Andoni Iraola as head coach in June, and Michael Edwards then stepped down as the owners' chief executive of football, frustrated by their reluctance to buy other clubs. [14] Fenway Sports Group has meanwhile agreed to sell 38% of Liverpool to a group led by Amit Bhatia that includes Jeff Bezos and Eduardo Saverin. [14]

    Why it matters — The people who choose which players the club buys are changing at the same time as the people who own it, and the incoming investors hold an option to increase their share within a year. [14]