Sports

Rugby's biggest rivalry moved to Baltimore, where the two unions bank about $9m more than at home →

South Africa and New Zealand are playing the last match of their series in an American football stadium, and splitting the takings 50-50. World Rugby's chief executive says the same money now makes a Six Nations match in the United States possible.

Madrid spent 150m euros on a Formula One track by its airport. Its first race comes as drivers say the new rules make them lift off on purpose. →

A city-owned exhibition company built a grand prix circuit next to Madrid's airport and signed Formula One for ten years. The cars arriving on it run on engines that are half electric, and the drivers say saving battery now decides the lap.

American football opened its season on a Wednesday night. A game in Melbourne had taken the Thursday. →

The NFL moved its opening game off its usual night so a match played in Australia could be shown on Thursday evening in the United States. Across the day, from a tennis quarter-final that ended at 3:33 in the morning to a women's hockey league taking a free channel, the choices were made for people watching on screens.

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

LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 protection in a New Jersey court on Tuesday. Jon Rahm is owed $7.4m, Bryson DeChambeau $5.7m, and the Saudi fund that stopped paying for the league in April is lending it $49.6m to get through the process.

Two in three college quarterbacks came from another school. Almost nobody starts an 18-year-old now. →

About 65% of the quarterbacks starting this season in American college football's top division transferred in from somewhere else. Five years after the NCAA let transfers play immediately, schools buy a proven starter instead of coaching a new one - and the first start has moved down to schools nobody was watching.

American football's owners kept their commissioner to 2031. More than 95% of his pay hangs on numbers they choose. →

Roger Goodell's fifth extension runs four months past the end of the players' labour deal, so he will negotiate the next one. The clubs he runs are worth ten times what they were in 2006, and most of that came from buyers paying more per dollar of income.

One game between ranked teams opened American college football's season. The big ones were saved for later weekends. →

The opening weekend of the American college season carried a single match between two ranked teams, against three top-10 matchups a year ago. The marquee games did not disappear - they moved to weeks two and three, and the two conferences that control the play-offs are now bargaining over the schedule itself.

A judge told the conference it cannot punish LSU. The conference sued its own member, and Clemson found a third rulebook. →

Three sets of rules now cover the same football match in Baton Rouge, and each one names a different body as the one that decides who plays.

A podcast started the investigation. Five years on, the NBA used every punishment it had. →

The NBA fined the Los Angeles Clippers $30m, took five draft picks and suspended their owner for hiding money paid to Kawhi Leonard. Every penalty was the largest the rulebook allows, and it was a podcast, not the league, that turned the scheme up.

Premier League clubs spent a record 3.5bn pounds on players. Nearly half of it went to each other. →

England's top football league closed its transfer window at 3.528bn pounds, and 1.627bn of that was one Premier League club buying from another. English clubs are now so much richer than the rest of Europe that they are often the only buyers available - so the prices are set by comparing each deal to the last one inside the same twenty clubs.

Duke will put an advert on a floor that has never carried one. That is where the money for players is coming from. →

A new US rule lets college teams sell logo space on their shirts, and the schools are selling everything else too. Duke's basketball court has been unbranded since 1940. It is being sold now because colleges must find $21.3m a year to pay their own players.

American football's 32 clubs all cut to 53 players at the same minute. Nobody could see anyone else's list. →

The NFL's squad deadline fell at 6pm New York time on Sunday. Close to 1,200 players were released across the league in one afternoon. The list of who was available only became public the next morning.

Seven college teams now spend over $40m on players. A coach who cannot afford that rebuilt his defence instead. →

College football's season opens with the richest squads it has ever had and a spending cap almost nobody obeys. The clearest sign of what that money does is not a signing. It is an Illinois coach who could not pay for big defensive linemen, so he changed the whole shape of his defence.

Seven baseball clubs signed with prediction markets this month. On Friday a court said states can treat them as bets. →

Two federal appeals courts have now read the same law opposite ways, so the same product is a financial contract in one part of the country and gambling in another. Nobody waited for the answer.

The players own 30% of a $650m league. They were handed that share when it was worth nothing. →

Unrivaled doubled its valuation to $650m in a year, and the players hold about a third of it. They got that share in 2023, when a share of the league was worth nothing.

Turkey pays £3.52 a month for the Premier League. England pays £51 and cannot watch every match. →

The same 380 games are sold at dozens of different prices around the world, and this week the fences that hold those prices apart moved in three places at once.

Seven days left in the transfer window, and every seller knows which buyers cannot wait →

The Premier League's window shuts on 1 September under a new rule that ties spending to income - so the clubs that most need to buy have to sell first, in front of everyone.

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

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.

Cable reached 88% of Pacers country in 2010 and 30% now. Sport's old package is being sold off in slices. →

The local cable channels that carried teams are winding down, so the NBA is building a streaming home of its own that is reported to cost over a billion dollars. Meanwhile the Rugby League World Cup leaves free British television, and the same 380 Premier League matches cost 3.52 pounds a month in Turkey and 87.77 in Iceland.

Every NFL club cuts 37 players on 30 August, on evidence from games nobody wins →

The preseason exists to gather information about players nobody knows yet. It costs real injuries, it ends on 30 August, and the Premier League is meanwhile paying 785 million pounds to skip it entirely.

Seattle just paid a record for a cornerback with two interceptions in three seasons →

The Seahawks made Devon Witherspoon the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history. A record ten first-round picks have signed new deals in 2026, because a bargained rule bars clubs from knowing sooner and rising prices punish waiting.

Sport learned how to keep old bodies going. It never learned when to stop paying for them. →

A record dozen NFL linemen aged 35 or over started a game last season, and Aaron Donald is weighing a comeback at 35. Meanwhile the year's most criticised contracts belong almost entirely to players on the far side of their peak.

Sport set another ownership record this week. In twelve days it starts cutting players. →

The Lakers sold for a record 12.5 billion dollars and Liverpool for 5.5 billion pounds, while hundreds of professional players wait to be released for nothing.

A judge, a city council and a bank all moved against sport's newest betting markets in one week →

Prediction markets turned every game into a live price. Now Washington state, New York City, a data firm and JPMorgan are all pushing back at once.

The new season starts with home advantage taken apart →

English football opens under laws that narrow what a referee decides alone, while a Spanish club hosts its opener at a rival's ground and Buffalo moves into a 2.2bn-dollar stadium built to keep the cold in. In the background, the Lakers sold for a record 12.5bn dollars and Liverpool's owners sold 30% to a Bezos-backed group.

Premier League clubs are buying 18-year-olds out of smaller academies at a record rate →

Fourteen teenagers have moved from EFL and Scottish academies into Premier League development squads this summer, matching all of last season. Eleven are 18. Nine went for nothing.

Second-tier football's record spending, and why the promotion prize makes clubs gamble →

England's Championship set a record 903 million pound wage bill chasing promotion to the Premier League - a prize so steep it pulls clubs into reckless bets, the same pattern of rank-based rewards driving record team sales worldwide.

The Premier League's favourite lesson is written only by the clubs that survived it →

As the new season opens, every mid-table owner wants to copy the "smart club" model. But the blueprint is reverse-engineered from the winners, and the clubs that ran the same playbook into relegation left no case study to warn anyone.

Relegated, then promoted - Ipswich tear up the safe plan and bet on a global gamble →

Facing near-certain relegation again, Ipswich abandoned the recruitment model that failed and spent 106.6m pounds on a bolder, riskier global squad. Across football and baseball this week, teams staring at a probable loss are reaching for the long shot.

MLB reads August streaks as destiny. The long season says slow down. →

Salah's move to Turkey, and why a few stars capture most of the money →

Mohamed Salah left Liverpool for Trabzonspor, the fourth-biggest club in Turkey, following Messi and Ronaldo into the tiny club of players who can cash in anywhere.

Baseball keeps spending more to win a trophy that stays exactly as rare →

The Dodgers added the game's best pitcher and stretched an already-record bill, and rivals are raising their own spending to keep pace - but only one team wins the World Series each year, and a lockout fight over a salary cap is really a fight over whether to call off the race.

A record nine Premier League clubs begin the season under a new manager →

Almost half the top flight has changed its boss, Uruguay handed its team to a playing legend, and the NFL reshuffled its sidelines - a season of first-time bosses stepping up.

Philadelphia stacked four scorers on one team. Now someone has to shoot less. →

The 76ers built a superteam around LeBron James, Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown - four players who each averaged 25-plus points. There is only one ball, so the math of stacking stars runs into the reality that a team is not the sum of its best nights.