Sports

Real Madrid's record fee, and why football keeps paying more for less-proven talent →

Real Madrid agreed a club-record 135m euros for a 19-year-old, part of a week where clubs at every level broke their own transfer records. The fee is the message.

The transfer window's winners, and why the crown is a warning →

Clubs are being crowned champions of the summer market - but winning the window rarely translates into winning games, as Liverpool's collapse and Eddie Howe's exit both show.

College football's pay cap was meant to end the spending war. It just moved it. →

A year into a $21 million pay cap, top programs are still pouring $40 million and more into their rosters to chase the same few playoff spots. The cap didn't stop the race - it changed where the money flows.

Wisconsin backed the coach it nearly fired, and bet it can't walk away →

Rather than pay a $25M buyout, Wisconsin poured a $25M roster around Luke Fickell - a bet on the money it had already sunk. Across sport this week, the same crossroads keeps appearing: keep paying, or cut losses.

College sports races to fence its athletes in before the money walks out →

The SEC and Big Ten back a bill to cap spending and curb transfers, a judge hands athletes a fifth season, and the Senate stalls - while abroad, TV money and record revenues keep the transfer market roaring.

Baseball's labor peace faces its biggest test in 30 years →

MLB owners want a salary cap for the next labor deal; the players don't. Both sides remember what happened the last time they blew it up. Plus football's money keeps changing hands and college players start to organize.

A record-contract summer, and why sport's bill never stops climbing →

Jalen Carter's $152 million deal headlines a run of record contracts across the NFL, NHL and college sport - and the reason the numbers keep rising has little to do with the players getting better.

The richest clubs got richer, and the gap in football stopped pretending to close →

English clubs outspent the rest of Europe combined this summer while Real Madrid banked record revenue without a trophy - the money is pooling at the top, and the pooling is the story.

FIFA moves to sell a fifth of the World Cup, and Europe threatens to walk →

FIFA wants to raise about 4.2 billion dollars by selling a stake in the World Cup's commercial arm to private investors led by a Kushner fund. UEFA is furious. It caps a summer in which outside money is buying claims on the game everywhere.

LeBron takes the minimum, and the NBA's pay machine snaps into view →

The highest career earner in basketball history just signed for less than 300 other players, and the same kind of rules that made that happen are reshaping club sport on both sides of the Atlantic.

The WNBA got rich, and the fight over the money got louder →

A boom league feuds with its own players over the split, football's late transfer cheques keep clearing, new billionaires buy in, and the World Cup's bill lands in the broadcasters' favour.

Why the world's richest clubs are suddenly paying up for "oven-ready" players →

Record British transfer fees this summer hide a quieter shift - clubs are paying a premium for proven players because the old edge in cheap, unproven talent has been competed away. Plus new billionaire money, the MLB deadline, and a fracturing TV map.

Rugby's concussion reckoning asks the question sport keeps dodging — whose job was it to protect the players? →

A landmark brain-injury case hits a decisive week as 1,094 former rugby players sue the game's governing bodies. It sits alongside a run of stories — a soccer academy abuse inquiry, a FIFA betting-integrity clash — all circling the same gap: a duty everyone shared and no one owned.

The World Cup's prize ladder shows why one goal was worth $17m →

Spain won the 2026 World Cup and $50m; Argentina lost by a goal and got $33m. FIFA pays by rank, and the gaps get steepest at the top — which is exactly why nations spend so hard to climb one more rung.

MLB's trade deadline nears, and a wide-open race is scrambling who buys and who sells →

With the August 3 deadline two weeks out, most teams still think they can win — so the market for stars is thin and strange. Behind it, both baseball and basketball are fighting over how to cap what teams can spend.

Liverpool's owners want to sell a slice — at a price valuing the whole club above $6bn →

FSG is in talks to sell a minority stake in Liverpool that would value the club at more than $6bn, part of a summer where a new record valuation lands every few weeks — from the Padres to a new NBA franchise to English cricket selling equity in its teams.

Chelsea's record £117m signing caps a transfer summer where the World Cup set the prices →

A month of football in the United States turned into a bidding frenzy, with Chelsea paying a club-record £117m for Morgan Rogers and clubs across Europe breaking their own records for players who shone at the tournament.

Prediction markets are eating sports betting from outside the rulebook →

Licensed sportsbooks spent a decade buying their way inside the law. Now a rival that calls itself a financial exchange is selling the same wager through a different door — and the debt market has started charging the old industry more.

MLB banned AI from the dugout — because the line between preparing and cheating had started to blur →

Baseball quietly outlawed teams from using artificial intelligence to help make live in-game calls. No one was punished. The league acted because a tool had made an old, unwritten line stop meaning what it used to.

The World Cup's video referee was built to end bad calls — instead it started a fight over who the rules are for →

FIFA changed refereeing rules mid-tournament, UEFA refused to copy them, and one country banned video review outright. Plus: the NFL suspends its own executive for betting while Britain moves against gambling sponsors, and Netflix airs its first Home Run Derby.

Manchester United paid Chelsea £48m for Andrey Santos — and selling him was near-pure profit →

Chelsea keeps turning cheaply-bought youngsters into accounting gold, because the way a transfer sits on the books decides which player it makes sense to sell.

The NBA's best young star took a discount — and the rules are why →

Why Victor Wembanyama and other young stars are signing for less than they could demand — plus a record NFL sale, Netflix's grab for baseball, and a UK move against gambling sponsors.

A clearinghouse rejected $90 million in college sports deals — for looking like pay in disguise →

A new body that vets endorsement money for college athletes has blocked roughly $90m, judging the deals worth less than they were priced. Plus a record NFL sale, a UK gambling crackdown, and Wall Street betting on sportsbooks.

Premier League losses jumped over 600% — because no club can afford to stop spending →

A new finance report shows the world's richest league is bleeding money at record levels — and the rules built to enforce discipline are pushing clubs to sell their best young players just to stay legal.

The World Cup broke US TV records — and set off a bidding war worth up to $2 billion →

A home World Cup is pulling the biggest football audiences American television has ever seen, and the fight for the next tournaments' rights could reach $2 billion. Plus: the Seahawks sell for a record $9.6bn, the Premier League loses £948m on record income, and a clearinghouse starts vetoing college paydays.

Norway built a World Cup team by keeping score away from its kids →

A country of 5.5 million reached the World Cup quarter-finals with a youth system that bans league tables and trophies for young children — while the United States, 60 times larger, went out early again.

A billionaire bought a soccer team and says an index fund would have paid more →

Peter Mallouk paid a record $700m for Sporting Kansas City, then said sports teams are worse investments than stocks. The numbers back him up — and explain why franchises still sell for billions.

A player earning $950,000 just became hockey's highest-paid — because one rival team finally bid →

The NHL's Leo Carlsson was locked to the Ducks on an entry-level deal worth under a million a year. Then Philadelphia made an offer, and his real price surfaced overnight: $18 million a season. It's the clearest look this year at what a young athlete is worth when only one team is allowed to buy.

A 24-year-old's brain showed a disease no scan can catch — and the game that caused it looks clean →

A Cowboys lineman who died at 24 was found to have CTE, a brain disease only diagnosable after death — while the sport's visible safety systems, from helmets to concussion protocols, keep working exactly as designed.

The Celtics traded a Finals MVP to escape a rule — and the rule is why he cost too much to keep →

Boston shipped Jaylen Brown to Philadelphia mostly to dodge the NBA's spending 'aprons', a penalty line that costs teams draft picks and roster tools, not just money. It bit harder this year because the salary cap grew far less than teams expected — local TV money is drying up even as national deals boom.

FIFA erased one red card at the World Cup — and left every other verdict looking negotiable →

FIFA reversed Folarin Balogun's suspension after a reported call from President Trump, the only one of 13 sending-offs not to carry a ban — and UEFA says the sport's rule-maker "crossed a red line.

Tennis wants to cut doubles in half — and the reason is a share of money, not a lack of fans →

The men's ATP Tour has proposed halving doubles draws from 2028 and cutting doubles' slice of prize money from 20% to 10%, moving the rest to singles. Doubles players call it a plan to end their profession.

Spurs spent £237m and Man City paid a British record — the trick is how the fee lands on the books →

A record-shattering transfer summer is really a lesson in amortisation: the accounting move that lets clubs spend huge and still pass the spending rules.

A lacrosse league just raised $100m like a tech startup — and that's the real story in sport this week →

The Premier Lacrosse League closed a $100m funding round led by a private-equity firm and a billionaire, while football clubs broke transfer records and the NBA found its salary cap floating on a shrinking revenue stream. Different sports, one thread: outside money is pouring in, and it comes with an appetite it needs fed.

An MVP-level player is being valued as "seventh best" — because a number can't see what it can't count →

A Boston Celtics forward who finished sixth in MVP voting is being talked down in trade talks by analytics that rate him far lower. The fight is really about a deeper question every sport now faces — what happens when the measure and the thing it measures disagree.

Betting became sport's business partner — just as it corrupted the games →

Prediction markets hit $24 billion a month and FIFA signed one as a World Cup partner, while NBA players were charged with rigging bets and a quarterback was banned from two leagues.