Sports

The NHL trades in a currency the other leagues barely use — the right to say no →

As free agency opens, hockey has 245 no-trade clauses to the other big leagues' handful. Players there swap cash for control — and it costs teams nothing on the cap.

A Wimbledon ticket sold for £293,000 — because it stopped being a ticket →

A pair of Centre Court passes changed hands for £586,000 this week, legal where ordinary touting is banned. The reason is a quiet financial trick — Wimbledon's best seats are sold as bonds, not tickets — and a week of records across women's football, NBA ownership and sports media shows the same money logic spreading through the games people watch.

Two leagues put a price on a new team — and it tells you who really owns the sport →

The NBA expects bids of $7–10bn for a Las Vegas seat; the NHL agreed $3.5bn for Texas. Expansion fees aren't a price for a team's future — they're a payment to existing owners for letting one more club exist.

The NBA built a wall that punishes you with handcuffs, not bills — and a title-winning owner is staring at it →

The "second apron" is a payroll line that doesn't just cost more money — cross it and you lose the tools to fix your team. The Knicks just won a title and their owner says going over would be "suicidal." Plus the PWHL takes its first outside money, a Blazers owner wants the public to pay for his arena, and a betting market buys its way onto the World Cup.

Britain moves to keep the World Cup free — as the rest of sport learns to charge for everything →

The UK is extending a 1996 rule that keeps its biggest sporting moments free-to-air into the streaming age — a deliberate exception to a market that, everywhere else this week, is charging more for less.

A heat break for the players became a $250m ad goldmine — and that's why it will stay →

Mandatory hydration breaks at the World Cup were sold as player welfare. They've also opened up more than $250m in new TV ads in the US alone — and that money, not the heat, is what locks them in.

College sports asks Congress for the one thing the courts took away — permission not to compete →

A bill to shield the NCAA and its conferences from antitrust lawsuits cleared a key Senate vote, while the two richest leagues fight it. Plus the IOC pays athletes for the first time in 130 years, and tennis counts the cost of its own split.

A teenager is "worth" $229 million — and most of these prices are guesses →

At the World Cup, single players are valued above whole rival squads. But those numbers are model estimates of transfers that mostly never happen — and this week's real deals show even the actual fees stay hidden.

Eight footballers over 40 at this World Cup, and the longevity machine behind them →

A record crop of athletes is competing into their forties — built by recovery science, money, and a lot of survivors you never see.

MLB wants to redraw how players turn pro — and pay them less to do it →

Baseball's owners proposed a sweeping overhaul of the amateur draft, including a first-ever international draft and a $200m-a-year cut to signing bonuses, setting up a likely labor fight.

Marseille gets a one-year European ban — but only if it slips again →

UEFA's financial monitor handed Marseille a suspended ban and an $11.5m fine, the latest case of sport governing money through deferred threats rather than bright lines. Plus a €60m defender, stadiums used as leverage, and a $22bn streaming deal built on live sport.

One game in, the World Cup makes no sense — and the data says wait →

Twenty-four matches into a 48-team World Cup, the results defy the form book: favourites stumbling, minnows holding draws, a coach fired off a single loss. The numbers underneath say most of it is noise that will fade.

The WNBA is adding games — and betting demand keeps up →

The league will play 50 games a season from 2027, up from 44, the most in its history. Plus Fox buys Roku for $22bn to own the screen sport plays on, and UEFA threatens Marseille with a European ban.

Why a losing baseball team gets bolder as the trade deadline nears →

With MLB's August 3 deadline six weeks out, the standings are forcing teams to pick a side — sell, buy, or hold — and a team's record, not its talent, decides which.

The Packers are fighting to keep TV from becoming a free market →

A 1961 antitrust exemption lets 32 rival NFL teams sell their TV rights as one bundle and split the cash evenly. The DOJ and Congress are now poking at it — and the smallest team is the one most afraid.

The bet that turns a player against his own team →

A US regulator is moving to ban wagers on player injuries and tiny in-game moments — the exact bets that pay a player more for failing than for winning.

Baseball's veteran hitters are having the worst seasons of any 30-somethings in over a century →

Players aged 31 to 35 are hitting worse than at any time since 1898 — not because they aged faster, but because data-driven pitching has quietly defeated the one edge experience used to buy. The result is a whole age band of stars looking finished at once.

College sports just took its first private-equity check — and Utah is the test case →

Utah became the first US athletic department to sell a stake in its commercial future to private equity. The deal shows how cash-hungry teams trade tomorrow's revenue for money today — and why the bill comes due when investor returns and college values pull apart.

The Chiefs gave Mahomes a half-billion dollars — and locked themselves in →

Patrick Mahomes became the NFL's first $500m player this week. The deal's real story isn't the number — it's how the guarantees make him almost impossible for Kansas City to ever release.

The favorite who had to beat the pressure first →

Mirra Andreeva won her first Grand Slam at Roland Garros not by out-hitting a 500-1 qualifier, but by handling the weight of being expected to win — the load that grows heavier the more talent you carry. Plus Serena's one-match comeback and a wave of managers sacked.

Everton must pay a relegated rival £35m — for a rule it broke four years ago →

A tribunal ruled Everton's overspending in 2021/22 helped relegate Burnley, and ordered Everton to pay the harmed club directly. Plus Real Madrid's record bid and the World Cup's automated offside.

The weekend the favourites lost →

Duplantis dropped his first competition in three years, an Olympic 800m champion ran a personal best and still lost, and the French Open crowned two first-time winners after the top seeds fell early. A clustered run of upsets — and a reminder of how thin the gap at the top really is.

The referee who was supposed to be neutral couldn't get into the country →

One of Africa's best referees was turned away at the US border days before the World Cup. The story of who gets to officiate is also the story of who gets to decide what's fair.

Baseball's owners want a salary cap. It could cost them a whole season. →

MLB's owners proposed the sport's first salary cap; the union says it cuts player pay by over half a billion dollars, and the commissioner admits he fears a 1994-style strike. The same money machinery runs under the NFL's date in Congress, the NBA's Clippers probe, and a $176,000 Knicks ticket.

The week sport fought over who controls the money →

A baseball salary-cap showdown, an NFL streaming hearing in Congress, and a college-sports bill all turned on one question — when can a league limit competition? Here's the machine behind the headlines.

The biggest World Cup ever, and the money machine behind it →

The 2026 World Cup expanded to 48 teams for a reason — more teams means more matches to sell. That logic, and the fights over who controls the money, run under almost every sports story this week.

College sports started paying its players — now it wants Washington to cap the cost →

A century-old rule kept college athletes unpaid while the games earned billions. A court settlement broke it, money flooded in, and this week the people losing control of the bill asked Congress for a cap. Plus: a quarterback's $90,000 betting case, the NFL dodging Congress over streaming, and who really pays for a stadium.

Women's sport just crossed a money line — and the machine behind it is finally spinning →

A record US TV deal for England's top women's football league, the highest-paid woman footballer in the world, and a rookie's jersey selling for $64,720 are the same story: the money flywheel that built men's sport is, at last, turning for women's. Plus why Congress wants the NFL's TV deals explained, how a trade can quietly cost a player millions in tax, and a $90,000 betting case that shows the cost of the betting boom.

Baseball reaches for a cap, and the value of every team keeps climbing →

MLB owners proposed the salary cap they've chased for 30 years, the union says it's a pay cut in disguise, and Forbes put soccer clubs at $87bn — here's the machinery underneath.