Sports, in brief

A Premier League subscription costs £3.52 a month in Turkey, £9.59 in the United States and more than £51 in England, where the league is played. [1]

Iceland pays the most at £87.77 a month. Romania pays £5.12 and Bulgaria £6.84 for the same fixtures. [1]

The English price also buys fewer games. A Saturday-afternoon blackout, meant to protect crowds at grounds, leaves 267 of the 380 matches on television. [2]

American viewers get all 380, spread across Peacock, NBC, NBCSN and USA Network. [2]

Measured against earnings the gap narrows but holds. A UK year costs 1.71% of average income; Turkey's costs 0.44%. [1]

The league signed 84 separate country deals for the 2025-28 period. One product, dozens of prices. [1]

Those prices only hold apart while the cheap feed cannot travel. The EFL and Scottish league are weighing legal action over matches shown in Russia. [7]

Sky has agreed to buy ITV's channels and streaming service for up to £1.6bn. Regulators must clear it, and completion is not expected before late 2027. [3]

Analysts say Sky would use ITV as a shop window. Put half the matches on free television, one warns, and people simply unsubscribe. [3]

Sky spends about £2bn a year on sports rights and ITV about £200m. Combined they would hold roughly a fifth of UK in-home viewing. [3]

The same fence divides rooms, not just countries. DAZN bought EverPass, the exclusive seller of NFL Sunday Ticket to bars and restaurants. [4]

ESPN splits its own service in two: $31.99 a month for everything, $13.99 for a cut-down version. [6]

American football is sliced finer still, with a Thanksgiving Eve game on Netflix and international matches on ESPN's newly bought NFL Network. [8]

Even the warm-ups are divided. Clubs sell their own preseason rights locally, and last year's national broadcasts averaged 2.2 million viewers. [10]

Leagues that need finding go the other way. The NWSL put eight Sunday matches on the free Roku Sports Channel, rising to 25 next season. [5]

The NHL is weighing a 33rd club in Houston or Austin, chosen partly for the size of the television market, before its next rights sale. [9]

Why it matters. Watch how many live matches Sky moves onto ITV once regulators rule; the number it picks is the clearest reading of how much its subscriptions rest on scarcity. [3]

Owners voted unanimously to approve the sale of the Seattle Seahawks to Vinod and Neeru Khosla at $9.612bn, an NFL record. [11][12][13]

Why it matters. Khosla must now sell his small stake in the rival San Francisco 49ers; no owner may hold two sides of the same league. [11]

TWG Global said the Los Angeles Dodgers and its Cadillac Formula One team are not for sale, and that there has been no fraud. [14][15]

Why it matters. Mark Walter faces two federal investigations over loans made by insurance companies he controls, and has already sold the Lakers at $12.5bn. [14][16]

Commissioner Rob Manfred said the sides meet weekly and that the league intends to play in 2027. A lockout is widely expected. [17]

Why it matters. Owners want a salary cap and say clubs lose money; how those losses are counted is itself the argument. [18][19]

Ohio State and Oregon each spend north of $40m on football players. Maryland spends just over $20m. The formal cap is $21.3m a school. [20]

Why it matters. Universities are opening nonprofits, such as Louisville's Cardinal Ventures, to raise money the cap does not reach. [21]

Aston Villa have taken 293.1m euros in fees this summer, Manchester City 278.6m and Newcastle 275.5m, nearing Monaco's 360m single-window record. [22]

Why it matters. Chelsea lead the spending at $476m [23], and Big Six purchases from other English clubs have reached £1.2bn in 14 months. [24]

The women's basketball league closed an oversubscribed funding round at a $650m valuation, up from $340m a year earlier. [25][26]

Why it matters. Players are its largest shareholder group, with a holding the league puts near $200m: pay in ownership rather than wages. [25]

Hillsborough County would put in $796m and the city of Tampa $80m toward a new Rays stadium, with the club carrying the rest and any overruns. [27]

Why it matters. Kansas City's council separately committed $600m to a downtown Royals ballpark last week. [28]

Three violations in any one of five flagged techniques now bring a one-game suspension, and the count carries across seasons. [29]

Why it matters. The headline one, the hip-drop tackle, has drawn three on-field flags in two years; the punishment arrives later, on review. [29]

LIV told employees their jobs finish in the first week of September as the Public Investment Fund's backing concludes. [30]

Why it matters. Its chief executive has not ruled out bankruptcy, and the league already faces two suits from unpaid suppliers. [30]