Sports, in brief

Duke University will put a corporate logo on the floor of Cameron Indoor Stadium, its basketball arena, for the first time since the building opened in 1940. [1]

The sponsor is Edward Jones, a US wealth-management firm. Its logos will sit on both sides of halfway, beside the two emblems honouring former coach Mike Krzyzewski. [1]

Edward Jones is paying a reported $34m over four years across Duke, the University of North Carolina and the University of Oregon. The deals were arranged by Learfield, a firm that sells sponsorship on behalf of college teams. [1]

Duke's athletics director, Nina King, said the school had worked hard at not overcommercialising its buildings and did not do this lightly. She also said Duke is open to a shirt sponsor and is always looking at its available inventory. [1]

The reason is a bill that did not exist two years ago. A US court settlement in the House v NCAA case ended the ban on colleges paying their players, and lets each school pay up to $21.3m directly in 2026-27. [1]

So the surfaces are going on sale. The NCAA, which writes the rules for US college sport, approved corporate logo patches on team shirts in January, and the rule went live on 1 August. [2]

Each shirt may carry two commercial logos, four inches at most, plus one more on equipment. [2]

Ohio State's patch deal with the bank JPMorgan Chase reportedly pays it close to $17m a year. Notre Dame's with the digital bank SoFi is reported at $18m to $20m a year for six years. [1]

The University of Missouri became the fifth school in the Southeastern Conference to sign a patch, joining Arkansas, LSU, Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Its sponsorship income has grown more than 130% in under three years. [3]

The University of California, Berkeley sold a patch reportedly worth $16m that covers all 30 of its varsity teams, plus its stadium field and its basketball floor. [4]

There is a different way to raise the money, and the schools are refusing it. Investment firms RedBird Capital and Weatherford Capital put $12.5m into the Big 12 conference and offered each of its 16 universities a credit line of up to $30m. [5]

Not one school has drawn on it. The interest rate is 10%, which many of them consider too expensive, according to two people the New York Times spoke to. The two firms collect a $1.25m management fee every year for five years regardless. [5]

Why it matters. Watch which surface goes next, rather than how much it fetches. Duke has no shirt sponsor yet and its director says the school is looking at its inventory.

LIV Golf, the golf tour backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, may file for bankruptcy protection as soon as next week, the Financial Times reported. Players owed millions in guaranteed money have reportedly been sent settlement offers worth a few cents on the dollar. [6]

Why it matters. The fund withdrew its support earlier this year, and the league has struggled to sign up enough players for a smaller 2027 version to attract new backers.

Major League Baseball proposed that free-agent signings be allowed only from the Monday of the Winter Meetings to 21 December, then not again until the first Monday in February, and only alongside a salary cap. Spending in 2027 would be capped at $245.3m. [7][8][9]

Why it matters. The current labour agreement expires on 1 December and a lockout is expected if there is no deal. The last time owners pushed a cap, the 1994 World Series was cancelled.

Bruce Meyer, who leads the MLB players' union, said the plan would create an artificial signing window under a cap, cut players' bargaining power and pit them against each other. The league says a cap-and-floor system would speed up the offseason and improve competitive balance. [7][8]

Why it matters. Both sides are arguing about the same fact: a short window means fewer clubs bidding for any one player at any one moment.

Members of the losing group led by Wyc Grousbeck and Aditya Mittal have been invited to join the Khosla family's ownership of the Seattle Seahawks, whose $9.612bn purchase is close to completing. [10]

Why it matters. A team that costs almost ten billion dollars needs more than one wallet, so the people you outbid become the people you call.

David Shuman, founder of the venture-capital firm Lateralus Holdings, agreed to buy a limited stake in the New York Islanders. The size and the price were not disclosed, and the NHL must approve it. [11]

Why it matters. NHL clubs averaged $2.1bn last year, double the 2022 figure, which is why investors with no hockey history keep appearing on the share register.

Kalshi became the exclusive prediction-market partner of the US Open tennis tournament, and the US Tennis Association is blocking every rival platform from advertising inside the grounds or on ESPN's broadcast. [12]

Why it matters. A prediction market is a place where people buy and sell contracts on what will happen. The tournament had not planned a deal this year; talks had been about match-integrity worries and about 2027.

The BBC cancelled the Women's Football Show, its flagship Women's Super League highlights programme, and is planning a YouTube chat show presented by Alex Scott instead. It says it will still broadcast 25 live WSL matches. [13]

Why it matters. The broadcaster is in year two of a five-year rights deal running to 2030, so this is a choice about where highlights live, not about losing the rights.

Nigeria's football federation left Nike for adidas on a deal worth $8.5m a year - $4.5m in cash and $4m in kit. The outgoing Nike contract had paid $500,000 in cash and $1m in kit, unchanged since 2015. [14]

Why it matters. Federation president Ibrahim Gusau said $500,000 in 2015 and $500,000 in 2026 amount to nothing. Eleven-year deals do not adjust for inflation unless somebody writes that in.

Chelsea signed a front-of-shirt sponsorship with Circle, whose USDC token is a stablecoin - a digital coin held at a fixed one-to-one value against the US dollar. The deal runs to the end of the season with an option to extend. [15]

Why it matters. Sources told The Athletic the club had been seeking around £50-60m a year. A one-year term is unusually short for a shirt front, and it keeps the space free to re-sell.

Jamie Vardy's YouTube channel will broadcast Bundesliga matches live in the UK and Ireland this season. Germany's league first sold UK live rights to online creators in 2025, to The Overlap and to That's Football. [16]

Why it matters. The Overlap will not show live games this season. The league is buying discovery rather than money, aiming at people who never open a sports broadcaster's app.

The England and Wales Cricket Board plans to offer more packages to free-to-air broadcasters when its next contracts begin in 2029, including the Hundred and some England white-ball matches, on a non-exclusive basis. ITV is interested. [17]

Why it matters. Comcast, which owns Sky, is buying ITV's broadcasting arm for £1.6bn, so the buyer and the rival may soon be the same company.

The NHL could award a 33rd team to Austin or Houston by the end of the year for a $2bn fee, with Phoenix and Atlanta discussed for a 34th. Houston is the sixth-largest US television market. [18]

Why it matters. The league's media contracts run out after 2027-28. Adding a city adds households before the negotiation, not after it.

The Indiana Pacers' payroll now sits above the NBA's luxury-tax line - a threshold above which a club pays a penalty into a pot shared with the clubs below it. They have not paid it since 2004-05. [19]

Why it matters. They are also hard-capped at the first apron all season, because signing Kelly Oubre for $16.5m over two years used an exception that triggers the cap. [20]

The Seattle Seahawks agreed a three-year, $90m extension with defensive tackle Leonard Williams, $56m of it guaranteed. He was voted the league's best at his position by executives, scouts and coaches. [21][22]

Why it matters. He was in the last year of a $64.5m deal signed in 2024. The new rate resets what a defensive tackle costs everyone else.

Joshua Kushner said his firm would not have got involved had it known what the plan would become. FIFA Forward Enterprise would have sold a minority stake in the company running the World Cup's commercial side. [23][24]

Why it matters. UEFA, European football's governing body, has asked for documents and argues the World Cup was valued at about £15bn without an open auction or an independent valuer.

Monarch Collective, founded by Kara Nortman and Jasmine Robinson in 2023, has invested its $250m in four football clubs across two continents, a WNBA team and a merchandise platform. Its NWSL clubs are Angel City, San Diego Wave and Boston Legacy. [25]

Why it matters. Nortman's argument is that the demand was always there and the product around it was not. Angel City sold about 16,000 season tickets before playing a game.

London-based investment firm APEX will put up to $30m into Canada's Northern Super League, on top of $5.45m pledged by the Canadian government on the day of the league's first championship. [26]

Why it matters. The NWSL added Boston and Denver this season with Atlanta and Columbus due in 2028, and England's WSL has gone to 14 teams. Money is arriving at several women's leagues at once.

Boston Legacy will play its 2027 NWSL season away from its own ground, which is still being built. The club has been splitting matches between Gillette Stadium and a smaller stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. [27]

Why it matters. A new club can raise investment faster than it can pour concrete, and the gap is paid in home matches played 60km away.

Athletes Unlimited paused its basketball and volleyball leagues to concentrate money on softball. Chief executive Jon Patricof said MLB, which invested an eight-figure sum in the softball league last year, did not pressure the company to do it. [28]

Why it matters. He described the decision as allocating money to the biggest opportunity, and did not rule out returning to the other two sports in a different shape.

Sky Sports is close to a three-year extension for live UK coverage of the US Open, with more than 12 hours of tennis a day across the three-week tournament. It has held exclusive UK rights since 2023. [29]

Why it matters. Sky walked away from tennis in 2017 and came back after Emma Raducanu's 2021 win. It bought the audience that one result created.

ESPN launched RedZone at the US Open, a stream that jumps between 16 courts at once, copying the NFL programme that shuffles between games to show only the live moments. [30]

Why it matters. Tennis has always had the problem RedZone solves: dozens of matches at once and one camera feed per viewer.

This year's US Open carries $108m in prize money. The cheapest first-round ticket was $197 last week. The tournament drew a record 1.14 million people last year. [31][45]

Why it matters. Sponsors have stopped buying signs and started building experiences that produce social video and customer data.

Jannik Sinner made an estimated $58m before tax in the year to the US Open, ahead of Carlos Alcaraz's $53.7m. Alcaraz earns more off court, an estimated $38m against Sinner's $35m; prize money decides it. [32]

Why it matters. Only four players have topped this list in its 19 years, which is a measure of how narrow the top of tennis is.

Jose E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones, who completed a $3.9bn purchase of the San Diego Padres, said they would live within their means. The club still has baseball's seventh-highest tax payroll at $263.8m. [33]

Why it matters. The previous owner ran a small-market club like a big-market one. The record price and the promise of discipline arrived in the same week.

Pennsylvania's governor, Josh Shapiro, said any future Philadelphia Eagles stadium will be built inside the city. The club's lease at Lincoln Financial Field runs to 2032 and it has been studying both a rebuild and a new ground. [34]

Why it matters. New Jersey is minutes across the river, and a state line is the main thing a club can threaten to cross.

The PGA Tour Championship will move to a group stage and sudden-death match play from 2028. Rory McIlroy called it a big swing. The 30 players this week are competing for a $40m purse, $10m of it to the winner. [35]

Why it matters. Nearly $100m in bonus money has been paid out this season, and the sport is trying to make the final week feel like a contest rather than an accounting exercise.

A group led by Amit Bhatia, called 1892 Holdings, bought a minority stake in Liverpool worth just over £2bn, around 38%. Jeff Bezos and Eduardo Saverin are among the investors. Fenway Sports Group keeps control. [36]

Why it matters. Bhatia joins an expanded board. Selling a large minority raises cash without giving up who decides.

Liverpool signed Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain after a meeting on 25 August between the clubs' senior figures. The signing takes the club's spending since last summer to almost £670m including add-ons. [37]

Why it matters. The strategy is stated: elite players under 24. The money for it arrived in the same month as a new minority owner.

Everton turned down Nottingham Forest's interest in Harrison Armstrong, an academy midfielder who has started their opening league matches this season. He is one of the club's two most valuable assets. [38]

Why it matters. The Premier League's squad-cost rules, which limit spending to a share of revenue, have been pushing Everton to sell. This time the football won.

RB Leipzig is close to signing Marc Guiu from Chelsea. The club had wanted about £25m and lowered the price this week. He is the third striker to leave Chelsea this window. [39]

Why it matters. Guiu made eight league appearances last season and started once. A squad assembled faster than it can be played produces exits at a discount.

The Nashville Predators hired Hayden Speak as director of research and development, to build models that rate the team and its rivals and tools for the coaching staff. [40]

Why it matters. Ice hockey came late to analytics compared with baseball and basketball, and the hires are still being announced one at a time.

Eight of the ten highest-rated US college football games last season involved Big Ten teams, and Indiana's championship win drew 30.1 million viewers. In the 2025 regular season the conference was in only two of the top ten. [41]

Why it matters. Its media deal runs on regular-season Saturdays, not on one January night, so the gap between those two numbers is the problem.

A Manchester United shirt buried for a year came out grubby but intact, while a cotton T-shirt buried beside it had vanished apart from its polyester seams. Premier League shirts are replaced every season. [42]

Why it matters. The garment lasts for decades and the design is designed to expire, which is the opposite of how the clubs describe it.

England's Women's Super League begins on Friday with London City hosting Manchester United, after expanding to 14 teams. Manchester City ended Chelsea's near-decade as champions last season. [43]

Why it matters. More clubs in a league that one team used to win is what a competitive title race is made of.

Crystal Palace signed the Vietnam-based gambling company Net88 as its front-of-shirt sponsor for two seasons only, because the Premier League is banning gambling companies from the front of shirts. [44]

Why it matters. When the deal was announced, Net88 did not have a working platform in the UK.

The Oklahoma City Thunder signed with locally owned Griffin Media and launched Thunder+, a subscription stream carrying every non-national game with no blackouts. Their previous television partner, FanDuel Sports, ceased to exist at the end of last season. [47]

Why it matters. When the regional sports channel disappears, the club has to become the broadcaster or lose its own city.

Current and former tennis professionals told Front Office Sports they welcome the content creators now filling major tournaments, with some caveats. [46]

Why it matters. Attention is what the sponsors at the US Open are now buying, and the players are the ones being filmed.