Sports, in brief

England's Premier League closed its summer transfer window at 11pm on 1 September, after clubs spent a gross 3.528bn pounds on players. [2][1]

Nearly half of that - 1.627bn pounds - was one Premier League club buying from another. [1]

Seven of the ten biggest transfers anywhere in Europe this summer were one English club buying from another. [1]

In the six summers to 2022, Premier League clubs spent an average of 418.2m pounds a year on each other's players. This summer it was four times that. [2]

The reason is wages. Salaries at mid-table English clubs are out of reach for most clubs abroad, so unwanted Premier League players are largely unsellable outside England. [2]

That leaves nineteen possible buyers for any player, all in the same league, and fees get set by comparing a deal to earlier deals inside it. [2]

Aston Villa paid Chelsea 65m pounds for Nicolas Jackson, a striker who would barely have played for Chelsea this season. The Athletic asked who the under-bidder was. [2]

Tottenham Hotspur agreed a 75m-pound option to buy Mykhailo Mudryk, who has not played a competitive match for over two years after a drugs ban. [2]

Not every club joined in. Liverpool, Fulham and Bournemouth signed fifteen players between them and took none from a Premier League club. [2]

A new rule started this season. Clubs may spend 85% of their football revenue plus their profit on player sales on players and coaches. [4][7]

That rewards the biggest earners most. Eleven of the twenty clubs set a club spending record, and four of the eleven most expensive signings in football history happened this summer. [4][6]

Spain, Germany, France and Italy's top leagues spent $3.8bn between them. The Premier League alone spent $4.7bn. [4]

Tottenham's coach Roberto De Zerbi, asked about the market days before it closed, said: "You can't understand it." [4]

Why it matters. Watch whether any Premier League club sells a first-team player abroad for a large fee this winter. That is the test of whether an outside buyer still exists. Without one, the same twenty clubs will price the next window off this one.

The NBA fined the Los Angeles Clippers $30m and suspended owner Steve Ballmer for a year, for getting round the league's limit on player pay. It also took five first-round draft picks, one in each year from 2029 to 2033. [9][10]

Why it matters. A salary cap only counts money paid as salary; the league had been investigating since 2025 whether the club routed money to a player through a sponsorship deal instead.

Arte Moreno agreed to sell the Los Angeles Angels to Stan Kroenke for a reported $4bn, beating the $3.9bn paid for the San Diego Padres. Moreno bought the club from Disney for $180m in 2003. [11][12][13]

Why it matters. The club has not reached baseball's play-offs since 2014, so the price is not being set by results. [11][16]

The deal includes Angels Broadcast Television, the regional channel Moreno rebranded this year after the collapse of Main Street Sports, which had carried nine baseball clubs. Kroenke's sports holdings are worth about $30bn. [15][14]

Why it matters. Owning the pipe that shows your games is now part of the asset, because the old regional cable channels are dying.

The US state of New Jersey asked the US Supreme Court on 2 September to decide whether individual US states or the US federal regulator control bets on sport sold as financial contracts. It filed one day before its deadline. [17]

Why it matters. A San Francisco appeal court ruled on 28 August that Nevada may licence these platforms. That is the opposite of an April ruling in New Jersey's own circuit, and such a split is what usually pulls the US Supreme Court in. [21][20][18][19]

The football associations of Finland, Sweden and Denmark wrote to Glenn Micallef, the European Union's sport commissioner, asking for a meeting about how FIFA, world football's governing body, is run. His office confirmed it received the letter. [22]

Why it matters. UEFA, which runs European football, is separately preparing criminal proceedings in Switzerland against FIFA president Gianni Infantino over a scrapped plan to sell stakes in the World Cup. [23]

The Anaheim Ducks, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Minnesota Wild and St Louis Blues will stream home-market games on Amazon Prime Video. Four of them lost their old channel when Main Street Sports shut. [24]

Why it matters. Amazon can now reach fans in their own city for 34 teams across four North American leagues. [24][25]

UCLA sacked athletic director Martin Jarmond five days before the football season opened. Donations had fallen three years running, from $18.5m in 2022 to $13.5m, against a Big Ten conference median of $34.1m. [26]

Why it matters. The move to a richer conference in 2024 was meant to fix the money, and the donors stopped writing cheques anyway.

The Southeastern Conference voted that any member signing a professional athlete loses half a season of its head coach, a fine worth 50% of that sport's annual budget, and its vote on conference business. LSU abstained. [27]

Why it matters. It is a conference punishing its own members for something no court has yet said is against the law.

Judges in Texas and Louisiana restrained the NCAA and the SEC from enforcing the ban, granting more than 40 players a fifth year and clearing a path for men on NFL rosters to return to college. The SEC says it will contest it. [29][28]

Why it matters. US college football began its season with its own eligibility rules under court order. [30]

Nielsen, the firm that counts US television audiences, told broadcasters that blending its figures with their own or third-party data to make comparisons in press releases is not permitted. [31]

Why it matters. Audience records are the currency sports rights are sold on, and several networks have been quoting combined totals for years.

The Mumbai Cricket Association gave annual retainers to 22 players - fourteen men and eight women - with the top grade worth 1.2m rupees to either. [32]

Why it matters. It covers players not on India's national board contracts, who are the ones with no other income from the game.

The Nigeria Football Federation's president, general secretary and entire executive committee all resigned, and an interim board was appointed. Nigeria has missed the last two men's World Cups. [33]

Why it matters. Ibrahim Gusau, who led the federation, stood down 33 days before his term ended and had been expected to seek re-election.

England's Cricket Regulator closed its investigation into a 1.75m-pound payment by Yorkshire to a firm connected to its chief executive, finding the decisions went through proper processes. [34]

Why it matters. The payment related to the sale of stakes in the Hundred, which raised 520m pounds for English cricket.

England's new Independent Football Regulator said it can assess the honesty and financial soundness of Sheffield United's co-owners, after the company they used to buy the club was wound up owing 35m pounds. [35]

Why it matters. Ownership had already been moved to a different parent company, taking the debt away from the club - the first real test of what the regulator can reach.

All 27 US-based Major League Soccer clubs will enter the 2027 US Open Cup, the first full participation since 2023. Prize money doubled to $1m in 2025 and CBS bought the broadcast rights. [36]

Why it matters. MLS walked out in 2023 partly because the cup is run by the US Soccer Federation, which sets the broadcast terms and takes a share of ticket money.

Kituwah, the investment arm of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, sued the former Dallas Cowboys running back and his property firm in Delaware. It says a $2.5m loan meant for a Texas solar project was used to repay an earlier partner instead. [37]

Why it matters. The filing says the money was never recovered; Smith's firm did not respond to requests for comment.

Ten professional women's leagues have started in the United States since 2024, across baseball, hockey, softball, volleyball, basketball, lacrosse and rugby, with a flag football league backed by the NFL to come. [38]

Why it matters. The four-team Women's Pro Baseball League is one month into its first season. [39]

The head of New York's hotel association called the US Open tennis championship a far more reliable driver of business for the city than this summer's World Cup turned out to be. [40]

Why it matters. An annual event that fills the same hotels every year is easier to build a business on than a one-off nobody can plan around.

The Los Angeles Angels sacked their pitching coach, and the interim general manager said plainly it was for refusing to use modern data. The replacement, a former analyst, took the starting pitchers from a 4.51 earned-run average to a league-best 2.03 over eight games. [41]

Why it matters. It is the clearest recent case of a change in method, not personnel, producing the result.

Meta agreed to pay up to $18bn and redesign Facebook and Instagram over claims they encourage addictive use by young people. Sports lawyers say betting and prediction apps face the same argument. [42]

Why it matters. Studies cited in the analysis find the large majority of sports bettors lose money, which is the fact such a case would rest on.

The NCAA, which governs US college sport, found no wrongdoing by the University of Cincinnati in its investigation of former quarterback Brendan Sorsby's sports gambling. [43]

Why it matters. The Big 12 conference took one of its own members to court over a linked case two months ago. [30]

The Kansas City Chiefs chose a fixed translucent roof over a retractable one for their new stadium. They found the Atlanta Falcons open theirs about 30% of the time, and that the moving version costs hundreds of millions more. [44]

Why it matters. A retractable roof is bought for the days it opens, and the weather keeps it shut.

The NCAA's oversight committee approved moving the season a week earlier into the Week Zero slot from 2027, adding a second bye week and shortening the January transfer window to ten days. A final vote is due in early October. [48][49]

Why it matters. A shorter window to change clubs gives players less time to look and coaches more control of the squad.

The Detroit Pistons and Jalen Duren, an All-Star centre who averaged 19.5 points last season, have not agreed a contract with training camp approaching, an unusually long stand-off for a player of his standing. [45]

Why it matters. Restricted free agency lets a club match any rival offer, which is why rivals often do not bother making one.

A year after hiring the six-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick, the University of North Carolina is discounting the merchandise it printed for his arrival. [47]

Why it matters. A famous name was the whole investment case, and the interest it bought has a shorter shelf life than the contract.

Yahoo added free digital collectible cards to its sports and fantasy apps, graded by rarity and awarded to users who were watching a moment live, starting with baseball, American football and college football. [46]

Why it matters. It is an attempt to make attention pay without routing fans to a betting product.

The Athletic broke down Liverpool's new signing Bradley Barcola on which flank he takes his touches, how he presses, and a measure called peak sprint velocity - his fastest recorded speed. [51]

Why it matters. The same tracking data that argues a fee is worth paying is what the selling club used to set it.

The tennis player Jessica Pegula works through data on opponents' habits and shot preferences before matches, rather than leaving it to a coaching team. [52]

Why it matters. In an individual sport there is no club analytics department, so the athlete either does it or plays without it.

NBC's US coverage of the Premier League, now in its 14th season, is presented and analysed almost entirely by British former players and broadcasters, with one American on the panel. [50]

Why it matters. The English accent is part of what the league sells abroad, and it is also what keeps the coverage at arm's length from its audience.