Sports, in brief

The NBA fined the Los Angeles Clippers $30m, took five future draft picks and suspended the club's owner for a year. [2][4]

A salary cap limits what a club may pay its players. Paying a player extra through a sponsor's endorsement deal gets around it, and the NBA bans that. [2]

Investigators say the Clippers steered four companies into paying their star forward Kawhi Leonard for endorsements he barely worked on, between 2020 and 2022. [1][2]

In one case the club is accused of routing money out of a scoreboard supplier's contract for its new arena into a deal for Leonard, and setting the terms itself. [2]

About $18m reached Leonard off the books around the season the Clippers reached the conference finals, the only time in the club's history. [1]

The club was required to tell the league the moment Leonard's agent asked for illegal side benefits in 2019. It did not. [1]

The league did not turn the scheme up itself. A podcast report by the journalist Pablo Torre spurred the investigation a year ago. [1][3][4]

Every penalty was set at the maximum the rulebook allows. The largest fine for one breach is $7.5m, so the league counted four breaches and charged it four times. [2]

Five first-round draft picks were taken, for 2029 to 2033, which was every pick the club still owned outright. A year is the longest an owner can be suspended. [1]

Leonard paid the league $700,000 and keeps his $51m contract for this season. The last big case of this kind, in 2000, cost that player an $86m contract, because his side deal was written down. [1][3]

The Clippers reject the findings, call the inquiry a witch hunt and say they will use every legal remedy. There is no appeal inside the league. [4]

The two clubs the Clippers knocked out in 2021 get nothing. The league's agreement with its players has no line that pays anything back to a beaten team. [1]

Why it matters. Watch whether the Clippers actually file in court: the league and the players' union have signed the penalties off as final, so any challenge has to start outside basketball altogether. [4]

A judge in Louisiana granted an injunction on Thursday letting two former Ole Miss players who had spent August in NFL training camps join LSU instead. [5] They are among 42 athletes suing the NCAA, which runs US college sport, for a fifth season. [5][6]

Why it matters. College eligibility is now settled in courtrooms one athlete at a time, and the SEC says it will obey the order while fighting it. [6]

Greg Sankey, who runs the SEC, told the other US college football commissioners his conference needs a shared scheduling standard before it will back a 24-team playoff. [7] The Big Ten, the only other conference with a veto, says it is comfortable with the standard: ten games a season against major opponents. [8]

Why it matters. The thing being asked for is not in the playoff at all. It changes what every conference has to schedule.

This is the fourth season running in which no two College Football Playoff formats have matched. [9] Under this year's rules last season's field would have been different, and would have left out Miami, who reached the final. [9]

Why it matters. A selection rule only works if teams can plan against it, and this one has not stood still long enough.

An insurance company spent $662,050 on 837,500 contracts on the prediction market Kalshi in 72 seconds, taking a position that pays $3m if LSU win the national title. [10] That is the exact sum LSU owes its coach Lane Kiffin in playoff bonuses. [10]

Why it matters. A market built for gamblers is now being used as insurance by the people who owe the prize money.

The NBA has circulated a proposal to prediction-market firms and has deal terms on the table, with announcements expected before the season starts. [11] Kalshi, Polymarket, Novig, Fanatics and a Robinhood joint venture are all in the talks. [11]

Why it matters. Every big US league is picking a partner in a business that courts have not finished defining.

The Friedkin Group, which owns Everton, is expected to open a process that could sell a minority stake in the Premier League club. [12] It follows a window in which Everton sold about 100m pounds of players and signed one, leaving 18 senior outfield players. [12]

Why it matters. Supporters' groups say the cost of the summer shows in the squad, not the accounts.

Daniel Kretinsky, the Czech businessman who owns Britain's Royal Mail, agreed a deal to hold 46% of West Ham and become its largest shareholder. [13] It ends Amanda Staveley's attempt to buy Vanessa Gold's stake, because the existing directors held first refusal. [13]

Why it matters. A clause about who gets asked first, not a price, decided who owns the club.

The actor Hugh Jackman said he is talking now about buying a stake in Norwich City, an English second-tier club, having turned down the same chance in 2010. [14]

Why it matters. Wrexham's three straight promotions under Ryan Reynolds turned celebrity ownership into something other people copy.

Private equity firms have put a credit line of up to $30m in front of every school in the Big 12 conference, and so far not one university has drawn on it. [15]

Why it matters. Schools short of cash are still weighing what an outside owner would eventually want back.

Al-Hilal signed Arsenal's Gabriel Martinelli for $81m, all guaranteed, with Arsenal keeping a share of any future sale. [16] It beats Arsenal's old record sale, 35m pounds for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain nine years ago. [16]

Why it matters. The Saudi club wrote in a clause that works as a release price for European buyers, so the move may not be the end of it.

Liverpool spent about 250m pounds, including 123m on Bradley Barcola from Paris Saint-Germain and 34.5m on Victor Munoz from Osasuna. [17] They signed no full-back and no midfielder, which supporters had asked for. [17]

Why it matters. The squad now depends on three players coming back from long injuries.

Manchester United start the season with Luke Shaw as their only senior specialist left-back, after a late attempt to borrow Rayan Ait-Nouri from Manchester City fell through. [18] The club is waiting for Newcastle's Lewis Hall next summer instead. [18]

Why it matters. Choosing to wait a year is a spending decision as much as a signing is.

Profit and sustainability rules are gone. Clubs may now spend up to 85% of their revenue on players and head coaches, a limit called the squad cost ratio. [19] Fourteen clubs voted for it, the bare minimum needed, and six voted against. [19]

Why it matters. Several club executives told The Athletic that tying spending to revenue widens the gap between rich and poor clubs rather than closing it. [19]

The NWSL, the top US women's football league, now makes boot makers other than Nike pay the league to have their logo seen on the field, believed to be at least $100,000 plus $5,000 for each player they sponsor. [20] Kansas City's Michelle Cooper has been disciplined for wearing New Balance boots, which have no such deal. [20]

Why it matters. Small brands designing boots for women's feet cannot pay the entry fee, so their work stays off the pitch. [20]

Athletes Unlimited has stopped running its basketball and volleyball leagues to put its money into softball, where Major League Baseball invested an eight-figure sum last year. [21] Its chief executive said MLB did not ask for the change. [21]

Why it matters. Growth in women's sport is not spread evenly; it concentrates wherever a big backer has already arrived.

Unrivaled, the three-a-side women's basketball league, will play regular-season games at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on 22 January, and plans four times as many away venues as last season. [22]

Why it matters. A league that played its whole first season in one Florida town is testing whether the crowds travel.

The Women's Professional Baseball League opened to a sellout of more than 4,000 in Springfield, Illinois, and attendance has fallen sharply since. [23] The four-team league started play on 1 August. [24]

Why it matters. An opening night sells itself; the second month is the number that tells you whether a league exists.

Money is going into new professional softball, baseball, volleyball and basketball leagues in the United States, and television audiences are following it. [24] More leagues has also meant more jobs coaching women's teams. [24]

Why it matters. The bottleneck in women's sport was never the number of players willing to play.

Monarch Collective, a $250m fund set up in 2023 that invests only in women's sport, now holds stakes in four football clubs on two continents plus a WNBA team. [25] Its co-founder helped start Angel City, which sold 16,000 season tickets before playing a game. [25]

Why it matters. Its bet is that the audience was already there and the surrounding business was not.

Eva Olid, Manchester United's new women's head coach, says the owners told her they want to invest, in what the club describes as a sustainable model built on younger players. [26] Her predecessor left last month after asking publicly for more. [26]

Why it matters. Jim Ratcliffe, who holds 29% of the club and runs its football side, has been criticised before for saying his focus was the men's team. [26]

In US college football a first targeting foul, called for a dangerous hit to the head or neck, no longer carries a suspension into the following game. [27] Pass interference enforcement and unsportsmanlike conduct rules also changed this season. [27]

Why it matters. The penalty was severe enough that officials had grown reluctant to call it, which is the opposite of what it was for.

An NCAA committee has approved pushing Week 1 earlier, along with a shorter transfer portal window and changes to off-season activity rules. [28] This is the last season the current Week 0 exemptions will work, which is how eight games are being played five days early. [29]

Why it matters. Games abroad and the Hawaii exception exist only because of a date in the rulebook, and the date is moving.

Australia's NBL has asked the sport's rule-makers to let it trial giving three points for a dunk and four for a shot from the halfway line. [30] Basketball Australia has passed the request to FIBA, the world governing body. [30]

Why it matters. The leagues with least to lose are where a sport's rules get tested.

Manchester United played their opening match with the Premier League badge on one sleeve and nothing on the other, which the league's handbook does not allow. [31] Their sleeve sponsor's deal had ended, and the rule says the league badge must fill the empty sleeve. [31]

Why it matters. The league's handbook carries 29 separate rules on kit and player identification. [31]

India's board says its next fixture programme will build in proper rest, after Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshit Rana and Washington Sundar all broke down. [32] An official noted the squad had played two months of the IPL before the tour. [32]

Why it matters. The calendar is set years ahead by the people who sell the matches, and the bodies playing them are not consulted.

Brad Holmes, who builds the Detroit Lions' roster, was asked why so many of his signings have injury histories and said any player can break down at any time. [33] He said the job is to have a replacement ready. [33]

Why it matters. If a market marks players down for past injuries, buying them is a discount, provided you can carry the risk.

The Las Vegas Stadium Authority approved $75m of public money towards a $158m upgrade to Allegiant Stadium, where the Las Vegas Raiders play. [34]

Why it matters. The public share of a stadium does not stop at the opening; upgrades come back for more.

USC opened a $225m football building with more than 100 reclining chairs, an in-house barbershop and hot and cold therapy pools. [35] The team had been dressing in the basement of a shared sports centre and crossing a road to practise. [35]

Why it matters. Now that US college players can be paid, buildings are one of the few things a school can still offer that a rival cannot match instantly.

The NFL and its players' union are working out the terms on which players could play flag football at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. [36] Club owners approved the idea last year, subject to agreement on pitch surfaces, medical care and the schedule. [36]

Why it matters. An employer letting its staff go and play for someone else needs every risk written down first.

The San Francisco 49ers meet the Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground next week, the first of nine NFL games abroad this season, with a first game in France to follow. [37] Owners approved going to ten last year, and reporting says they would like sixteen. [37]

Why it matters. Each added away game has to be bargained with the players' union, because it is their travel.

The CIAA, a conference of historically Black colleges, signed a media rights deal with Urban Edge Network that covers football and some basketball. [38] The network pays for the rights and also shares advertising revenue back with the conference and its member schools. [38]

Why it matters. Sharing the advertising, rather than paying a flat fee, is unusual, and it is what a smaller conference can bargain for.

Eight of last season's ten highest-rated US college football games involved Big Ten teams, and Indiana's championship win drew 30.1 million viewers. [39] That was, at the time, the highest-rated non-NFL sporting event since the deciding game of the 2016 World Series. [39]

Why it matters. The conference's television money was agreed before those numbers existed, which is why the next negotiation matters more than this one.

Roy Alexander, a former Texas Tech receiver, is suing the NCAA over his suspension for betting. [40] He admits betting from 2023 to 2025, mostly under $12 a time and never on his own teams, and argues the punishment does not fit. [40]

Why it matters. The rule treats all betting the same, and the courts are being asked whether it should.

Brendan Sorsby, who bet at least $90,000 while a college player including on his own team, speaks publicly for the first time in a documentary out on Friday. [41] He won an injunction restoring his eligibility, then left the team anyway after the Big 12 threatened to bar Texas Tech from its championship game. [41][42]

Why it matters. He won the legal argument and still could not play, because the punishment moved to the club around him.

Guardian analysis found 22 of the past 50 Premier League managers to leave their job lasted under a year, and 110 matches this season will feature two coaches appointed in 2026. [43]

Why it matters. Predicting a match on how the two clubs have played each other assumes the same people are in charge.

The Cleveland Cavaliers announced a new television deal after 36 years of regional sports channels ended with the last one shutting down. [44] The Orlando Magic moved to the streaming service DAZN at $19.99 a month, with some games still free over the air on local stations. [45]

Why it matters. The regional sports channel that used to carry a club is disappearing, and the replacement is usually something the fan pays for separately.

Venture capital firms are putting money into sports teams, landmark property and children's toys, looking for businesses that artificial intelligence cannot replace. [46]

Why it matters. A club's value now rests partly on being the kind of thing a machine cannot do.

Mark Walter bought the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2.15bn in 2012 through a bankruptcy court, not the usual league vetting. [47] Two people briefed on ownership matters told The Athletic his bid would probably have been rejected by Major League Baseball's normal process. [47]

Why it matters. A league's power to choose its owners only works while it controls the process, and a court took that away.

Denver Summit, Colorado's first professional women's football team, played its opening home match this season in front of 63,000 people at Mile Stadium. [48] Its captain, Janine Sonis, grew up in the city. [48]

Why it matters. The team is in its debut season, and the crowd arrived before any results did.