Sports, in brief

Big matches sold abroad

South Africa and New Zealand moved the last match of their series to Baltimore, in the United States. [1] The NFL's first Australian league game drew 100,021 people to the Melbourne Cricket Ground. [10] World Rugby says it would help any country that wants to move a Six Nations match to America. [3]

Investors buying into sport

Clearlake Capital, an American investment firm, is close to buying out two of Chelsea's minority owners. [8] Cricket Australia will sell the Melbourne Renegades, a Big Bash club, to private buyers. [32] A group led by the investment firm L Catterton is buying control of the fitness race Hyrox. [30]

Members challenging their federations

Belgium's football association says it will not support FIFA president Gianni Infantino's next term. [24] Ukraine's motor racing federation has demanded that the FIA suspend Russia's membership. [27] The FIA's appeal court published a defence of its own judges after an Alpine team boss questioned one of them. [28]

Courts and prosecutors stepping in

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have opened a criminal investigation into the Los Angeles Clippers. [21] LIV Golf's bankruptcy papers show Phil Mickelson holds a stake in the tour itself. [23] The parents of a footballer who died after hitting a pitchside wall want England's Football Association to change the rules. [34]

One pressure seen across the day runs through Sports too.

• Taking it to a courtBuilding ↑ · seen in 4 beats→

1. 1Rugby's biggest rivalry moved to Baltimore, where the two unions bank about $9m more than at home
2. 2Chelsea's majority owner buys out the two front men
3. 3US prosecutors open a criminal inquiry into the Clippers
4. 4Belgium refuses to back FIFA's president
5. 5The NFL's first Australian game drew 100,021

South Africa and New Zealand play the fourth and last match of their series on Saturday in Baltimore, on the east coast of the United States, rather than in South Africa. [1][5]

Watch whether any Six Nations union takes up World Rugby's offer.

Alan Gilpin named an Italy against Ireland match in Boston or New York as the kind of fixture that would work, and said no such talk is live yet.

Todd Boehly and Mark Walter, the two American businessmen who fronted the 2022 takeover of Chelsea, are close to selling their 12.8 per cent stakes to Clearlake Capital. [8]

Clearlake, a Californian investment firm, already owns 61.5 per cent of the club.

The consortium bought Chelsea from Roman Abramovich for 2.3bn pounds after he was sanctioned, and agreed that nobody could sell to an outsider for ten years. [8]

That agreement leaves Clearlake as the only available buyer. Walter says he expects to make a profit. [9]

It ends the idea that Chelsea is run by a group.

One investment firm will hold nearly 90 per cent of a club that has spent more than any other in Europe since 2022.

A week after the NBA fined the Los Angeles Clippers $30m and suspended owner Steve Ballmer for a year, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn opened a criminal investigation into the same matter. [21]

At least one subpoena has been issued, and the scope and targets are not yet clear. [21]

The league found the club had routed money to Kawhi Leonard through endorsement deals, which its salary rules forbid.

Leonard's agreed trade to the Toronto Raptors, first reported on 30 June, is still frozen. [22]

A league punishment is the end of a league's own process. A criminal file is a different authority asking whether the same facts broke a public law.

Also seen in Space, Food and Gaming.

Belgium's football association says it will not support Gianni Infantino's bid for another term as FIFA president. [24][25]

The row is over Folarin Balogun, the United States striker whose automatic red-card ban FIFA suspended, letting him play against Belgium in the World Cup last 16 after US President Donald Trump asked Infantino to review the case. [24]

Belgium won that match 4-1 but wants the decision explained at the FIFA Council on 15 October. [25] FIFA says Infantino is standing regardless. [26]

Infantino has been elected unopposed twice. This is the first national association to say publicly that it will not vote for him.

The San Francisco 49ers beat the Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in front of 100,021 people, the NFL's first league match in Australia. [10][12]

The ground holds 100,024 and is the largest in the southern hemisphere; NFL home stadiums hold between about 60,000 and 82,500. [10]

It is the first NFL regular-season crowd above 100,000 since 2009. [10] Kick-off was 10:35am local time, and bars around the ground opened at 6am. [10][11]

A club gives up a home date to play abroad because the away crowd is bigger than anything its own stadium can hold.

It is the same trade the rugby unions made.

New Zealand's rugby union owns no stadium, so it sold its biggest match of the year to a city on the other side of the world.

New Zealand's union owns nothing, so it takes the All Blacks to Baltimore.

the same step: NFL stadiums hold at most about 82,500, the Melbourne Cricket Ground holds 100,024, so a club gave up a home date and 100,021 people turned up

the same step one level down: the governing body lost A$11.3m in a year and could not raise it from its own gates, so it is selling a club instead

the other end of the same chain: the club owns its stadium, is rebuilding it, and is paying for the ground rather than being paid by it

The season-ticket holder in Auckland found out from a press release. The person who bought a seat in Maryland has probably never seen either team play.

None of them saw the accounts.

Cricket Australia said private investors will be allowed into the Big Bash League, its Twenty20 competition, from the 2027-28 season, starting with the sale of the Melbourne Renegades. [32]

An earlier plan to sell 49 per cent of every club was blocked in April by the state boards of New South Wales and Queensland. [32]

Cricket Australia had hoped to raise up to A$600m from it, and reported a net deficit of A$11.3m for 2024-25. [32]

The governing body lost money in a year when it hosted India, its richest visitor.

Selling clubs is what is left when the gate and the broadcast deal are already counted.

The founders of Hyrox, the indoor fitness race that pairs eight one-kilometre runs with eight exercises, have bought back the majority stake held by the Swiss firm Infront Sports and Media. [29]

They did it with a group led by L Catterton, an American investment firm backed by the luxury group LVMH. [29][30]

Terms were not disclosed; several outlets put the value at 600m euros. [29] Hyrox ran more than 100 events last season, with over 1.4 million competitors. [29]

A race invented in a Hamburg gym in 2017 is now a property worth more than most football clubs, and the people who invented it had to buy it back to keep it.

TMRW Sports, the company Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy set up in 2022 with former Golf Channel president Mike McCarley, has raised new money at a valuation of about $1bn. [31]

That is double its valuation two years ago and up from a reported $650m last year. [31]

TMRW owns TGL, the men's indoor golf league played in a purpose-built arena, and the women's league that follows it. [31]

Dynasty Equity, which helped lead the earlier round, is taking part again. [31]

The league has played only two short seasons. Most of the value is in the two players' names and the idea of golf in a shed with a screen.

LIV Golf's 128-page bankruptcy filing listed its owners. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund holds 98.48 per cent and a company the fund controls holds 1.05 per cent. [23]

Former chief executive Greg Norman holds 0.23 per cent, and so does an unnamed current player. [23] That player is Phil Mickelson. [23]

Mickelson joined LIV at its launch in 2022 on a reported $200m guarantee and captained its Hy Flyers team. [23]

He is now both a creditor of the tour and a part-owner of it, which means he is on both sides of the same bankruptcy.

Ukraine's automobile federation has written to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem demanding that Russia's membership be suspended and that restrictions on Russian competitors be restored. [27]

The FIA, which governs Formula One and world motorsport, lifted its ban on Russian competitors earlier this year. [27]

The letter calls the FIA's inaction a dangerous precedent that could let other members ignore the statutes. [27]

Ukraine's sports minister told the BBC last week that nothing had changed to justify lifting it. [27]

Federations run on one member per country. Once one of them decides a rule no longer applies, the others find out what the rulebook is actually worth.

The FIA's court of appeal issued a statement rejecting claims by Flavio Briatore, the executive adviser to the Alpine Formula One team, that one of its judges was too close to the McLaren team. [28]

Briatore based the claim on a 2018 charity auction in California that the judge attended, at which he said McLaren donated cars. [28]

The court said both sides were invited to raise objections before and after the hearing and neither did. [28]

The FIA says the court works independently of the rest of the organisation. [28]

The panel that decides a protest is being asked to prove it is not part of the sport it judges, and its only answer is its own statement.

Enric Mas of Spain leads the Vuelta a Espana with two stages left, after Ireland's Eddie Dunbar won stage 19 on Friday. [13][14]

Dunbar caught the Colombian Santiago Buitrago 300 metres from the line on a 210.8km climb to Penas Blancas and beat him by 14 seconds. [14]

Buitrago has sealed the mountains jersey if he finishes in Granada on Sunday. [13] The day before, Switzerland's Stefan Kung won the 32.1km time trial and Mas held on comfortably. [15]

The Vuelta is the last of cycling's three three-week races, and the only Grand Tour a Spanish rider has a real chance of winning this year.

Sepp Kuss, an American rider, is close to finishing all three of cycling's three-week races in a single season for the second time. [16]

Only 36 riders in the sport's history have done it once, and only seven since 2010. [16]

Kuss rode the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France earlier this summer and is tenth overall at the Vuelta, the race he won in 2023. [16]

No other rider has attempted the treble since that year. [16]

Each race is about 3,500km over 21 days. Doing three in one season is the endurance equivalent of playing every match of three seasons back to back.

Matthew Brennan, a British rider on his first three-week race, has won four stages of this year's Vuelta a Espana. [17]

He is the first rider since Fernando Gaviria at the 2017 Giro d'Italia to win four stages on a Grand Tour debut. [17]

His team, Visma-Lease a Bike, has six wins at the race, after a Tour de France in which their leader Jonas Vingegaard crashed out and the team won nothing. [17]

Brennan says he is aiming at next year's Tour. [17]

Sprint stages are the ones sponsors see, and a team that won nothing in July has now recovered its season in three weeks.

The Newcastle Knights beat South Sydney 20-10 in an elimination final at Allianz Stadium in Sydney, their first away play-off win since 2013. [18]

Newcastle finished bottom of the Australian National Rugby League last season. [18] They played without five-eighth Dylan Brown and both first-choice front-rowers, and young back-rower Jermaine McEwen scored twice. [18]

They now face the loser of the Warriors against the Dolphins. [18]

Australia's rugby league play-offs began with none of last season's top four teams in them, and the club that finished last a year ago is still in.

Australia's National Rugby League reached its play-offs with not one of last season's top four sides in the eight. [19]

The Brisbane Broncos, champions in 2025 and fourth on the ladder, finished 14th this year. [20] The Penrith Panthers finished top of the table and are chasing another title. [19]

Newcastle, last season's bottom club, won the first elimination final. [18]

A league where the previous year's best four all miss the play-offs is either very even or very badly graded, and the salary cap is designed to produce the first.

Canal+, a French broadcaster, and LaLiga, Spain's top football league, signed an agreement to fight illegal streaming across nearly 50 countries in Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti. [33]

They will pool their detection technology and run joint investigations and lobbying. [33]

Broadcast income at Spanish clubs fell 5.2 per cent to 1.43bn euros in 2024-25, and commercial revenue overtook it as their biggest source for the first time. [33]

Canal+ estimates piracy costs 1.5bn euros of value a year in France alone. [33]

Spanish clubs build their budgets on television money. In Spain that money is now falling, and the league is spending on lawyers and detection software to slow it.

Billy Vigar, a 21-year-old playing for Chichester City in England's non-league football, died after a brain injury sustained when he fell into a concrete perimeter wall just under three metres from the touchline. [34]

It happened in an away match at Wingate and Finchley in north London; his parents were on holiday in Croatia when they were called. [34]

They are now pressing the Football Association for changes. [34]

The distance between a touchline and a hard surface is a ground-safety rule, not a rule of the game, and nobody had to argue about it until somebody died.

The US Open, the last tennis Grand Slam of the year, increased its total prize money by 20 per cent to $108m. [35]

The men's and women's singles champions each take $5.5m, the largest winner's cheque in Grand Slam history and $500,000 more than last year. [35]

Every player who reaches the 128-player singles draw earns at least $140,000, also a record for a tennis event. [35] A quarter-final is worth $780,000 and a semi-final $1.45m. [35]

Tennis players pay their own coaches, travel and physios. Raising the first-round cheque changes more careers than raising the winner's does.

ESPN said its US Open coverage through three rounds averaged 846,000 viewers, the most since 2022. [36]

Friday night's coverage, which featured Serena and Venus Williams playing doubles together, averaged 1.1 million across ESPN and ESPN2 and peaked at 2.2 million. [36]

That was 17 per cent up on the same night last year, and Saturday's average was 37 per cent up. [36] The Williams sisters lost in a match tiebreak. [36]

Two players in their forties in a doubles match produced the tournament's biggest audience, which is what a broadcaster is really buying when it pays for a Grand Slam.

Barcelona became only the second football club ever to take more than 1bn euros in a season, after Real Madrid, and still posted a post-tax loss of 17.8m euros. [38]

Its debts are set to top 2bn euros, and the rebuilding of its Camp Nou stadium is unfinished. [38]

The club won a second straight Spanish league title in May and reached the Champions League quarter-finals. [38]

President Joan Laporta was re-elected in March and is in his sixth consecutive year in charge. [38]

Owning your stadium is normally what pays for the team. Barcelona owns one it cannot yet play in, and is paying for it twice.

Scott Davidson, a 58-year-old American who made his money in real estate, has been cleared by the English Football League and the Independent Football Regulator to buy Shrewsbury Town, a club in England's fourth tier. [37]

Brad Friedel, the former United States goalkeeper who made 476 Premier League appearances for Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers, Aston Villa and Tottenham, joins the board with him and helped Davidson through the purchase. [37]

Davidson has been a director of The Spartans in Scottish League Two since 2021. [37] The deal ends 85-year-old Roland Wycherley's three decades as chairman. [37]

England's new football regulator now signs off who may own a club, and this is one of the first fourth-tier takeovers to go through it.

The NFL's agreement with its players, signed in 2020, sets out how fines are decided and where the money goes. [39]

Every Monday of the season the league's vice-president of policy and rules reviews game film, applies the agreed table and publishes the results the following Saturday. [39]

Minimum fines rise automatically by 3 per cent each year to keep pace with inflation. [39]

Half the money goes to a players' union programme for retired players, including cognitive checks; the other half goes to charities the league and the union pick together. [39]

A fine looks like a punishment set by a referee. It is a schedule the players themselves negotiated, indexed like a wage.

Western Michigan's president, Edward Kavalhuna, said the Big Ten conference's video review process is not as good as it could be. [40]

In Saturday's game against Michigan, television replays showed the clock reaching zero with a Hail Mary pass still in the air; conference replay officials put one second back on, and Michigan scored with the extra play. [40]

Kavalhuna said viewers at home see something different from what the review shows, and asked why the two cannot be synchronised. [40]

Every other argument about officiating is about judgement. This one is about two clocks giving two answers, which is fixable.

The Miami Dolphins carry a dead salary cap charge of $183m this season, an NFL record. [41]

Dead cap is money counted against a club's spending limit for players no longer on its roster.

Miami is paying more for men who are not there than the $104m it is paying the 53 players who are. [41]

More than 60 per cent of its limit is tied up that way; since the figure was first tracked in 2011 no club had gone above 45 per cent. [41]

That money buys nobody who takes the field, and it was committed by contracts signed in earlier seasons by people making a different plan.

Tony Popovic said he happily declined a four-year contract extension from Football Australia and chose to commit only until the Asian Cup, which runs from 7 January to 5 February in Saudi Arabia. [42]

He said the shorter deal lets the federation change direction if it wants to. [42]

Popovic took over from Graham Arnold in late 2024 and qualified Australia for the first 48-team World Cup, where they fielded the youngest squad in the tournament. [42]

Coaches normally take the longest contract on offer, because the payoff for being sacked is the length of what is left.

Lucas Bergvall has agreed a new contract at Tottenham Hotspur, where he has made 80 appearances since joining from Djurgarden in Sweden in 2024. [43]

The 20-year-old said he is happy to extend because the club is building something. [43] Manager Roberto De Zerbi called himself delighted. [43]

Clubs extend young players early to move the transfer value onto their own balance sheet before a bigger club sets it for them.

Arctos Partners, set up in 2019 by Ian Charles and David O'Connor to buy minority stakes in sports teams, holds pieces of the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox, Utah Jazz and Buffalo Bills. [44]

In May the investment group KKR bought Arctos and folded it into a new division. [44]

Arctos was approved by every major American league soon after the pandemic began, except the NFL, which let private equity in a few years later. [44]

Team values rose faster than any single person could keep up with, so the owners let in investors who buy a slice and never have to sell the club.

Mauricio Pochettino, who managed Tottenham from 2014 to 2019 and now coaches the United States men's team, said Tottenham should be awarded the 2016-17 Premier League title because Chelsea admitted breaking the rules that season. [45]

Tottenham finished second to Chelsea that year, Pochettino's best league finish there. [45]

He said the two clubs did not compete under the same rules and that with the same rules Tottenham could have signed different players. [45]

English football has never taken a title away after the season ended, and every new financial ruling makes someone ask whether it should start.