Sports, in brief

Owners paying in again

Tottenham's owners put 120m pounds into the club, their third payment in a year. [9] Advisers say owners lower down English football are selling because the yearly losses never stop. [8] Ki MMA, a new fighting league, raised $60m before it has any TV deal. [18]

Players asking for a bigger share

Top tennis players asked the four biggest tournaments for 22% of their money. [11] Rugby player Henry Pollock's adviser says he is worth 1m pounds a season. [27] Barbra Banda signed the biggest contract Orlando Pride has ever given. [28]

Too many contests in too few days

Boxer Eumir Marcial is due to fight in California and then in Japan four days later. [16] Ben Shelton goes from the US Open final to two more team events in two weekends. [31] Ki MMA wants its tournament winners to fight twice in one night. [18]

Fighters choosing their own promoter

Conor McGregor says he has one UFC fight left before he is free to box bare-knuckle. [20] Muhammad Mokaev signs one-fight deals while he waits for the UFC to take him back. [21] Henry Cejudo, a former UFC champion, now boxes for an influencer promoter. [23]

One pressure seen across the day runs through Sports too.

• Arguments over who covers a shared billHigh ↑ · seen in 3 beats→

1. 1Clearlake bought out Chelsea's chairman and his partner for a reported 950m pounds. Lower down English football, owners are tired of paying losses.
2. 2Tottenham's owners pay in 120m pounds more
3. 3Garcia stops Benn in under four minutes
4. 4Tennis players end their public pay campaign
5. 5The WTA Finals move to Charlotte

Chelsea said on Wednesday that Clearlake Capital, a Californian investment firm, will buy out its co-owners Todd Boehly and Mark Walter. [5][2]

The next big test is the stadium: Chelsea plans either to rebuild Stamford Bridge or to move, that plan caused friction with Boehly, and Clearlake now makes the call. [1][2]

Most clubs lose money every year, so owning one means paying in again and again, and an owner who stops paying ends up owning less of it, or sells.

The Lewis family paid in for the third time in a year, and Daniel Levy, who did not join the June payment, saw his share fall from about 26% to 24%.

The owners had put in about 4.2bn pounds by mid-2025, and now two of them have taken cash and left, so the next bills fall to Clearlake.

The national body is handing the paid league to owners who can bring in more money, and keeping the national team and the community game.

A new league must spend on at least 13 events before a TV deal pays it anything, so its backers pay first and hope to earn later.

American football has a salary cap and no relegation, and one adviser says that is what buyers of cheap English clubs forgot.

Players' wages, the staff at the ground and the fans in towns whose clubs are for sale all depend on someone still being willing to pay it next year.

The Lewis family, Tottenham Hotspur's majority owners, put another 120m pounds into the club on Wednesday. [9]

They did it by buying new shares in ENIC, the company that owns 88.3% of Tottenham. [9]

It is their third payment in a year, after 100m pounds in October 2025 and 100m in June 2026. [9]

The club spent heavily this summer, including a deal worth up to 100m pounds for Sandro Tonali. [9] Payments since May 2022 now pass 450m pounds. [9]

Daniel Levy, the chairman sacked last September, did not put money into the June payment. His share of the club fell from about 26% to about 24% as a result. [9]

Also seen in Climate and Money.

Ryan Garcia kept his WBC welterweight world title by stopping Conor Benn in Las Vegas on Saturday, after three minutes and 45 seconds. [10] Almost 19,000 people had tickets. [10]

Benn had fought at over 160lb last November and weighed in at 146lb. [10] He dieted for 15 weeks, eating 1,000 calories a day less than his body needed. [10]

Less than 12 hours after weighing in, he posted a video showing 178lb. [10]

A sports physiologist told The Athletic that about 89% of combat athletes still lack body water on the morning of a fight.

Drinking and eating fast puts weight back on the scale, but not water back into the body's tissues. [10]

The top tennis players who had campaigned for more prize money said on Monday that they are ending the public part of it. [11]

The four Grand Slams, tennis's biggest tournaments, created a council last month through which players can negotiate. [11]

Players had asked for 22% of tournament revenue, and the Slams have not agreed to it. [11] Prize money across five Slams since the request reached $415.6m. [11]

Players estimate more than $30m of that is above what the old growth rate would have paid. They say they will restart the campaign if the council fails. [11]

The WTA Finals, the season-ending event of women's tennis, will be played in Charlotte, North Carolina, from next year. [12]

The WTA, which runs women's professional tennis, called it at least a three-year deal. [12]

In July the tour pulled out of the last year of a three-year deal with Saudi Arabia. [12]

It moved this year's event to Indian Wells, California, over worries about military conflicts in the Middle East. [12]

The WTA's chair, Valerie Camillo, says she wants the event to become the Super Bowl for women's sports. It comes while the tour is in financial difficulty. [12]

The Asian Games open in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan, on Saturday and run to 4 October. [15][33] Organisers planned for about 15,000 athletes and officials, but about 17,000 registered. [13]

Hundreds had to leave their rooms briefly in heavy rain last week, and roofs leaked at several venues. [14] Organisers have also had to work hard to sell tickets. [14]

India alone is sending about 500 athletes. [33]

The Games have 469 medal events in 43 sports, against 329 at the Paris Olympics. [14]

Chess, go, Chinese chess and bridge were dropped after they helped China win a record 201 golds in 2023. [14]

Eumir Marcial, a Filipino boxer who won Olympic bronze in Tokyo, is due to fight Omar Ulises Huerta in California on 19 September. [16]

Four days later he is due in the ring at the Asian Games in Aichi, Japan. [16] The boxing draw is held hours after his professional fight. [16]

Huerta has won 15 of 17 fights, 13 by knockout. [16] Marcial has not boxed as a professional since October 2025. [16]

He won the Philippines' only boxing medal at the last Asian Games, which also earned him a place at the Paris Olympics. [16]

Its boxing federation had expected him to lead its team. [16]

India, the men's Twenty20 world champions, will play Japan in Sano on 22 September. [17]

It is the first time Japan will face a full member of the International Cricket Council, the sport's world body. [17] Japan has 7,300 registered players and 16 grounds. [17]

Leaders of both countries agreed in July to mark 75 years of diplomatic ties with the match. [17] Suzuki, the carmaker, is backing it. [17]

Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan also play in Japan this month, at the Asian Games cricket in a converted baseball ground in Nisshin. [17]

Scott Coker, who ran the Strikeforce and Bellator fighting leagues, launched Ki MMA in New York on Monday. [19][18]

It plans a 32-fighter tournament at 145lb from early 2027, across four continents. [18] The last four would fight a semi-final and a final on the same night. [18]

Ki has $60m of funding but no TV deal yet. [18] The UFC stopped same-night tournaments after 1999, as it sought approval in more US states. [18]

The format needs at least 13 events, three on each continent plus the final, and none has a date yet. [18]

Coker's earlier leagues were both sold, Strikeforce to the UFC and Bellator to a rival. [19][18]

Conor McGregor, the Irish mixed martial arts fighter, said he has one fight left on his UFC contract. [20]

He said he cannot wait to be free to fight in Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, where he is a part-owner. [20] He spoke after its event on Friday. [20]

McGregor has won one of his five fights since 2018. [20]

His UFC contract has hung over every rumour about his next fight. [20] Once it ends, he can fight for a league he partly owns. [20]

Joshua Van defends his UFC flyweight title against Alexandre Pantoja in Los Angeles on Saturday. [22] Van won it in December when Pantoja dislocated his elbow 26 seconds into their fight. [22]

Pantoja was back in the gym two days later with his arm in a sling. [22]

Muhammad Mokaev, a British fighter the UFC let go in 2024 after seven straight wins, has fought eight times since. [21]

Mokaev says the UFC offered him $10,000 for a jiu-jitsu match rather than a return. [21]

He now signs one fight at a time so he can go back if the UFC asks. [21]

Henry Cejudo, an Olympic gold medallist and former UFC champion at two weights, boxes in Miami on 26 September. [23]

The fight is for Misfits Boxing, a promoter built around online stars. [23] His first opponent, an influencer, pulled out less than two weeks before. [23]

The replacement is Javon Walton, 20, an actor from the TV series Euphoria who has won three pro fights. [23]

Cejudo retired from the UFC after losing in December 2025. [23]

Walton is under contract to another promoter, Most Valuable Promotions, which is lending him for one night to fill the main event. [23]

Katie Taylor, the Irish boxer who won Olympic gold in 2012, fought for the last time on 5 September. [24]

She beat Flora Pili on points in front of more than 80,000 people at Croke Park in Dublin. [24] She became undisputed junior welterweight champion for the second time. [24]

ESPN's new top ten puts Claressa Shields first. [24] Chantelle Cameron rises to third after winning three of the four world titles at her weight. [24]

Taylor also held every title at lightweight. [24] Her retirement opens a place in the top ten for Caroline Dubois. [24]

Netball New Zealand has agreed in principle to let Anna Mowbray and her husband Ali Williams run its top league from 2027. [25]

Williams played rugby for the All Blacks, and the couple already co-own Auckland FC, a football club. [25] The national body keeps the Silver Ferns national team and the community game. [25]

Teams can now use two overseas players instead of one. [25]

New Zealand Rugby tried a similar split with the US investment firm Silver Lake in 2022. [25] It pulled its business and rugby sides back together under one boss in 2025. [25]

The Dolphins, a club in Australia's National Rugby League, have 14 players who can leave on 1 November. [26]

They include the centre Herbie Farnworth, man of the match in a 26-16 play-off win. [26] Chief executive Terry Reader says reported offers for his players are exaggerated. [26]

He says players will earn about 20% more a season once the salary cap starts rising in steps from 2028. [26]

The Dolphins play a preliminary final first. [26]

Reader says a club cannot match every offer, so he is counting on players choosing to stay together, as Penrith's core players did while that club won four titles. [26]

Henry Pollock, a young Northampton Saints forward, said on Monday that his new contract is not signed and he is open to offers. [27]

Reports had put a deal at about 400,000 pounds a year. [27] His adviser is the boxing promoter Eddie Hearn, who says Pollock is worth 1m pounds a season. [27]

Fans point out that English rugby's salary cap makes that figure unrealistic. [27]

Pollock helped Northampton win the league title last season and has brought in young fans. [27]

The club's director of rugby joked it would have been good to settle it three weeks ago. [27]

Barbra Banda signed a new contract with Orlando Pride, of the US women's league, averaging well over $1m a year. [28]

It is the biggest in the club's history, and it has no release clause. [28] Orlando says other clubs called offering world-record transfer fees. [28]

A league rule from December 2025 lets clubs pay up to $1m above the $3.7m salary cap for star players. [28]

Banda has scored 16 goals in 20 games this season after injury cut short her 2025. [28]

With no release clause, no rival can force a sale by paying a fixed sum. [28]

Charles Huff, Memphis's new American football coach, hired sleep physician Cheri Mah for about $20,000. [29] His first game kicked off at 9pm on his players' home clock, in Las Vegas. [29]

Mah has worked with two Super Bowl-winning teams. [29] Players logged their sleep, turned rooms down to 68F and put phones away earlier. [29]

In one Stanford study, sleeping more improved basketball shooting by 9%. [29]

A long-running study found West Coast teams beat the betting line 66% of the time in late East Coast games. [29]

Huff says following her plan to the letter will give Memphis an edge. [29]

Florida State University fired its athletic director, Michael Alford, on Monday. [30] The university's leaders said the decision was about the long term and not about the football coach, Mike Norvell. [30]

Norvell has won 39 and lost 35 at the school. [30] His team is 1-1 and plays Alabama away on Saturday as a 19.5-point underdog. [30]

Last season the first coaches fired were at UCLA and Virginia Tech, after losing their first three games. [30] Norvell's boss is now gone before the season's third week. [30]

Ben Shelton lost the US Open final to Alexander Zverev on Sunday and rose to a career-high fourth in the world on Monday. [31]

He was then named for the US Davis Cup team against the Czech Republic in Prague this week. [31]

The weekend after, he plays for Team World at the Laver Cup at London's O2 Arena. [31][32] Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul pulled out of the Davis Cup team. [31]

Zverev is also playing both events, for Germany and for Team Europe. [31] Andre Agassi and Yannick Noah return as the two Laver Cup captains. [32]