Sports, in brief

Money pouring into clubs

The average NHL club rose 16% in value in a year. [2] The Philadelphia 76ers signed what Sportico's sources call the NBA's second-biggest shirt sponsor deal. [7] A Japanese baseball club got more than $50m when its star pitcher left for Los Angeles. [8]

Fights over betting rules

The US regulator for prediction markets is checking the cash offers those apps use to sign people up. [9] The US Supreme Court may decide whether states can treat the apps as gambling. [10] New York sued Polymarket, one of the two biggest, last Thursday. [11]

Football's rulers under attack

FIFA, which runs world football, told a US court that UEFA is spreading false claims about its president. [12] Turkish police arrested the head of the body that runs the country's referees. [13] A UK minister said Manchester City could in principle be expelled from the Premier League. [14]

Stars hurt before big games

Rugby league's Nathan Cleary broke his ankle in a club semi-final and will miss the World Cup. [15] The Yankees played their first playoff game without Aaron Judge, who has a calf injury. [16] Boston brought back pitcher Garrett Crochet, who has not played since April. [17]

1. 1Ice hockey's NHL clubs are worth $2.43bn on average as the season starts, 16% more than a year ago. The Islanders agreed to sell 15% of theirs at a $3bn value.
2. 2Braves win the first game against the Phillies
3. 3Yankees beat the Red Sox 9-0 without Judge
4. 4White Sox win a playoff game two years after 121 defeats
5. 5FIFA tells a US court UEFA is spreading false claims

Ice hockey's NHL, North America's top league, started its season on Tuesday.

Watch the NHL's vote on the Islanders sale, and the price of a 33rd club: Sportico's sources put it at $2.3bn or more, against the $650m Seattle paid to join in 2018. [2]

The Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies 5-3 on Tuesday, in the first game of a best-of-three baseball playoff series. [18]

Austin Riley hit a three-run home run in the eighth inning off Jhoan Duran, the Phillies' best relief pitcher. [18]

Manager Don Mattingly had sent Duran in during the seventh, an inning he had not pitched all season. [19]

Phillies relief pitchers gave up runs at the worst rate in the major leagues in September. [18]

It is the third playoff opener in a row in which they lost a lead from the seventh inning on. [21]

The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 9-0 in the first game of their playoff series on Tuesday night. [16]

Their star hitter Aaron Judge missed it with a calf injury. [16] Ben Rice hit two home runs, one with all the bases full, and drove in six runs. [16]

Pitcher Cam Schlittler struck out 10 and threw 117 pitches, the most by a Yankees playoff starter since 2012. [16]

Rice and Schlittler both grew up among Red Sox fans in Massachusetts. [16]

Boston now need two wins in a row. The only team to do that in this round was last year's Yankees, against Boston. [20]

The Chicago White Sox beat the Houston Astros 6-3 on Tuesday for their first playoff win since 2021. [22]

Two years ago they lost 121 games, the most by a major league team since 1899. [22]

They are the first club ever to reach the playoffs straight after two seasons of 100 or more defeats. [22]

Houston got in with 81 wins and 81 defeats, and 34,011 fans came to a ground that holds 40,963. [22]

Part of the turnaround was Munetaka Murakami, a Japanese star the White Sox signed for two years and $34m, who hit a rookie record 20 home runs before June. [8]

Game 2 is in Houston on Wednesday. [22]

FIFA, which runs world football, told a court in Florida that UEFA, which runs European football, is waging a 'misinformation campaign' against its president, Gianni Infantino. [12]

UEFA had asked the court for FIFA documents for a possible criminal complaint in Switzerland. [23]

The fight is over a scrapped plan to sell 20% of FIFA's World Cup business for $4.2bn. [12] UEFA says that valued the business too low, at $20bn.

FIFA says $20bn was only the shares, and the whole business was worth over $30bn. [23]

FIFA also asked the judge not to let UEFA sway its election. [24] Infantino stands for a fourth term in March, and challengers have until 18 November to enter. [25]

Aleksander Ceferin, UEFA's president, told European club bosses in Copenhagen on Tuesday that 'the emperor is naked', borrowing the old fairy tale. [26]

He said selling part of football's future does not become 'development' because someone calls it that. [26]

Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who runs Paris Saint-Germain and Europe's club association, said he has 'zero interest' in running against Infantino. [27] Ceferin has ruled himself out as well. [27]

UEFA wants Infantino gone, but seven weeks before the deadline it still has no candidate to stand against him. [27]

Turkish police arrested Ferhat Gundogdu, head of the body that runs the country's football referees, with his deputy and five other people. [13]

Turkey's justice minister said the case is about interference in how referees are graded, picked for matches and tested on the rules. [13] Police searched homes and offices. [13]

Last November the Turkish Football Federation suspended 149 referees and assistants after finding that hundreds of officials had betting accounts. [13]

The body under investigation is the one that decides which referee gets which match and who is promoted. The minister did not link the case to last year's betting scandal. [13]

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which oversees prediction markets, is checking the rewards those apps offer new users, Front Office Sports, a sports-business site, reported. [9]

Prediction markets let people put money on yes-or-no questions, such as who wins a game. [11]

The CFTC is looking at offers that promise cash in a new account for signing up and trading. [9]

Kalshi, Polymarket and Novig all offer rewards like these, and some action is expected this week. [9]

The CFTC warned the companies in August and is frustrated that many did not change. [9] Some politicians in both main US parties have been pushing it to act. [9]

The US Supreme Court may soon agree to hear cases about prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket, Reuters reported on Tuesday. [10]

The companies say they sell financial contracts that only the CFTC should oversee. [10] A group of states says sports contracts are gambling and fall under state betting laws. [10]

Lower appeal courts have disagreed. [10] Last Thursday New York sued Polymarket, saying it takes bets without a licence. [11]

If the court calls them gambling, the apps face different bans, taxes and licences state by state. [10]

A source told Front Office Sports New York wants at least $4.6bn, though its court papers name no figure. [28]

Nathan Cleary, the halfback who runs the attack for Penrith Panthers and Australia, broke and dislocated his left ankle in a tackle on Sunday. [15]

It came in Penrith's play-off defeat by the Newcastle Knights in the NRL, Australia's top rugby league competition. [15]

He was already playing with a broken bone in his right foot, and will have surgery on both feet. [15]

Before the game Penrith had said the foot injury could get worse. [29]

He misses the World Cup in Australia, which starts on 15 October with Australia against New Zealand. [15] He helped Australia win the last one, four years ago in Manchester. [15]

A club pays a player all year and his country borrows him for a few weeks, so the national team takes him as his club season made him.

So it has almost no say over the rest of their year at their clubs, and it gets them in whatever state that year leaves them.

A tackle in that game broke his other ankle, and Australia lose him for their home World Cup.

Each decision about him is made for the next game, by whoever pays him, and nobody is choosing for both.

The NRL's disciplinary panel banned Newcastle's Phoenix Crossland for four matches on Tuesday for the tackle that broke Cleary's ankle. [30]

It was a 'hip-drop', where the tackler drops his weight onto the runner's legs; the league outlawed it in 2020. [15]

Crossland pleaded guilty and apologised, and said Cleary is his favourite player. [30] He misses Sunday's grand final, the NRL's title match, against the Sydney Roosters. [30]

The same ban covers New Zealand's three World Cup group games, against Australia, the Cook Islands and Fiji. [30]

He plays for his country again only if New Zealand reach the semi-finals. [30]

UEFA will pay €31.5m to clubs whose players took part in the 2024-25 Nations League, a competition between Europe's national teams. [31]

The money goes to 611 clubs, some of them amateur. [31] RB Leipzig, of Germany, gets the most, about €353,000 for lending 16 players. [31]

It is part of €104m set aside for clubs across two Nations Leagues and the qualifiers for Euro 2028. [31]

The payment comes from a deal between UEFA and European Football Clubs, which speaks for more than 800 clubs. [31]

The money is for releasing players, whom the clubs employ, to play for their countries. [31]

Oura, which makes rings that track sleep and heart rate, put off its $2.2bn share sale on Tuesday, blaming uncertain markets. [32]

Its early backers include basketball's Shaquille O'Neal and Manu Ginobili, cyclist Lance Armstrong and a fund run by baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers. [32]

Several of them put money in during 2018, when Oura was valued at $35.2m. [32] The sale would have valued it at about $15.6bn. [32]

Athletes and team owners have been investing in fitness gadgets, a business close to their own. [32] Oura's chairman, David Shuman, is also one of the Islanders' new investors. [32]

The Philadelphia 76ers, an NBA basketball club, signed Bloom Energy, a company that makes fuel cells for electricity, as the sponsor on their shirts. [7]

Neither side gave the price, but two people told Sportico it is the NBA's second-biggest shirt deal. [7] The Golden State Warriors have the biggest, worth more than $50m a year. [7]

The 76ers added LeBron James and Jaylen Brown this summer. [7]

Sportico says the deal gives Bloom wide exposure: the 76ers will play 34 games on national TV this season, the most the league allows. [7]

Japan's top baseball league, NPB, keeps losing its best players to America's MLB, and is looking for ways to stay strong, Front Office Sports reported. [8]

A Japanese player needs nine years in NPB before he can leave freely. [8] Before that, his club must agree to 'post' him, and the American club pays it a fee. [8]

The fee is 20% of the first $25m of his contract, 17.5% of the next $25m and 15% of the rest. [8]

The Orix Buffaloes got more than $50m when Yoshinobu Yamamoto joined the Los Angeles Dodgers. [8] NPB still draws more than 25 million fans a year to its 12 clubs. [8]

South Africa beat Australia by 32 runs in Johannesburg on Sunday to win their three-match one-day cricket series with a game to spare. [33]

Temba Bavuma scored 103 and David Miller 142, the best score of his career, in a total of 365 for nine. [33] Australia were all out for 333. [33]

Miller wore his mother Jenny's name on his shirt, in a yearly match that raises money for breast cancer care. [34]

It is South Africa's sixth series win in a row against Australia. [34]

Australia's batters were beaten by spin bowling again, and they were without fast bowler Pat Cummins. [33] The last game is in Potchefstroom. [33]

Six batters scored hundreds in one-day internationals on Sunday 27 September, the most ever on one day, ESPNcricinfo's statistics column said. [35]

India's Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill, and Justin Greaves of the West Indies, all did it in one game in Thiruvananthapuram. [35]

Bavuma and Miller did it in Johannesburg, and Tom Banton for England at The Oval. [35] The old record was five. [35]

Three one-day games fell on the same Sunday. [35] On that day Somerset's Tom Abell also reached 307, the latest triple hundred ever made in an English season. [35]

Cricket South Africa will stage 78 days of international cricket this season, more than ever, and its busiest grounds are wearing out. [36]

Its answer is an 'exchangeable pitch system': strips of pitch grown ready, which a ground can swap in and out. [36] Each ground grows them from its own soil and grass. [36]

It is different from Australia's drop-in pitches, which are lifted out so other sports can use the stadium. [36]

The same few grounds must carry a much busier season, and tired pitches can turn slow and uneven. [36]

South Korea's An Se-young, the world and Olympic badminton champion, beat Japan's Akane Yamaguchi 21-17, 21-9 at the Asian Games on Tuesday. [37]

She is the first woman to win the Asian Games singles twice in a row, and she did not lose a game all tournament. [37]

Surfing gave out its first Asian Games medals, and Japan won both golds. [37] Kanoa Igarashi and Mirai Ikeda also won places at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. [37]

North Korea will play Japan in the women's football final. [37] Weak ticket sales left the stadium in Shizuoka nearly empty for the semi-finals. [37]

Rain washed out Tuesday's cricket quarter-finals at the Asian Games in Japan. [37] Sri Lanka and Bangladesh went through to the semi-finals because they were ranked higher than Nepal and Malaysia. [37]

Organisers apologised after Pakistan's volleyball team was driven to the wrong city for a match, which then started late. [38]

South Korea's men's team also missed a practice after reaching the wrong venue. [38]

Pakistan still won 3-0. [38] Transport problems have delayed events and upset athletes' preparation throughout the Games. [37]

Athletics at the Asian Games ended on a rainy Tuesday with Japan winning the men's 4x400m relay in 3:00.75, ahead of Qatar and India. [39] India won the women's 4x400m relay. [39]

Ernest John Obiena of the Philippines won the pole vault at 5.91 metres. [39] China topped the athletics medal table with 17 golds, Japan had 10 and Bahrain 9. [39]

Obiena's own Asian record, 6.00 metres, is 30 centimetres short of Armand Duplantis's world record. [39]

Puripol Boonson, 20, won the Asian Games 200 metres on Sunday in 19.88 seconds, two days after winning the 100m. [40]

He is the first Thai sprinter to run 200m in under 20 seconds. [40] His time equals the Asian record set by China's Xie Zhenye seven years ago. [40]

On the same day China's Yan Ziyi, 18, beat the Olympic javelin champion, Japan's Haruka Kitaguchi, with her first throw. [40]

The world championships are in Beijing next year, and Puripol said he is aiming for more records. [40]

Trent Redden, standing in as the Los Angeles Clippers' president of basketball, apologised on Monday for the club's weeks of silence about its NBA penalties. [41]

The league fined the Clippers $30m and took five first-round draft picks for arranging paid deals for star Kawhi Leonard with companies doing business with the team. [41]

Owner Steve Ballmer is suspended for a year, and basketball chief Lawrence Frank for six months. [41]

The NBA treated the deals as a way around its salary cap, the limit on what a club spends on players. [41] The club starts its season without Ballmer and Frank. [41]

South Carolina's Dylan Stewart, a star defensive player, was banned for one game by his college and the Southeastern Conference (SEC), its league, for punching an Alabama player in the helmet. [42]

It happened in Saturday's 49-18 defeat, and Stewart also shouted at his coaches. [42] SEC commissioner Greg Sankey warned of harsher punishment next time. [42]

Stewart misses Saturday's home game against Kentucky. [42]

His coach, Shane Beamer, first suspended him with no end date; the league then set it at one game. [42]

The torch relay for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will pass through all 50 US states, starting in Atlanta, the organisers, LA28, said on Tuesday. [43]

Atlanta hosted the Games in 1996. [43] The route and the dates will be announced in 2027. [43]

Coca-Cola, JPMorgan Chase, Allstate and Xfinity will be the relay's presenting sponsors. [43]

Los Angeles will host the Olympics for a third time, and the Paralympics for the first. [43]

Germany's Olympic committee picked Munich on Saturday to bid for the Summer Games of 2036, 2040 or 2044. [44] Berlin pulled out two days before the vote. [44]

Munich last hosted in 1972, when 11 Israeli team members were killed after being taken hostage. [44]

Earlier German bids were voted down by local residents, who worried how big and expensive the Games would be. [44]

More than 10 places have shown interest, among them India, Indonesia, Qatar's capital Doha and Saudi Arabia. [44] The IOC, which runs the Olympics, has set no date to decide. [44]

Pune, in India's Maharashtra state, will host cycling's road world championships in 2032, the UCI, cycling's governing body, said last Wednesday. [45]

It is the first time they will be held in India. [45] Pune ran India's first multi-stage international road race in January. [45]

The other bidders, Groningen and Drenthe in the Netherlands, were given 2034. [45]

The UCI chose to award two championships at once, so neither bidder went away empty. [45]

Sarina Wiegman, England's women's coach, said the fall in young English players in the Women's Super League (WSL) worries her. [46]

Home-grown players made up 45.9% of WSL matchday squads in 2023-24 and 34.2% so far this season, by the count of Opta, a sports data company. [46]

London City Lionesses started one game with no English player at all. [46]

Players aged 18 to 23 need real games to develop, Wiegman said. [46]

She named two uncapped players for England's World Cup play-offs against Greece and left out Ella Toone and Chloe Kelly. [46]