Sports, in brief

TV money moving to big nights

Baseball wants fewer ordinary games and more playoff nights before its new national TV deals in 2029. [5] The NBA plans to spend about $10bn over ten years on a new European league, with some places expected to sell for more than $1bn. [9] A football fan in the UK needs four paid TV services to see every Premier League, Champions League and Scottish Premiership match. [10]

Sport's fights going to court

Sport's highest court heard Senegal's appeal over January's Africa Cup of Nations final on Thursday. [11] The NFL asked the US Supreme Court to let US states, not a federal US agency, police betting apps. [12] Manchester City's case for breaking the Premier League's money rules now goes to an independent appeal board. [13]

Rules with no one to enforce them

College sport's pay watchdog is investigating five to ten top programmes, but it never got the schools to sign the agreement that would give it power. [14] The NFL says the US agency for betting apps has only 543 staff for the whole country. [15] Rugby league graded London 16th, yet Australia's NRL, which plans to invest, wants London in the top division anyway. [16]

Fans paying more

The cheapest Ashes ticket at Edgbaston, a cricket ground in Birmingham, went from £65 in 2023 to £115 for 2027. [10] The average Premier League replica shirt costs 50.7% more than a decade ago. [17]

1. 1Major League Baseball proposes cutting its season from 162 to 154 games in 2029, and ties it to a salary cap the players refuse
2. 2NFL asks the US Supreme Court to step in on betting apps
3. 3College sport's pay watchdog investigates top programmes
4. 4Infantino's likeliest rival stays out of FIFA's election
5. 5Ceferin will stay at UEFA and sets out a FIFA reform plan

Watch the union's written reply at the bargaining table: while the shorter season stays tied to a salary cap, it waits on the lockout expected after 1 December. [1][2]

The NFL, American football's league, filed a brief on Thursday asking the US Supreme Court to take a case on prediction markets. [12]

These are apps such as Kalshi where people buy contracts on game results, and they are run under US federal rules rather than state gambling laws. [18]

Appeals courts have split on who should police them. [15] The NFL backs New Jersey and the states, and Ohio and 38 other states filed in support the day before. [15]

Kalshi must reply by 9 November, and the court will not decide before December. [12]

On the first Sunday of this season, $1.8bn of the $3.3bn traded on these apps was on NFL games. [15]

Baseball, ice hockey and Major League Soccer have partnership deals with Kalshi or Polymarket, so the NFL is breaking ranks with other leagues. [19]

The College Sports Commission (CSC), the body that polices how much US colleges pay their players, is investigating five to ten top programmes, CBS Sports reported. [14]

Under a court settlement, schools may pay their players about $21.5m this year directly, but some football rosters cost $40m to $50m. [14]

The gap is filled by outside sponsorship deals, which the CSC must approve as fair. [14] It has cleared $582.5m of them and refused $156.9m. [14]

The CSC is looking for fake sponsorship deals used to get round the limit, the way the NBA's Clippers were accused of doing. [14]

It never got all 68 of the biggest schools to sign the agreement that would force them to cooperate, so it may struggle to punish anyone. [14]

Victor Montagliani, who runs Concacaf, the football body for North and Central America and the Caribbean, will seek a final term there instead of challenging Gianni Infantino. [20][21]

Many had seen him as the strongest rival to Infantino, FIFA's president, after Infantino's failed plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to investors. [22][21]

The same day, all 54 African federations backed Infantino at a meeting in Cape Verde. [23][7] Candidates must enter by 18 November, and the vote is in Rabat on 18 March. [20][23]

Infantino needs 106 of FIFA's 211 votes, and Africa's 54 are more than half of that. [21]

UEFA, Europe's football body, has led the campaign against him and still has no candidate. [22]

Aleksander Ceferin will stand for a fourth term as president of UEFA, the body that runs European football, after saying in 2024 that he would not. [24]

UEFA changed its rules in 2024 to allow it, and England's Football Association was the only country to vote against. [24]

Its 55 members met in Berlin and published a plan to reform FIFA, backed by everyone except Azerbaijan. [23]

It asks for a president 'who leads, not manages' and a one-off $10m for each FIFA member from its reserves of nearly $6bn. [20][23]

UEFA's vote is on 22 April 2027 in Astana, and Ceferin is expected to win it. [24]

Ceferin and the rest of FIFA's 37-member council meet Infantino in Zurich next week, their first meeting since the World Cup sale plan. [23]

Senegal beat Morocco 1-0 after extra time in January's Africa Cup of Nations final in Rabat, Morocco's capital. [11]

During the match Senegal's players walked off for about 15 minutes in protest at a late penalty, then came back. [11]

In March an appeals panel of CAF, Africa's football body, ruled Senegal had forfeited and gave Morocco a 3-0 win. [11]

The Court of Arbitration for Sport, sport's highest court, heard Senegal's appeal in Lausanne on Thursday and expects to rule within days. [11]

Football's own rules say the referee's decisions on the result are final, and the referee finished the match. [11]

Since the final, football's lawmakers have added a red card for any player who walks off in protest. [25]

Manchester City were found guilty last month of breaking the Premier League's money rules for years. [13]

A separate, independent board will hear the club's appeal, and the hearing to set the punishment has not been scheduled. [13][26]

Some rival clubs told the BBC they now fear political interference, after Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he would be 'really concerned' if City's owners sold. [13]

Burnham says he did not play down the verdict. [13]

City's owners are from Abu Dhabi, and the UK government wants more trade with the United Arab Emirates. [13]

Senior figures also say City cannot easily be refused a licence for Europe, because licences look only at a club's current finances. [26]

The NBA's planned European league will start in 2028, a year late, with a qualifying event next year to pick four temporary members, the Guardian reports. [9]

The NBA, North America's basketball league, plans to invest about $10bn over ten years. [9] Twelve permanent places are expected to sell for $500m to more than $1bn each. [9]

An NBA managing director said on Thursday that it is still moving ahead with plans for a launch next year. [9]

The London place has drawn bids above $1bn, including from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. [9] Permanent places are planned for cities including London, Manchester, Rome, Athens, Istanbul and Lyon. [9]

EuroLeague's clubs voted this week to keep their own league, though NBA sources say talks will continue. [9]

Baseball's 162-game season was sized for local TV channels that paid for a game almost every night, and those channels are shrinking.

Now that national broadcasters pay the most, eight ordinary games are worth less to the league than a longer playoff round in October.

Players, ticket buyers and viewers each see only their own part of that deal.

Super League, the top division of English rugby league, picks its clubs by a grading that scores fans, money, stadiums, community work and results. [27]

This year's grades keep all 14 clubs for 2027, with champions Wakefield Trinity top on 17.85 out of 20. [27][16]

London Broncos won every second-tier trophy but were graded 16th, below Barrow. [27] Even so, London look set to become a 15th club. [16]

Australia's National Rugby League (NRL) is close to investing in Super League, and it insists London must be in the top flight. [16]

In return the NRL would take control of how Super League is run, away from the club owners. [16]

A BBC investigation traced official replica shirts for Arsenal, Celtic, Liverpool and Real Madrid to two factories in Cambodia, Bowker and Trax Apparel. [17]

Payslips showed basic pay of $210 to $220 a month, under £1 an hour. [17] Workers described heat above 35C and targets of up to 700 items a day. [17]

Adidas, which supplies eight of the 20 Premier League clubs, says wages at its Cambodian suppliers average 34% above a living-wage benchmark. [17]

Research cited by the BBC splits a typical £85 shirt as £8.50 for fabric, sewing and shipping and £37.45 for the retailer. [17]

The average adult replica shirt costs 50.7% more than ten years ago, and fans are turning to fakes. [17]

The cheapest adult ticket for an Ashes day at Edgbaston in 2027 is £115, against £65 in 2023, BBC Sport found. [10]

General admission at the British Grand Prix is £289, up from £189 in 2021. [10]

The R&A, which runs golf's Open, says hosting it costs 25% more than five or six years ago, and tickets bring in under 20% of its money. [10]

More seats are sold as hospitality, and corporate boxes are being split into single premium seats for couples and small groups. [10]

In a BBC Sport poll, 95% said Ashes tickets were too expensive. [10]

At home, a UK football fan needs Sky, TNT, Amazon and Premier Sports to see every Premier League, Champions League and Scottish match. [10]

A'ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces was named the WNBA's most valuable player for the fifth time on Thursday, the first player to do it. [28]

It is also her third in a row, another first for the women's basketball league. [29] She took 65 of 74 first-place votes after averaging 26.2 points a game. [28]

Olivia Miles of Minnesota, a rookie, came second, ahead of Indiana's Kelsey Mitchell and Caitlin Clark. [30]

In the men's NBA only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with six, has won more MVP awards. [29] Wilson's Aces trail Golden State 2-0 in their semi-final and must win Game 3 on Friday. [28]

The Milwaukee Brewers beat the San Diego Padres 3-1 in San Diego on Wednesday to win their playoff series three games to one. [31]

Jackson Chourio, 22, now has 17 playoff runs batted in from 16 games. [32] That ties Andruw Jones's record for a player under 23, which took Jones 45 games. [32]

The Brewers, who won 103 games this season, now play the Los Angeles Dodgers for a place in the World Series. [33]

It is a rematch of last year's semi-final, which the Dodgers won 4-0 as Milwaukee scored one run a game. [33]

The Dodgers, two-time defending champions, were the only other team to win 100 games this season. [33]

Bordeaux, six times French champions, will play this season in the sixth tier, the regional league confirmed on Thursday. [34]

They were punished in the summer for failing to find about 10m euros for two seasons and to meet debt payments. [34]

Their new owners, the US group Park Bench, bought the club last month for one euro. [34] A 12-year rescue plan halves the debt from 26m to 13m euros. [34]

A commercial court must approve the plan on 20 October. [34] The team is now mostly amateur and may field only five players on professional contracts. [34]

Presidents of the SEC, one of the biggest US college sports conferences, will consider making athletes who transfer to another SEC school sit out a season, Yahoo Sports reported. [35]

The idea revives an old NCAA rule that once applied to almost every transfer. [35] College sport has also cut its spring transfer window, leaving one window a year. [35]

Any such rule would almost certainly be challenged in court. [35]

The SEC is writing its own rules while the Protect College Sports Act, which passed the US Senate, waits in the House. [35]

A sit-out could stop rivals poaching from each other, but it could also push top players to leave the conference. [35]

The NCAA, which runs US college sport, proposed on Tuesday letting basketball teams play up to three summer games or scrimmages against other colleges, open to fans. [36]

Today their only summer games are on foreign tours, which have been allowed every year since a change earlier this year. [36]

The committees vote in December, and the change could start in January. [36] Transferred players could play for their new teams in those games. [36]

Schools need new money to pay their players, and televised summer games could bring it in. [36]

Boston College's coach said it has been described to him as almost like the NBA's summer league. [36]

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, without a win this season, beat the Dallas Cowboys 24-16 in the Cowboys' own stadium on Thursday night. [37]

Jalon Daniels, an undrafted rookie quarterback, threw for 189 yards and a touchdown. [37] Bucky Irving ran for 165 yards, and Tampa Bay ran for 243 in all. [37]

Their opening drive took 15 plays and about 11 minutes, their longest by time since 2007. [38]

Dallas, nearly 10-point favourites, fell to two wins and three defeats. [37] Their defence has ranked 28th, 30th and 30th in the league since 2024. [37]

NFL teams accepted 963 penalties in the first four weeks, the most at this point of a season since 1978, ESPN found. [39]

But the league's own count of all penalties called is down, from 17.44 a game last season to 16.86. [39]

The rise is in penalties before the ball is snapped, such as false starts, up from 6.44 to 6.69 a game. [39]

In the first week, 37% of starting players had played no pre-season football at all. [39]

A source told Front Office Sports the cause is 'sloppy play' by players, not stricter referees. [39]

Commanders coach Dan Quinn hired extra officials for practice this week to cut his team's mistakes. [39]

Sean Payton, head coach of the Denver Broncos, said on Thursday he will call the team's attacking plays himself again. [40]

He had handed the job to Davis Webb, a first-year coordinator, before the season. [40] Payton made the decision on Monday after a slow start to the season. [40]

He said Webb will still become a head coach one day. [40]

Denver play the Los Angeles Chargers away this week, the first game under the change. [40]

Quarterback Bo Nix, who has struggled this season, will again work with the coach who called plays in his first two years. [40]

LeBron James, 41, played his first pre-season game for the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday, after leaving the Los Angeles Lakers in the summer. [41]

He scored 10 points with five assists and four rebounds in 18 minutes. [41] He played only the first half, and Philadelphia lost 114-108 to the Brooklyn Nets. [41]

The 76ers also added Jaylen Brown, alongside Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. [41]

Sporting News expects his passing to matter most, with Embiid, Maxey and Brown to feed. [41] Young guard V.J.

Edgecombe still played 23 minutes and scored 11. [41]

England will host the 2031 Netball World Cup at the Co-op Live arena in Manchester, World Netball and England Netball announced on Thursday. [42] England last hosted in Liverpool in 2019. [42]

The Roses, England's team, reached their first World Cup final in 2023 and lost to Australia. [42] The award comes in England Netball's hundredth year. [42]

A ten-year plan to make the Netball Super League professional should be well advanced by 2031. [42] The sport is also pushing to join the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane. [42]

Clubs in the Women's Super League (WSL), England's top women's division, approved more money for referees, the Guardian reported. [43] But referees will only become full-time professionals in the 2029-30 season. [43]

They will then be employed by Pro Ref, which runs referees across English professional football. [43] Players in the WSL have been full-time since 2018-19, and men's top referees since 2001. [43]

Many WSL referees now hold other jobs alongside refereeing. [43] Some clubs wanted the change sooner and were disappointed it is three seasons away. [43]

England's women play Greece in Heraklion, Crete, on Friday in the first leg of a Women's World Cup play-off. [44]

Ella Toone was called back into the squad after Lucy Bronze went home with a minor injury. [44]

Coach Sarina Wiegman had left Toone out, saying she had not been playing to her level. [45] Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland also play first legs on Friday. [46]

England must win this tie and another against Slovakia or Ukraine to reach next summer's finals in Brazil. [44]

They are in the play-offs because Spain won their group, on a better goal difference in their two games against England. [45]

Australia play South Africa in Durban from Friday, their first Test series there since the 2018 sandpaper scandal. [47]

In Cape Town that year, Australia's players were caught using sandpaper to rough up the ball, and three were banned. [47]

Former batter Usman Khawaja, who played in that series, publishes his autobiography in November. [47]

Captain Pat Cummins said Khawaja called him about the book, and that the team has moved on. [48]

Cummins and three other bowlers said in 2021 they did not know about the plan. [47] The two sides are ranked first and second in the world. [48]

George Russell of Mercedes will start Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix from the back, because he needs an engine beyond his allowance. [49]

He said on Thursday he will take another penalty later this season, when Mercedes' improved engine is ready. [49] Each driver may use four engines a season, and seven races remain. [49]

His teammate Kimi Antonelli leads the championship by 84 points. [49]

Mercedes will also run its two cars in different versions this weekend to test whether a new upgrade works. [49]

Antonelli is likely to take a back-of-the-grid penalty too when the new engine arrives. [49]

Formula 1 declared Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix a heat-hazard race, the fourth of the year. [50] The label is used when the race is forecast to pass 31C. [50]

It lets teams fit a cooling vest that pumps cold liquid around the driver. [50]

Drivers who choose not to wear it must carry 5kg of extra weight, so they gain no advantage. [50]

The FIA, which runs F1, lets teams spend $50,000 outside the spending limit on a vest that lasts a whole race, and $75,000 more to make it comfortable. [50]

Mercedes called that too small and does not use one. [50]

Andrew Abdo, the new head of Tennis Australia, set out plans for the 2027 Australian Open on Thursday. [51]

They include 700 more seats, three times as much shade, and a cap on day passes to cut queues. [51] The tournament sold more than 1.3 million tickets this year. [51]

His speech was marred when he called world number one Jannik Sinner 'Jacob Sinner'. [51][7]

Abdo came from rugby league and has also made himself tournament director. [51] Last month he floated shorter men's matches, and the tournament had to say five-set tennis is staying. [51]

The LPGA, the main women's golf tour, will pay out $147m in prize money in 2027, up from $137.5m this year. [39]

That includes $94m for events outside the five majors, $12m more than this year. [39] The Women's PGA Championship is now the richest women's major, at $13m. [39]

The men's PGA Tour pays out $524.75m this year. [39]

The total could still rise, because majors often raise their prizes closer to the event. [39] The men's tour still pays more than three times as much. [39]