Sports, in brief

LIV Golf, the breakaway tour paid for by Saudi Arabia, told a US bankruptcy court it plans to wind down. [1]

BC Partners, a London investment firm, pulled out of a plan to put $300m into a new version. [2]

It judged that too few top golfers had agreed to come back in 2027. [2]

LIV's lawyer Matthew Williams said on Thursday they 'just couldn't get' enough financial and player support in time. [69] LIV says it remains open to other offers during the wind-down. [69]

LIV had already failed to pay suppliers and some of its players, CBS Sports reports. [6] Rahm was reported to be owed about $100m when he left. [1]

Adelaide, in South Australia, had a LIV event booked for 18-21 March. [1] The state's premier, Peter Malinauskas, said he did not expect it to go ahead. [70]

'I think it's not going to happen next year,' Malinauskas told reporters in Adelaide. [70]

The PGA Tour, the main US tour, has been slow to open more ways back for LIV golfers. [6]

Rory McIlroy said LIV gave golfers 'a lot of leverage' over the tours, and he doubts that helps the game. [5]

Contract lawyers call this a condition precedent: BC's $300m counted only if enough players signed first. [4]

The players were slow to swap guaranteed pay for a share in the league. [3] So by BC's reckoning the condition was not met in time. [2]

A school trip runs only if enough pupils pay by Friday. If too few pay, nobody goes, and nobody broke a promise.

CBS Sports reports about 15 interested players, while sources told ESPN and The Athletic about 30. [6][2] The 13-minute hearing did not say which players had signed. [1]

The bill differs too: the BBC says more than $5bn, while CBS says about $7bn. [1][6]

LIV and BC Partners now say only that terms could not be agreed, and neither has named the terms. [69]

LIV plans to file its wind-down plan by Monday, and the next hearing is on 24 November. [69] Golfers have until 16 November to apply to the DP World Tour. [2]

LIV Golf plans to close because BC Partners would pay only if enough star golfers signed, and it judged that too few had by its deadline. [4]

Saudi Arabia's fund had already spent more than $5bn on a tour that never earned more than $227m in a season. [3]

A figure like $300m sounds like money in the bank, so people plan around it long before anyone has met the conditions.

The rival that took their players and sponsors plans to close, so golfers must come back on the old tours' terms. [5]

They wait in a bankruptcy where the Saudi fund itself is the largest creditor. [4]

Its premier says the LIV event had been worth A$316m to the state, and it will not run next year. [70]

How much LIV's creditors will get back.

The tour's bankruptcy filing gives only wide ranges for what it owns and owes, and no sale of anything has been reported. [2]

Whether anyone else steps in.

LIV says it remains open to other offers, and its lawyer says its committee can revisit the decision if facts change. [1]

The Six Nations and Sanzaar rugby unions agreed to sell their TV and sponsor rights together for the first time. [18]

Sanzaar is New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and Argentina, so with the Six Nations that makes 10 unions. [18]

Southern unions will share profits from the Six Nations and from British and Irish Lions tours. [18]

European unions will share deals from the Rugby Championship and the New Zealand-South Africa series. [18]

A new agency, set up by a 10-person board, will run the sales. [18]

Sponsor deals change from 2028, and TV rights from 2030, because current TV deals run until 2029. [18]

Rugby needs the money, and the Guardian says debts left by Covid pushed the unions together. [19]

A broadcaster in 2030 can buy the Six Nations, Rugby Championship and Nations Championship as one package. [18]

Economists call this collective selling: 10 unions sell as one, hoping to raise what their rights fetch. [18]

Alone, each union faced a difficult TV market, so they pooled rights in the hope of growth. [18] Smaller packages stay on offer, to draw more bidders. [18]

Neighbours who sell old bikes at one stall draw a bigger crowd than each selling alone.

Fiji and Japan are not among the 10 founding unions, and get much smaller appearance fees. [18]

Voters in Plano, a Dallas suburb, rejected taxes for a Dallas Stars hockey arena by 55% to 45% on Tuesday. [7]

The Stars play in the NHL, North America's top hockey league, and want to move by 2031. [7]

The taxes, on hire cars, parking, hotels and tickets, would have paid Plano's $700m share. [7]

That money was for a $1bn arena, inside a $3bn project on the site of an empty shopping mall. [7]

The vote did not kill the arena, only that way of paying for it. [7]

Opponents campaigned under slogans like 'Puck No!', amid voters' worries about costs and traffic. [7]

Plano's city manager says the financing must be reassessed before the council acts. [7]

The plan resembles the Atlanta Braves' move to a suburb, where they built shops and homes around their ground. [7]

Public finance calls this earmarking: these taxes would have gone to one named project, Plano's arena share. [7]

The council had approved only a non-binding letter, so the $700m depended on voters agreeing. [7] When they said no, nothing was left to enforce. [7]

A class can vote down a trip fee without cancelling the trip. It just needs another way to pay.

The Stars had not commented on the result when Front Office Sports reported it. [7]

Why $300m on paper is not money until its conditions are met

A backer promises money, but only if something happens first

Everyone quotes the big number, and plans around it

The condition sits with other people: players, voters, a judge

The deadline comes and the condition is not met

The promise falls away, and nobody has broken it

A deal can die without anyone breaking a promise. The backer only ever promised to pay if the condition was met.

LIV's hunt for a backer. Even the 2 offers at the end were not binding, so the number that made the news was never yet money.

The city's $700m rested on a non-binding letter and on voters approving new taxes, so a 55% to 45% vote removed the money without anyone breaking a deal.

His guaranteed pay carried duties, and the team voided about $27m, reportedly over missed meetings.

The contract is on offer, but it works only if he gets an EU passport and Fifa signs it off.

The same idea run backwards: Burnley hold Everton's £38.8m now, and an appeal in January could make them repay it.

A condition protects the one paying, so it can also give them an easy way out.

The golfers, the suppliers and the people of Adelaide all planned around a number that one firm had promised only on terms.

They avoid the new charges that would have paid for the arena. [7]

Where Plano finds its share of the arena money.

Nobody has named another source for it, and the city manager's review has not reported. [7]

Burnley, in England's second tier, published accounts showing a £9m loss for 2025-26. [8]

Without £38.8m from Everton, the loss would have been £47.8m, a club record. [8]

Everton paid because its own breach of spending rules in 2021-22 hurt Burnley's fight against relegation. [8]

Everton's appeal is expected in January, and Burnley may have to repay anything from nothing to all of it. [8]

ALK Capital bought Burnley using a £65m loan against the club's assets and £37m of the club's own cash. [8]

Before that takeover, Burnley had no debt and £41.65m in the bank. [8]

Debt now stands at £62.9m, down by more than half, helped by £77.7m from the owners and Everton's money. [8]

£24.2m of bank loans falls due in January, and £21.6m next August. [8]

Burnley sit in the relegation zone, with 1 win in 14 league games. [8]

Finance calls this a leveraged buyout: ALK Capital borrowed against the very club it was buying. [8]

So Burnley ended up carrying the debt, paying interest as high as 12%. [8]

Imagine buying a shop with a loan that the shop itself must repay. Its till pays for your purchase.

Kieran Maguire, a football finance professor, said filing 6 months early lets Burnley count Everton's money before the January appeal. [8]

The same idea run backwards: Burnley hold Everton's £38.8m now, and an appeal in January could make them repay it.

If the loans cannot be refinanced, the club needs its owners to find more money, and its accounts warn of 'significant doubt' over its future. [8]

Whether Burnley will have to repay Everton.

The appeal has not been heard, and Burnley's accounts say they cannot measure the likely result. [8]

Voters in Arizona and Nebraska backed tighter bans on transgender athletes in women's and girls' sport on Tuesday. [20]

Arizona's measure had 59% and Nebraska's 68% on Wednesday afternoon. [20]

Washington and Colorado were also on track to pass bans, though both were too early to call. [20]

Nebraska's ban covers state schools, colleges and private schools that play against them. [20]

Arizona's defines sex as the sex assigned at birth, and also covers changing rooms and toilets. [20]

Washington's would ask women's team players for a health worker's statement verifying their sex. [20]

Washington and Colorado lean Democrat, so these votes ran against Tuesday's wider swing to Democrats. [20]

Lawyers call it entrenchment: Nebraska's voters moved a 2025 law into the state's constitution. [20]

A school rule in the founding charter is harder to drop than one on the noticeboard.

These counts were taken on Wednesday afternoon, and the final totals may move. [20]

The Protect College Sports Act now has almost no chance in the US House, sources tell Front Office Sports. [9]

The bill, on the rules of college sport, passed the US Senate 77-22 in September. [9]

It must pass the US House before the new US Congress sits on 3 January. [9]

Democrats won both chambers on Tuesday, and are unlikely to do deals with Republicans now. [9]

'There's absolutely zero reason to give Donald Trump a win on college sports,' one Democratic aide said. [9]

House Republicans had doubts too, including their leader Steve Scalise. [9] The Congressional Black Caucus, a group of Black lawmakers, opposed it. [9]

The bill's backers now face starting over with a US Congress run by Democrats. [9]

In US lawmaking, a bill that has not passed dies when that Congress ends. [9] So the 77 Senate votes count for nothing unless the House acts within weeks. [9]

Homework not handed in before the term ends has to be done all over again next term.

This forecast rests on unnamed aides and a lobbyist, and President Trump has backed the bill. [9]

They raised concerns in the US House, and now the bill's sponsors would have to start again under Democrats. [9]

California voters were rejecting Proposition 40, a one-time 5% tax on billionaires, 55.6% to 44.4% with 60% counted. [21]

It would have sent 90% of the money to healthcare. [21]

California has 83 of the Forbes 400 richest Americans, and New York comes second with 54. [21]

More than a dozen billionaires who control big sports teams would be spared. [21]

The richest is Henry Samueli, worth $31.7bn by Forbes's count. [21] He bought hockey's Anaheim Ducks for $75m in 2005, and Sportico values them at $1.92bn. [21]

Several new team owners live in California, like Marc Stad, who is buying basketball's Minnesota Timberwolves at $4.5bn. [21]

Economists call this tax flight: Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin moved before the vote. [21]

They went to Florida and Nevada, and Mark Zuckerberg told a board committee he was considering leaving too. [21]

If one shop charges more, people with cars just drive to the next town.

Billionaires spent heavily against it, and Governor Gavin Newsom opposed it too. [21]

If the vote holds, they keep the one-time slice of their wealth that the tax would have taken. [21]

US sports team owners put more than $100m into Tuesday's elections, mostly for Republicans, Front Office Sports found. [10]

In its count, 8 of the 9 close Senate states went to Democrats, with Alaska not yet called. [10]

Owners gave Republicans in those states more than $350,000 directly, almost 6 times what Democrats got. [10]

Miriam Adelson, owner of basketball's Dallas Mavericks, gave more than $67m. [10] ESPN reports she has sold control of the club to her daughter and son-in-law. [10]

James Dolan, who owns New York's Knicks and Rangers, switched from the Democratic governor to her Republican rival, who lost. [10]

Only 3 of the top 25 owner donors gave mostly to Democrats, led by Seattle's Vinod Khosla with $2.09m. [10]

Owners now face a Democratic Congress and more Democratic governors, after funding mostly the other side. [10]

Front Office Sports counted filings by principal owners, so other investors in these teams are left out. [10]

Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter, lost Minnesota's US Senate race by about 10 points. [22]

Tafoya, a Republican, spent over a decade on NBC's Sunday Night Football. [22] 'The voters spoke,' she said as she conceded. [22]

Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker, trailed by 7.2 points in an Arizona House race with 90% counted. [22]

His opponent, Amish Shah, was the New York Jets' team doctor when Feely kicked for them. [22]

Mark Teixeira, a former baseball star, won a House seat as a Republican, leading by 10 points when called. [22]

Feely's district was seen as a test for the House, having voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. [22]

Political scientists call this a national swing: Democrats gained so widely that Tafoya's fame could not hold her race. [22]

Tafoya had polled just behind her rival, but the swing to Democrats proved too strong. [22]

A US judge has opened a formal inquiry into whether officials misled her over President Trump's golf course plan. [11]

Trump wants to turn East Potomac, 3 affordable public courses in Washington, into 1 championship course. [11]

Judge Ana Reyes has already blocked more tree felling, after over 400 trees came down on a holiday weekend. [11]

She said government lawyers' claims did not match Trump's own posts about his timeline. [11]

A special master, an expert or retired judge, will review the evidence and advise her. [11]

Reyes stressed she has not yet found any wrongdoing. [11]

From 3 January Democrats will chair committees that can order documents and testimony on the plan. [11]

Lawyers call this the duty of candour: government lawyers owe a court honest answers, and Reyes is checking. [11]

If Reyes finds officials misled her, penalties could include contempt or referring lawyers to their regulators. [11]

A pupil who says the dog ate the homework can get in more trouble for the lie.

The government has appealed her order, and the inquiry's details are still to be set. [11]

The Atlanta Braves reported a $12.5m loss on baseball for the first 9 months of 2026. [23]

That is down from a $62.5m profit a year earlier, which the team blames mainly on player costs. [23]

The Battery, the shops and homes it built by its ground, made $55.8m on $84m of income. [24]

The club made the playoffs and drew 2.8 million fans, 10th in baseball. [23]

Baseball's labour deal ends on 1 December, and owners are expected to lock the players out. [24]

Owners can point to a popular team losing money on baseball. [23] The players' union can point to the property profit. [23]

Accountants call this segment reporting: the Braves report baseball and The Battery as separate profit lines. [23]

So which line you quote decides the story, and each side in the labour fight quotes its own. [23]

A cafe can lose money on coffee and still do well by renting out the flat upstairs.

The Braves' chairman, Terry McGuirk, declined to discuss the labour talks on the results call. [24]