Week in Sportbiz: Sports give qualified backing to Covid certification plan; US Beijing boycott talks escalates; Masters caught up in vote row April 8, 2021 British sport’s leading governing bodies have backed plans to use Covid certification if it means they can reopen stadiums in full later this summer. But they have called for urgent clarification on how and when social distancing will be relaxed, warning that partially full venues will not stem their financial losses. The Premier League, Football [...]
Lee Isaac Chung’s Oscar hopeful Minari is a well of emotion April 8, 2021 It’s unlikely that any of the Oscar hopefuls will arrive in the traditional way this year. Nomadland will head to Disney+ at the end of April, Netflix’s Best Picture nominees are already available, and last week saw the UK debut of Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari. Partly based on Chung’s own childhood memories, the film takes [...]
Palm Springs is a dark twist on the Groundhog Day formula April 8, 2021 Before the dark times, it’s likely most of us will have been stuck at the wedding of some vague acquaintance or relative we don’t care for. We’ve stared into space through prolonged speeches, and tried to sneak out before the DJ played The Macarena. Well, what if you could never leave? That’s the nightmarish prospect [...]
Sound of Metal – Riz Ahmed deserves his Oscar nom April 8, 2021 The Academy Awards are just a few weeks away, and will belatedly celebrate the most unusual year in cinematic history. While more profitable movies have been moved to a future where they can feasibly be seen in cinemas, a lot of this year’s hopefuls are smaller films that will debut on streaming services. One of [...]
Athletes are driving the acceleration of sports investment – will we see European players follow the US trend for SPACs and NFTs? April 8, 2021 Barely a day goes by without another high-profile athlete being announced as an investor in a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a tech start-up or launching their own non-fungible tokens (NFTs). While the Covid-19 pandemic has created major cash-flow problems for many elite teams and leagues, there is certainly no shortage of liquidity being channelled [...]
The Masters 2021: How much prize money players can at this week’s iconic golf tournament April 7, 2021 Winning the Masters is more about Green Jackets than greenbacks, but the prize money isn’t to be sniffed at either. This article details how payouts at men’s golf’s most iconic tournament compare with those at the other three majors. It will also illustrate how the Masters prize money has increased over time, and reveal who [...]
Rakuten chief revives calls to cancel Tokyo 2020 Olympics amid rising Covid-19 cases April 7, 2021 One of Japan’s most prominent businessmen, Rakuten chief executive Hiroshi Mikitani, has urged the country to reconsider staging the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this summer. The delayed Games are set to begin on 23 July despite widespread opposition among the population and rising Covid-19 cases in the capital. “Honestly, I feel that the Olympics this summer [...]
Sam Torrance Masters 2021 preview: The five players I expect to challenge at Augusta – and why I’d love to see Rory McIlroy or Lee Westwood triumph April 6, 2021 Whether it’s in November or April, the Masters is special. I enjoyed the last one as much as any other, despite it taking place in autumn rather than the traditional spring conditions. But I’m very excited for this week’s 85th outing at Augusta, which I expect to play harder than it did five months ago. [...]
Rugby League World Cup chief Jon Dutton: We’re very optimistic that we’ll have full stadiums April 6, 2021 Organising a major international sporting event is a logistical labyrinth at the best of times. Doing so when your dining room has been your office for the past year, when you haven’t yet met most of your staff, and when it has been impossible to be certain how or even if the event will take [...]
‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ crushes pandemic box office record April 6, 2021 The latest in the giant lizard vs ape saga, ‘Godzilla vs Kong’, has smashed pandemic box office records which raked in £35m just this weekend. In the biggest opening in the US in the last 12 months, the Adam Wingard-directed blockbuster has surpassed the highly anticipated ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ which took home around £12m in its [...]