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 [...]
Falcon and The Winter Soldier episode 3 catch-up April 2, 2021 *** WARNING: This review contains spoilers for all current episodes of Falcon and The Winter Soldier *** We come to the halfway point of Marvel’s action/espionage/buddy cop miniseries. As you might imagine, an ominous presence is looming over the investigations of Sam/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky/The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). What you might not expect [...]
EP:50 Lingfield, Haydock, Musselburgh & Hong Kong April 2, 2021 It’s a typically busy Easter weekend for racing with a mixture of flat and jump meetings spread across the UK and today trainer Warren Greatrex joins us as our special guest. City A.M. racing editor Bill Esdaile previews the best of this weekend’s action in the UK and Ireland, plus we hear from Wally Pyrah [...]
Podcasts that helped us survive lockdown April 1, 2021 Podcasts have been one of the defining mediums of recent years, evolving from an online alternative to live radio to a thing all of its own, intimate and confessional, beamed into bedrooms, gyms and underground carriages across the world. In the last year we’ve relied more than ever on our favourite hosts talking quietly into [...]
Is Mike Dean really the strictest referee in the Premier League? April 1, 2021 Mike Dean is many things – showman in a world of automatons, purveyor of the no-look booking, gift to gif makers – but is he, as some would have it, the strictest referee in the Premier League? A study of officiating in English football’s top flight over the past five seasons has attempted to answer [...]