Top marks to Athlos for reimagining athletics and creating that elusive vibe Sport Business Generating atmosphere at live sport is no easy feat – and it might not be the one that everyone wants – but Athlos succeeded, writes Ed Warner. Perri Shakes-Drayton was there for it. Luke Littler might stay away because of it. Millwall and West Ham fans create it organically. The average county cricket fan at [...]
Ultimate Championships delivered but can China at the 2027 Worlds? Sport Business China didn’t feature much at the Ultimate Championships and Ed Warner questions whether they can at a home World Championships in 2027. “I might get told off. I just did a race, so I’m allowed to drink what I would like. Thank you so much,” said Lando Norris as he reached for a Coke after [...]
Here’s to the quiet heroism of county cricket: Pride, jeopardy and extraordinary matches Sport Business While the world’s white-ball franchise leagues flash past in a blur of sixes, jazzy uniforms and fireworks, England’s red-ball heartbeat, the County Championship, keeps thumping, writes Ed Warner. We painted the County Ground in Hove yellow on Tuesday to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of John Wisden just under a mile away in Crown [...]
Greater fool theory helps to explain Premier League’s record £3.5bn transfer window September 3, 2026 The transfer window has left Ed Warner’s head in a spin and even the most devoted football nut must have struggled to keep up, he writes. The football transfer window closed on Tuesday night, with over £3bn splashed out by Premier League clubs for the second summer running. In the end, Everton didn’t sell their [...]
What I’ve learned about English cricket finances in seven weeks chairing Sussex August 27, 2026 Seven weeks as chair of Sussex Cricket and no major jolts to the view of the sport that I held while my nose was pressed to the window looking in, but lots of new detail to fill out my understanding of its challenges. Some of these challenges are unique to cricket, others common to many [...]
Is £5bn now the entry ticket into Premier League football? August 20, 2026 It may have taken 34 years but the Premier League has at last clawed its way into the financial big time. The reported £5.5bn valuation placed on Liverpool FC by a consortium of new investors that includes Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos – aka the world’s third richest man – has the whiff of an NFL [...]
Not enough bums in Brum: Why so many empty seats at European Athletics Championships? August 13, 2026 Britain loves sport yet ticket sales for the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham have been slow. Ed Warner wonders why. British sport has a capacity problem or a bandwidth one, depending on which way you want to look at it. Too many seats in too many venues with too few bums to fill them. Or [...]
Fifa crisis: Is it possible to defend Infantino’s World Cup sell-off plan? August 6, 2026 Crafting a defence of Infantino isn’t easy, but it is possible to assemble both a behavioural excuse and a commercial justification for the Fifa president’s plan to sell stakes in the World Cup. One newspaper evocatively likened Gianni Infantino to Icarus at the weekend after his proposal to sell stakes in the World Cup melted [...]
Cristiano Ronaldo on Mars: Where will sport take us in the next five years? July 30, 2026 Tech disruption, athlete power and new formats: sport has changed dramatically since Ed Warner started writing weekly about the industry in 2021. This column – based on my weekly newsletter, Sport Inc. – has just reached its fifth anniversary. The book of the same name is three years older. In this short span of time, [...]
Commonwealth Games must prove crises are thing of past July 23, 2026 There is no evidence of Commonwealth Games fever in downtown St Peter Port. Guernsey, an island of 65,000 people, is sending 22 athletes to Glasgow 2026, down from 38 to Birmingham 2022. Colleagues on the island report far less public interest than four years ago. There you have these slimmed-down Games which start today in [...]
