Football clubs fear EFL sanctions unless they sack staff or make pay cuts March 31, 2020 Football clubs fear they will be punished for “doing the right thing” if they don’t make redundancies or ask staff to take pay cuts while all sport is suspended. The coronavirus pandemic has slashed teams’ income, especially at those below the Premier League, who are more reliant on revenue from fans attending matches. That has [...]
English football agrees to “indefinite” suspension of 2019-20 season March 19, 2020 The English football season has been extended indefinitely to give leagues every chance to play remaining matches currently on hold due to the coronavirus outbreak. Play had already been suspended at all levels until at least 4 April, but a resumption has been pushed back to 30 April at the earliest. The decision has been [...]
Sports business in 2019: Industry insiders pick the trends that defined the year December 15, 2019 Izzy Wray, consultant in Deloitte’s Sport Business Group Women’s football The growing popularity of women’s football has been one of the defining sports trends of 2019. The Women’s World Cup smashed TV audience records, with a reported 1bn people watching it worldwide and over 28m people tuning in to the tournament on the BBC. Numerous [...]
Stefanos Tsitsipas: Why the charismatic, gangly Greek likened to Bjorn Borg is the man most likely to challenge Federer, Nadal and Djokovic November 18, 2019 It’s a question that feels almost as old as the old guard themselves: is [insert name of young buck here] the man to break Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic’s stranglehold on men’s tennis? Grigor Dimitrov, Milos Raonic, Nick Kyrgios and Alexander Zverev have all been touted as saviours, yet none has managed to [...]
VAR wars deflect from Unai Emery and Arsenal’s woes; Frank Lampard the genius; Leicester outfoxing all over October 27, 2019 An exercised Unai Emery pointed, with some justification, to two video assistant referee interventions to explain why Arsenal lost a two-goal lead and drew 2-2 at home to Crystal Palace on Sunday. “For me, VAR is positive, but we need to manage it in the right way,” said the Gunners manager. “At the moment to [...]
Player ratings: Raheem Sterling and Ross Barkley shine for England in Bulgaria October 14, 2019 England thrashed Bulgaria 6-0 in Sofia tonight in a Euro 2020 qualifying match overshadowed by persistent racist abuse from the stands. Here is how the visitors rated on a dark night for European football. Jordan Pickford: 6 Saved what came his way, which was very little in an embarrassingly one-sided match. Some wayward kicking. Kieran [...]
Copa America: The reasons behind Qatar’s involvement in South America and what the future holds June 20, 2019 There is something odd about the Copa America this summer. In among the usual suspects – hosts Brazil, holders Chile, 15-time winners Uruguay – sits a jarringly incongruous name: Qatar. The surprise winners of this year’s Asian Cup have travelled 12,000km to play in Group B alongside Colombia, Paraguay and Lionel Messi’s Argentina, who they [...]
Stevenage FC launch share offering as they seek £1.2m boost to promotion ambitions June 3, 2019 For clubs scrambling to scale the ultra-competitive English football pyramid it can pay to go against the grain. Ambitious Stevenage FC are doing just that with an innovative equity offering designed to give them a leg up into League One and, later, the Championship. Chairman and majority owner Phil Wallace hopes to raise £1.2m by [...]
Anthony Joshua’s seismic defeat by Andy Ruiz Jr is the shake-up that heavyweight boxing needed June 2, 2019 This wasn’t supposed to happen. Anthony Joshua’s first fight in the US was meant to be a glossy commercial for the Briton; more than merely a defence of his IBF, WBO and WBA world heavyweight titles, Saturday night’s clash with Andy Ruiz Jr was designed to break a new market, to wow an audience and [...]
Champions League final prize money 2018-19: What Liverpool and Tottenham can earn and how winnings have trebled in a decade May 30, 2019 When Barcelona conquered Europe for the first time in Pep Guardiola’s reign, beating Manchester United 2-0 in the 2009 Champions League final in Rome, it banked the club prize money of €31m. A decade on and the winners of this year’s competition – either Tottenham or Liverpool, who meet on Saturday night in Madrid – [...]