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  • Are there enough fans to keep a team in the NHL’s smallest market?

    Are there enough fans to keep a team in the NHL’s smallest market?

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    WINNIPEG – Three hours before puck drop, Greg Burnett awaited the fate of his beloved Winnipeg Jets, on the brink of elimination.

    The 56-year-old retired high school teacher stood in a fenced-off courtyard, just beyond a statue of the late Jets legend Dale Hawerchuk, between the glittering reflection of newly developed office towers on what used to be a vast parking lot in Winnipeg’s age-worn downtown.

    Burnett felt optimistic. He calls it a glass-half-full mentality when his team is “paradoxically aligned with impending doom.”

    He sipped a Michelob Light as hundreds of Jets fans filled the streets around Canada Life Centre ahead of Game 5 of the team’s first-round playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche, trailing 3-1.

    The stakes that night felt particularly high. The Jets’ successful regular season (second in the NHL’s Western Conference) was clouded by dwindling attendance and concerning comments made by ownership about the team’s future.

    Winnipeg is Canada’s seventh-largest city. With a population of 758,000, it is the NHL’s smallest market.

    The prairie hub proudly leans into its reputation as a large “small town.” The region boasts a rich history in the game — and a passionate fan base.

    But Winnipeg is often overlooked by players. The Jets appear with great frequency on the “no-trade” lists of many contracts. High-profile players like Jacob Trouba, Evander Kane and PL Dubois have all forced their way out of town. In The Athletic’s anonymous player poll, Winnipeg was declared the destination that players least liked to visit on the road, with 41.24 percent of the vote.

    That sentiment has a galvanizing effect on the fan base.

    “The perception is that people want us to fail,” Burnett said, adding that the Jets faithful embrace the team’s underdog position.

    Burnett wore a white Connor Hellebuyck jersey, the team’s All-Star goalie who recently signed a seven-year deal to stay in Winnipeg and was named a finalist for the Vezina Trophy. Burnett’s jersey could have been any member of the current Jets roster, aside from the team’s most recent trade deadline acquisitions. He has a jersey for almost every player who has played multiple seasons in Winnipeg since the team’s return more than a dozen years ago. His collection includes more than 60 jerseys from two generations of the Jets.

    I first met Burnett in 2011, when he was one of the 13,500 fans who signed up for season tickets in 17 minutes when the Atlanta Thrashers moved to the Canadian Prairies, becoming the second iteration of the Jets.

    He gave me a tour of the basement he’d dedicated to the team that left the city for Arizona in 1996, which had become central to Burnett’s life. Celia Burnett relinquished the basement to her husband, knowing he needed a place to address his anger and sadness at the Jets’ move to Arizona. He turned it into a shrine that includes a miniature locker room, old jerseys, game programs and memorabilia that spoke to the love and agony that comes with being a fan. The final A from the Winnipeg Arena sign above the entrance of the now demolished building sat on a landing above the basement stairs. Gillian, the youngest of the Burnetts’ four daughters, helped her father show off his prized Jets possessions.

    Gillian was 9 then. She’s grown up sitting in the family’s seats — section 312, row 5 — next to her father. She is now 22 and has a Winnipeg Jets tattoo on her forearm.

    “I got it in honor of my dad, because that’s what my dad is — the Winnipeg Jets,” Gillian said. “It’s part of him.”

    She sat next to her 78-year-old grandmother, Donna, on a concrete stoop in True North Square, as a DJ pumped music into the pregame festival. Donna, who wore a white and pink Jets zip-up hoodie, also never misses a game, not because of an obsession with an on-ice product but because of what the team means to her family.

    In the late 1970s, Donna bought season tickets to the original Jets franchise. For a single mother, the Jets became a way for her to connect with her rambunctious 8-year-old son. They drove more than a half-hour to each game and always went out to a restaurant they considered to be fancy. At the time, it was all doable on Donna’s teacher salary.

    “We had a wonderful time,” she said. “I just loved it.”


    Greg Burnett at the entrance of his Jets shrine. (Dan Robson / The Athletic)

    But that “wonderful time” didn’t last. In 1996, the original Jets franchise left for Arizona. When the ownership group True North announced in 2011 that it was purchasing the Atlanta Thrashers and moving the team to Winnipeg, Jets love was rekindled.

    The NHL’s return kicked off a revival so fervent that the franchise nurtured a waiting list of several thousand people willing to purchase season tickets should a seat ever open up.

    The Canada Life Centre is the smallest arena in the NHL, with a capacity of just more than 15,000. And for years the Jets boasted constant sellouts and one of the loudest fan bases in the league.

    But over the past couple of seasons, the Jets have had only a handful of sellouts.

    And then early this season, Greg Burnett started to feel that familiar pang of dread when he saw rows of empty seats inside the Jets home rink. It was a reminder of an underlying anxiety shared by many fans old enough to remember the first time the team left town.

    It was just the second home game of the 2023-24 season and only 11,226 fans showed up to watch the team play the L.A. Kings, the lowest attendance Burnett said he had ever seen at a Jets game.

    Things didn’t get much better. Aside from the smoldering ashes of the Arizona Coyotes — the former Jets franchise playing out its final days at a 5,000-seat college rink — Winnipeg had the lowest attendance in the NHL this season, averaging 13,490 fans. By percentage of rink capacity, the Jets were third worst at 89.9 percent, ahead of only the Buffalo Sabres and San Jose Sharks. In Winnipeg, it was the continuation of a downward trend that started with the NHL’s first full 82-game season after the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The Jets’ season-ticket base shrunk by 27 percent in three years, falling to under 9,500 from close to 13,000.

    The team’s mediocre results didn’t help. The Jets missed the playoffs in 2022, then lost in the first round after barely squeaking into the postseason in 2023.

    Last spring, True North angered fans with a poorly conceived “Forever Winnipeg” ticket drive.

    “So is Winnipeg an NHL city? You better believe it,” narrator Kenny Omega, a Winnipeg-born wrestling star asks over sentimental visuals of Jets highlights and smiling fans, before the background music turns abruptly somber. “But it takes all of us.”

    The campaign was widely viewed as a not-so-veiled threat, recalling painful memories of the Jets’ departure.

    In February, concern about the franchise’s future was stoked by comments Mark Chipman, True North’s chairman, made in an interview with The Athletic’s Chris Johnston.

    “I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t say, ‘We’ve got to get back to 13,000,’” Chipman told Johnston. “This place we find ourselves in right now, it’s not going to work over the long haul.”

    In the upper bowl, behind the visiting goal — section 312, row 5 — Greg, Gillian and Donna took their regular seats in the sea of white. The rink filled quickly, as it had through the final stretch of the regular season when the Jets sold out six of the team’s last eight games. A late-season surge helped build excitement for the playoffs. The Jets carried an eight-game winning streak into the playoffs. They drew the Colorado Avalanche in the first round, a team they hadn’t lost to all season and had recently stomped 7-0.

    Maybe the fans just needed a reason to believe?

    If that hope was fleeting with the Jets trailing 3-1 in the series, you wouldn’t have noticed as the Jets took the ice for warmups in Game 5. The arena buzz rose to a crescendo.

    Just after warmups, Celia Burnett met her family at their seats, taking a quick break from her job working at the front gate of Canada Life Centre, ushering lively fans through the ticket line at Portage Avenue. The family was at the arena so much that a few years ago she decided it made sense that she get paid to be close by.

    “It’s a constant,” Celia said. “It’s always about the Jets.”

    The arena thundered. The sold-out crowd twirled white towels and cheered at a relentless volume. Fans belted the words “True North” in unison when the Canadian national anthem lyrics were sung — a tradition that started with the team’s inaugural season in 2011.

    Outside the Jets “whiteout” street party on Donald Street, next to the arena, another 5,000 fans packed as close to two massive projection screens. All wore white. Some reveled in more creative attire. Several wore full white bodysuits and white old-school goalie masks. One man wore a white beer-stained pinstripe suit. Another wore a Panda head.


    Jets fans packed the streets around the Canada Life Centre for Game 5. (David Lipnowski / Getty Images)

    Evan Chubaty wore a low-cut wedding dress he found at a thrift store, fastened by dirty shoelaces he borrowed from a pair of sneakers. He was 9 when the Jets arrived. He’s not worried about them leaving. He thinks the fans would never actually let that happen.

    “Everyone loves them,” Chubaty said. “It’s a huge part of Winnipeg. The city wouldn’t be the same without them.”

    Benny, the original Jets mascot, interrupted the conversation and got down on a furry blue knee in front of Chubaty.

    The Bloodworth family stood quietly amid the crowd of mostly twentysomethings, reflecting both the older and younger generation of fans. Shayne and Maureen Bloodworth brought their children out for the experience. Shayne was a “1.0” Jets fan.

    “I’m the old guy,” he said, as a crush of well-imbibed fans weaved around the family.

    His 10-year-old twins — Max, who sat sleepily on his shoulders, and Jack who leaned against him — have grown up in the “2.0” era. They play minor hockey for the River East Royals and catch every Jets game they can stay awake for.

    “It’s become a part of this city’s culture, for sure,” Shayne said. “It’s brought a lot of people together.”

    Moments later, the street erupted as Josh Morrissey scored for the Jets halfway through the second period, tying the game at two. But before the period was over, Colorado was ahead again.

    Greg Burnett admitted that his optimism was fading. The Jets were 20 minutes away from another first-round exit. Considering the empty seats of the regular season, the stakes felt especially high.

    “I hope I’m wrong,” he said.

    So is Winnipeg an NHL city?

    Glen Hodgson, an Ottawa-based economist and expert in the economics of sports franchises, believes it is — but in a unique, inherently precarious way. Hodgson wrote a book on the business of sports franchises, developing a methodology with his co-author for evaluating whether a sports franchise would succeed or fail.

    As a market, Winnipeg falls short in almost every key component. The population is too small, the per capita income is too low, and there are a dwindling number of corporations with a head office in Canada’s windy city.

    “But then you get to the intangibles, like passion,” Hodgson said. “And Manitoba is off the chart.”

    Hodgson knows the psyche of the city’s sports fans well. He grew up in Winnipeg and was a devoted follower of the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers, the other franchise that holds a deeply rooted place in the region’s culture and identity.

    For many, like Burnett, the NHL’s return in 2011 was a miracle, faithfully prayed for.

    Nostalgia and pride alone were enough to sell the team to local fans. For more than a decade, True North was viewed as a savior.

    The franchise was able to operate in an “if you build it, they will come” mode, Hodgson said.

    But after the pandemic, amid a wavering Canadian economy, high inflation, and growing dissatisfaction with rising prices, stringent policies and a perceived lack of appreciation from the organization, many fans decided to stay home. The magic faded. The season-ticket waiting list disappeared. And the franchise entered a new, critical era.

    Chipman later clarified his comments about the franchise’s sustainability and season-ticket sales, saying he was referring to the team’s ability to spend to the cap and ice a contender. Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner, visited Winnipeg this winter and underscored his confidence in the city as an ideal hockey market — which is something he has previously said about several other cities that ended up losing NHL teams.

    But there is plenty of reason for Jets fans to be confident in the team’s commitment to Winnipeg.

    The franchise’s books are kept private, but Chipman has said it’s never lost money since its inaugural NHL season. And there is plenty of cash underpinning it. David Thomson, one of True North’s co-owners, is the richest person in Canada — and 21st richest in the world — with a net worth of $61.3 billion, according to Forbes.

    True North has also invested hundreds of millions into the city, revitalizing the area around Canada Life Centre with sparkling new office towers. Last year, the group announced a $500 million plan to redevelop a worn-down shopping center across the street from the arena, a healthcare and social services hub for the community.

    Still, Winnipeg remains a constrained market, Hodgson said. There are only so many businesses and people to commit to season tickets.

    Chipman has been candid about True North’s missteps in taking the community of Jets fans for granted. At the same time, fans like Burnett say it’s also on the community to re-up its commitment to the team. He’s reached out to friends who’ve let their season tickets lapse in recent years, urging them to come back.

    The team’s future likely depends on that rekindled relationship.

    “If you’re asking the fundamental question, is the market really big enough to sustain over time, it really depends on engaging the passion,” Hodgson said.

    “If any city is going to make it with those limitations, it will be Winnipeg.”


    The Jets didn’t have any trouble filling the stands for Game 5 of their first-round series against the Avalanche. (David Lipnowski / Getty Images)

    As the Colorado Avalanche pulled away from the Jets, those passionate fans started to head for the exits. Before the final horn sounded on a 6-3 Avalanche win, large sections of the stands sat empty. Celia watched people stream through the doors onto Portage Avenue.

    Gillian joined her friends who’d watched from the street party, which emptied off Donald Street within minutes. Hundreds of crushed silver cans sparkled beneath the street lights.

    In section 312, Greg sat next to his mother, watching the teams shake hands, trying to process another lost opportunity. As the players left the ice, Greg helped Donna from her seat and carefully guided her down the steep stadium stairs.

    He paused for a moment in the atrium, trying to describe the dejection he knew would linger u​​ntil the Jets begin again. A deep playoff run would certainly have stoked deeper interest in the team across the city. But this first-round exit felt perilously familiar.

    “You know, as a Winnipeger,” Greg said, “it feels like we can’t have nice things.”

    Donna smiled softly. Her son extended his arm and she took it. They walked away together, disappearing among the fans left and leaving.

    (Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic. Photos: David Lipnowski / Getty Images; Jonathan Kozub / NHLI via Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Premier League salary cap mailbag: Why? Who wins and loses? How would it work?

    Premier League salary cap mailbag: Why? Who wins and loses? How would it work?

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    Premier League clubs this week opted to push on with plans for a hard spending limit — a de facto salary cap tied to the income of the lowest earning side in the top flight.

    OK, we hear you say, but what on earth does it all really mean?

    Who better to answer your questions than Matt Slater, who broke the original story? If you prefer, you can listen to Matt for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the usual listening places on The Athletic FC Podcast.

    Let’s dive in…

    What are the real motivations for such a rule? — Adam M 

    Do I detect a note of suspicion, Adam?

    For some, such as Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish, who has been talking about this idea longer than most, there are sincere concerns about the competitive balance of the league.

    They worry that the revenues of the ‘Big Six’ — which already feels like a ‘Big Seven’ and might be a ‘Big Eight’ before long — are growing faster than the revenues of the Premier League’s middle and lower classes, and that is before you factor in the increased sums they will receive from playing more Champions League games and occasional appearances in the FIFA’s revamped Club World Cup. Financial fair play regimes that tie your ability to spend to your own revenues play into the big clubs’ advantage, which compounds with each passing year.

    So, “anchoring” is an attempt to slow the big clubs down. It’s a backstop to the squad cost rule that UEFA has already introduced and the Premier League is moving towards. The two are meant to be complementary, with anchoring being the backstop — a hard cap that even the richest/most successful/most ambitious club cannot go beyond.

    Follow the Champions League on The Athletic…

    What is the role of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA)?  — Peyton B 

    Is there any chance the PFA will agree to a hard spending limit of 5x? And, if yes, what concessions would they require from the owners? — Dave D

    The PFA calls itself the players’ trade union and it is, officially, the world’s oldest players’ union. But it has spent most of its history acting more like a lobby group, with a large charitable arm and growing education and healthcare sections. Unlike the North American players’ unions, it has not engaged in big disputes about profit-sharing with the clubs, the players’ employers, and it has not signed formal collective bargaining agreements with them.

    Instead, there is almost a gentleman’s agreement between the leagues, on behalf of the clubs, and the PFA that the former will fund the union’s work in looking after former professionals who need new hips, providing counselling for those who need it, funding grants for second careers and backing research into conditions such as dementia.

    The PFA, unsurprisingly, hates the idea of salary caps. Would you like it if a third party said your employer was not allowed to pay you over a certain level, even if that employer wanted to and could afford it?


    Erling Haaland with the 2022-23 PFA Player of the Year award (PFA)

    This is why European football’s governing body UEFA and everyone else have always had to step carefully when introducing cost controls. To avoid breaking European Union and national laws on restraint of trade, governing bodies have neeed to prove that what they are doing is justified by a legitimate aim — the sustainability of a culturally significant industry — and the proposed measure is fair, proportionate and transparent. In other words, they cannot push it too far.

    So, rules that tie a club’s ability to spend to its ability to earn have, until now, been OK with lawmakers, as there is a clear link to sustainability. But linking a club’s ability to spend to someone else’s earnings? Hmmm. Debatable.

    And it is almost certainly a debate the PFA will enter. As things stand, it is aware of the Premier League’s anchoring proposal and some preliminary conversations have taken place, but it is adamant that a proper consultation on the matter, at the relevant body, has not started.

    The body in question is the ‘Professional Football Negotiating and Consultative Committee’, which is comprised of members from the PFA, the English Football League, the English Football Association and the Premier League. It is where all matters relating to employment in the game are discussed. If its members cannot agree, the dispute goes to independent arbitration. And there has been a lot of that in football of late.

    Which clubs will benefit the most and the least from this? The clubs that objected to this seem very different, so it’s hard to tell — Andrew R

    Good question!

    Crystal Palace chairman Parish clearly believes it will help his team continue to compete in the Premier League. Anything, even something as loose as the proposed 5x anchoring cap, will help Palace put out a competitive team every week in the Premier League.

    And every other team in Palace’s tax bracket seems to agree. For them, letting Manchester City and the rest spend 70 per cent of their ever-growing total revenues on their squads will destroy what is left of the jeopardy when City meets a team from the league’s lower half.

    But the other big potential beneficiaries of anchoring are those clubs directly competing with Manchester City right now, and worried about the rising threat of Newcastle United. They want to tie their rivals to a more transparent cost-control mechanism. So, this would explain the support from Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.

    Manchester United would ordinarily be in that gang but their new increasingly de-facto owner INEOS is concerned about anchoring slowing down its ability to perform the radical surgery United’s squad requires. So, their opposition is more tactical than strategic.

    Manchester United


    Sir Jim Ratcliffe, part-owner of Manchester United (right), with Sir Dave Brailsford (Robin Jones/Getty Images)

    Aston Villa’s opposition to the idea is interesting as it reveals just how ambitious their billionaire owners Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris are for the club. In the past, Villa would have been in favour of something that constrains the league’s elite. Now, they see themselves as potential aristocrats.

    And Chelsea, well, they abstained probably because they realised a vote against the idea was not going to stop it from proceeding to the next stage in the consultation and legal process, so there was no point voting against it. But, equally, they could hardly back a rule that they are probably the only club to be in immediate danger of breaching. So, they did neither and abstained.

    Will the players not just go to a league without a cap? — Darragh N

    All of them, Darragh? And where? Which league pays average salaries anywhere near as high as the Premier League?

    I understand the concern, and it will be voiced as a reason not to do this by those who hate the idea. I just do not think it is very likely.

    According to the most recent data from UEFA, 10 of the top 20 wage bills in European football are in the Premier League. No other league has more than three representatives.

    The two biggest wage bills in Europe, and therefore global football, are at Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, but they can only field 11 players at a time, and both are trying to trim their wage bills, with Barca badly needing to stop their slide towards bankruptcy and PSG moving towards a more sustainable model.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Who is the best-paid player at every Premier League club?

    Nothing lasts forever, of course, but there is no evidence of any short- or medium-term threat to the Premier League’s status as the richest domestic league in global football.

    Could the Saudi Pro League be the threat? It might, one day, but I would argue there is just as much chance of the SPL going the same way as the Chinese Super League in a decade as there is of it becoming a genuine challenger to the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and other major leagues.

    If I were in charge of the Premier League, I would be more worried about Major League Soccer but, as we know, North American sports owners love cost controls, so I cannot imagine them getting into an arms race for players with the Premier League, particularly as half of those owners are likely to own Premier League teams, too.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    It’s a controversial topic, but does taking a Premier League game to the U.S. make sense?

    How punitive are these rules on the richer clubs? A circa £500m limit on spending is hardly forcing teams to scratch around the bargain bin — Tom N

    I think you have answered your own question, Tom. And the answer is… not very! Not yet, anyway.

    We have estimated each club’s squad cost calculation for the 2022-23 season. The numbers that go into that calculation are the wages for your first-team squad players and coaching staff, your annual amortisation bill (the cost of your transfers spread across the length of their contracts) and any agents’ payments you make.

    Premier League

    Now, some of those numbers are publicly available but we have had to make educated guesses on the biggest one, the wage bill, as clubs only publish their total wage bills — for all their staff — and not what they pay their players. However, most clubs spend about 70 per cent of their total wage bill on their players, so that is the amount that we have used.

    The result is that only Chelsea spent more than five times what the Premier League’s bottom club, Southampton, received from the league in central payments. The Saints’ share of the league’s broadcast and sponsorship cash was £103.6million, which would have set a 5x cap at £518million. Chelsea’s estimated squad cost that season was £539million.

    So, no, you’re right, if the only club to possibly breach the proposed anchor was Chelsea, after their wild shopping spree, this would not appear to be particularly restrictive.

    Curious how it will work, timing-wise. Will they confirm the amounts available to spend the next season, once the season is over? — Courtney A

    You are not the only one to be curious about the details of this, Courtney, and you ask a good question.

    Whether the Premier League bases the cap on the multiple of the previous season’s bottom club’s central income or an estimate of the new season’s bottom club’s number is not clear yet. But I do not see how they can set the cap retrospectively. Clubs must know where they stand, so the cap will have to be set in advance.

    I wonder if the cap should be linked to rolling three-year domestic TV rights deals.

    The actual calculation is not that difficult, as most of the numbers are easy to predict. Every club receives a basic award of about £90million, with each place in the table worth a £3.1million merit payment, so the bottom club gets 1 x £3.1million and the top club 20 x £3.1m.

    The only real variable is the facility fee, as that is the payment clubs receive each time they appear on live television in the UK, and it is not often the case that the team that finishes 20th is the least-picked team.

    The facility fee is just over £1million a game and every team is guaranteed a minimum number of televised games. The range for facility fees in 2022-23 was £25.3million (Manchester City) to Bournemouth (£10.2m).

    So, there is some variability in the exact amount your bottom club will earn but not much. The facility fees make up 25 per cent of amount clubs make from the domestic deal, which is about half of the total income. As previously mentioned, Southampton received £103.6million last season and that seems like a good benchmark for a bottom-placed team in the current broadcast rights cycle.

    How will this new rule tie in with UEFA’s rules? Could you have a situation where a team spends more than £500million and wins the Premier League fairly but is not allowed to play in Europe? — Ben H

    This proposal will work in tandem with UEFA’s squad cost rules and the Premier League’s version of the same concept. Think of anchoring as a backstop or a relatively distant line in the sand that nobody can cross.

    Your second question is an intriguing hypothetical but does not seem very likely to me.

    Even if we ignore the numbers and just pretend that there is a way for a club to emerge from the pack and win the league, while breaching UEFA’s 70 per cent threshold, do not forget that winning the league will bring a big TV merit payment, increased commercial income and the promise of at least £45million of Champions League prize money.

    So, they might bust the 70 per cent limit in the year they win the Premier League, but they are unlikely to do so the following season. We have a very recent example of such a club: Leicester City. They made a record profit the year after they won the Premier League.

    Finally, even if your champion still, somehow, manages to breach UEFA’s threshold, the European governing body does not like banning champions from its competitions. It has a long track record of dishing out fines, which they collect by withholding some of the prize money, and squad restrictions.

    This approach is actually baked into the new squad cost rules, as UEFA has published a penalty schedule that links the size of the fine to the scale of the breach.

     (Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • 100 days until the Olympic Games – is Paris ready?

    100 days until the Olympic Games – is Paris ready?

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    Follow The Athletic’s Olympics coverage here.

    In 100 days, Paris will host the most famous sporting jamboree on the planet: the summer Olympic Games.

    There will be action across 32 sports watched by millions of visitors, as well as an unprecedented opening ceremony set to take place on the River Seine, which runs through the city’s heart. At least, that is plan A, anyway — Emmanuel Macron, the French president, confirmed an off-river contingency for the first time on Monday.

    Excitement has not quite taken hold in Paris yet. Decorations around the city remain discrete for a Games awarded to the French capital in September 2017. The City Hall has been plastered with Olympic regalia, but the focus of messaging has primarily been on practicality — “anticiper les jeux” (anticipate the Games), as posters on the Paris Metro, the city’s subway system, depict it.

    The past few years have seen plenty of focus on staging the Games, but there has been much more discussion about the practical impact. Authorities have battled and quarrelled to meet deadlines and targets. There have been fears around security, heightened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza conflict, with the audacious, river-based opening ceremony — set to be the first time a Games has not opened in a stadium — a particular area of concern.

    Add in worries about transport disruption and the threats of strike action from unions with public sector workers, including police, demanding pay concessions for the extra work anticipated for the Games, and the build-up has been anything but smooth. Even ‘les bouquinistes’, the booksellers who maintain a 400-year tradition on the banks of the River Seine, erupted in protest at the prospect of temporary removal for the opening ceremony.


    Booksellers have lined the Seine for more than four centuries (Mohamad Salaheldin Abdelg Alsayed/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

    But now, the focus should turn to what else the Games has to offer before the Olympics begin on July 26 (although the men’s and women’s competitions for soccer and rugby sevens begin on July 24), with the Paralympic Games to follow from August 28 until September 8.

    “This is the French edition,” joked Emmanuel Gregoire, the mayor of Paris’ first deputy, when asked about optimism before the Games at a press briefing this month. “At the beginning, we have been talking only about problems — but we feel that the joy is growing.”

    The Olympic flame is now ablaze, lit on Tuesday on Mount Olympia in Greece before beginning its journey across 400 towns and cities in 65 regions of the French territories and landing in Marseille on May 8.

    “Paris 2024 begins on May 8, that’s kick-off,” said Pierre Rabadan, the deputy mayor in charge of sport, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the Seine. 

    Olympics


    The first torch runners with the Olympic flame in Olympia on April 16 (Socrates Baltagiannis/picture alliance via Getty Images)

    It has been a long journey to reach this point. Since Paris was awarded the Games, there has been a global pandemic — which first postponed the Tokyo Olympics and then forced it behind closed doors — conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, inflationary pressures, and screaming headlines about bedbug infestations hitting Paris.

    It is safe to say the world could do with a little bit of joy and maybe the Games can provide that.

    The question now is whether Paris is ready.

    Are the sporting venues ready?

    The permanent sites are ready. Paris is aiming to host a sustainable, green-focused Games, with 95 per cent of tournament venues either temporary or using already existing infrastructure.

    The new permanent sites — the ones built specifically for the Olympics — are nearly there. The only new sports venue within inner Paris, the Adidas Arena at Porte de la Chapelle in the 18th arrondissement, opened in February. The two-hectare site will host badminton, rhythmic gymnastics, para-badminton and para-weightlifting.

    The other two new sites, the Olympic Village and the Aquatic Centre, are in Saint-Denis, north of Paris and near the Stade de France, the national stadium. The Olympic Village was handed over to the organising committee in February and the Aquatics Centre opened this month.

    Olympics


    The Aquatics Center in front of Stade de France in February (Stephane de Sakutin/AFP via Getty Images)

    “I thought it was not possible, but we delivered them two weeks or one month before the (due) date,” said Rabadan. “So that’s a good point for two things. First, because we are not late and less pressure. Second, because we want to respect our budget.”

    Not everything is finished, however. The temporary and renovated venues are in the process of completion, while some training sites are not yet ready. Rabadan added: “Some of the renovations for training camps and venues, we are finishing. For example, we have a massive swimming pool in the north of Paris (20th arrondissement), Piscine Georges-Vallerey. That will open up at the end of April.”

    Redeveloped venues include the renovated Yves du Manoir Stadium, used for the eighth Olympiad in 1924, which will host field hockey competitions. Temporary sites are also being put together around famous landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower (beach volleyball), the Place de la Concorde (which will become an urban park and host 3×3 basketball, BMX freestyle and skateboarding), the Champ de Mars (judo and wrestling) and the Hotel de Ville (archery, athletics, cycling). The Grand Palais, on the Champs-Elysees, will host taekwondo and fencing.

    Existing infrastructure is also being used and sometimes re-purposed, such as the home of tennis’ French Open, Roland-Garros (tennis and boxing), and La Defense Arena, which is home to rugby union side Racing 92 and holds major concert events but will host swimming and water polo.

    “We are exactly where we would like to be 100 days before the Olympic Games,” said Rabadan.

    What about other infrastructure, such as transport?

    The extension of Metro Line 14 is due to be ready. This will link Saint-Denis, the heart of the Games, with Paris-Orly airport. Capacity is being increased through more trains and other developments, such as an extension of the tramway to Porte Dauphine, which will allow access to Porte de la Chapelle. That is now complete. The group of new lines, named the “Grand Paris Express”, will not all be ready. The new lines 15, 16, 17 and 18 will open before 2030.

    “We’ve known for a very long time that the Paris Express could not be ready for the Games,” said Gregoire. “So it’s not a problem, but of course, it could have been better. But these lines don’t serve Olympic sites. The major aspect is we are guaranteed to have the 14th line in Paris. This will open in May or June.”

    “We will have 15 per cent more offerings of trains and metros during the Games,” said Rabadan.

    The Charles de Gaulle expressway, a new line that will speed up links between Charles de Gaulle airport and the Gare de l’Est, will not be ready. “It was supposed to be delivered for the Olympic Games,” said Gregoire. “But five years ago, we knew it would not be ready. It would be ready at the end of 2025-26.”

    More trains and more people will mean more cost. During the Games, transport fares will be doubled.

    Will the opening ceremony actually happen on the Seine?

    As it stands, athletes will parade outside a stadium for the first time, as part of a large flotilla of boats along the River Seine.

    The event will start at the Bibliotheque Nationale and conclude at the Trocadero, the site of the Palais de Chaillot, on the opposite bank of the river to the Eiffel Tower.

    It promises to be an eye-catching spectacle, but questions have been raised about feasibility — particularly given heightened security risks. Last month, following an attack at a concert hall in Moscow that killed more than 130 people, France raised its terrorist alert warning to its highest level.

    The complexity and uncertainty are mainly due to the large numbers set to attend and the challenge of securing the river. Initial hopes of more than a million in attendance were quickly dashed, but the capacity is still set to be more than five times that of the Stade de France (which can hold 80,000 people).

    As well as 10,500 athletes, around 600,000 people will attend the ceremony. Of those, 104,000 are paid tickets sold by the Olympic Committee, 220,000 are distributed across the organising parties (the state, city of Paris and Paris 2024), and 200,000 will be for those on barges or watching on balconies.

    Seine, Paris


    (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)

    Other considerations have had some impact. Les bouquinistes, the booksellers who have lined the Seine in some capacity for almost 400 years, caused a bit of a headache when they refused to remove their box stalls, some of which are a century old, for the opening ceremony. This dispute has been resolved, albeit at a cost, after Macron intervened. “We lost 70,000 spectators to guarantee security,” said Rabadan.

    So is there a plan B? There have been mixed messages. This month, Paris city officials insisted the event will not be taken off the water. “We can reduce the impact and the facilities of the opening ceremony if the international risk becomes harder,” said Rabadan. “We can reduce it, the show, the number of people. But there is no plan B.”

    But on Monday, Macron said there were contingencies — potentially even off the river. Asked what would happen if security risks made the river procession too risky, he told BFM TV/RMC: “There are plan Bs and plan Cs. We have a ceremony that would be limited to the Trocadero so it would not cover the entire Seine. Or we could return to the Stade de France. This is what is traditionally done.”

    In a statement on Monday, city officials said: “While announcing alternative projects, the president reiterated his priority commitment to the ceremony on the Seine. This is an objective shared by all stakeholders.”

    If Paris can pull off the ceremony in full, it will be spectacular. The opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games will take place along the Champs-Elysées.

    What do we know about security plans?

    France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, outlined this month that an “anti-terrorist” perimeter would be set up around the Seine one week before the opening ceremony. It will be several square miles in size and closed to traffic unless authorised, while 15 metro and tram stations will shut, too. Only four bridges will stay open. This will then ramp up again on July 26, with no entry permitted after 1pm. Those living inside this security cordon will need a QR code to enter. “If you have not registered, you will not be able to return,” said Darmanin.

    “The police need to check who they are in case they represent a threat to security,” added Gregoire. “They will have strong security measures days before. The idea is to maintain the possibility that neighbours can welcome friends and family. At the same time, to guarantee security.”

    Checks are underway for volunteers and torchbearers. This month, Darmanin told broadcaster LCI that they had “excluded 800 people, including 15 on ‘Fiches S’ (the list of the most serious threats)”.

    What about swimming in the Seine? 

    Paris wants to host the cleanest Olympic Games in history and plans to clean up the River Seine and use it to host events, such as triathlon and open-water swimming. Swimming in the Seine has been banned since 1923, but organisers hope they will be able to open three bathing areas in the river before 2025, a key legacy target of the Games.

    To help offset severe waste run-off during heavy rain, a new multi-million dollar storage basin is being constructed near the river, designed to store enough wastewater to fill 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Concerns have been raised about the suitability of the river in a worst-case scenario, such as after intense heavy rain. “You need a plan B in case it’s not possible to swim,” said reigning Olympic 10-kilometre open-water champion Ana Marcela Cunha, speaking to AFP last month. “The health of athletes must come first.”

    City officials insisted they are confident the river-based events will take place without hazard, but the risk of one leg of the triathlon (swimming, cycling and running) remains.

    “We know if there is a problem we can delay the event by two days,” said Rabadan.

    “We will finish all the work and the quality of water (will be suitable). Unless we have two months of continuous rain during the summer, we will be ready.” 

    How much will this all cost?

    Last month, credit rating agency S&P Global estimated that the Paris Olympics is “unlikely to do any lasting damage to France’s finances”.

    According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), 96 per cent of the budget for organising the Games has come from the private sector, “namely the IOC, partner companies, the Games ticket office, and licensing”.

    A 2022 budget review by Paris 2024 cites a total of €4.38bn (£3.74bn, $4.66bn) for the Paris 2024 Organising Committee, with an IOC allocation of €1.2bn (including TV rights of €750m and partnerships contribution of €470m). Ticketing, hospitality and licensing will contribute €1.1bn, €170m and €127m and partnerships will bring in €1.226bn, according to the review. There will be a further four per cent of public funding to finance the organisation of the Paralympic Games.

    Macron, Paris


    President Macron views a model of the Aquatics Centre on April 4 (Gonzalo Fuentes/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

    The rest of infrastructure spending and modification should double that budget, according to reports, to around €8.8bn. It has risen from a reported €6.7billion, but that is still below London, Rio and Tokyo.

    This month, the former president of the French court of auditors, Pierre Moscovici, told France Inter that the Games “should cost” between €3bn and €5bn, although the true cost will not be known until after the Games have concluded.

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    GO DEEPER

    World Athletics to pay track and field Olympic gold medalists prize money

    What’s the legacy vision?

    Paris wants to host the Olympics and Paralympics using predominantly existing infrastructure, but more broadly, an environmentally-friendly approach is central to these Games.

    This is defined by the cleaning of the Seine, but also by an increase in the number of bikes. There will be “10,000 more bikes” in Paris, according to city officials, with the network expanding to 1,400 kilometres (870 miles). Of those, there will be 60 ‘Olympistes’ — cycle routes dedicated to the Games and moving between venues.

    Paris is aiming for a 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions compared with the averages of London 2012 and Rio 2016. They want to use 100 per cent renewable energy and intend to achieve this using modifications such as connecting all venues to the grid, therefore limiting the use of temporary diesel generators. They want all sites accessible by public transport and are even “doubling the plant-based food to reach a target of 1kg of CO2 per meal, compared with the 2.3kg French average”, according to Paris 2024.

    Paris


    Ugo Gattoni, artist of the Paris 2024 Official Poster (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

    Ensuring a lasting impact in disadvantaged communities is also on the agenda. Saint-Denis, in particular, is set to benefit, with the athletes’ accommodation planned to be turned into 2,800 homes after the Games, 25 per cent of which will be social housing. The area also stands to gain renovated pools, including the Aquatics Center, which will replace a 50-year-old 25-metre pool.

    This, along with cycling, will assist a sporting legacy. There will also be more access for disability sports. “Four years ago, only four sporting clubs (in Paris) could welcome young people with disabilities,” said Gregoire. “Before the Games, we are speaking of almost 50.”

    The other new arenas will be repurposed. The Adidas Arena will become the headquarters of the Paris Basketball Club, and will host concerts and schoolchildren.

    Fundamentally, though, Paris wants to breathe life back into the Olympic movement, which suffered due to the pandemic at the Tokyo Games.

    “The world needs some joy and if the Paris edition of the Olympic Games helps a little for that, that would be good for everyone,” said Gregoire.

    (Top photo: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

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  • Inside the ‘very predatory’ world of illegal betting that lured Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter

    Inside the ‘very predatory’ world of illegal betting that lured Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter

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    In the story Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter Ippei Mizuhara initially told to ESPN, the two men logged into Ohtani’s bank account together on eight or nine occasions in 2023 and wired increments of $500,000 to Mathew Bowyer, an alleged illegal bookmaker under federal investigation. In the story Ohtani told the public days after Mizuhara recanted his initial claims and was fired by the Dodgers, the interpreter stole the money to pay off his gambling debts.

    Both versions of the story generated a question that stumped the general public: Why would a bookie extend a line of credit of at least $4.5 million to someone who said he was drawing an $85,000 salary as an interpreter with the Los Angeles Angels? The scenario was easier to understand for those acquainted with the inner workings of gambling markets.

    “Credit is the lifeblood of illegal bookmakers,” said Chris Grove, a gambling industry entrepreneur and investor. “So we shouldn’t be surprised when an illegal bookmaker utilizes credit to attract a high-value customer, especially when that customer has shown they are good for it.”

    The scandal has captivated the industry of baseball and the larger sporting world at a time when gambling has become intertwined with sports consumption. Ohtani, the 29-year-old two-time American League MVP who recently signed a 10-year, $700 million contract, said he never bet on baseball or any other sports, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing. He described himself as a victim duped by a friend. “Ippei has been stealing money from my account and has told lies,” he said through his new interpreter, Will Ireton. Major League Baseball has opened an investigation. The IRS’s Los Angeles field office has partnered with the Department for Homeland Security to investigate Mizuhara and Bowyer.

    The story also opened a portal for the public into the lesser-understood world of illegal bookmaking. Since the Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that effectively banned sports betting in most states, the majority of the country has gained access to legally wagering on games. Yet a 2022 report by the American Gaming Association estimated that Americans wagered a total of $63.8 billion with illegal bookies and unregulated offshore sites in 2021. So why do these bookies and offshore operations maintain such a thriving business?

    The allure of credit — the ability to bet money you don’t actually have — is the primary reason, as gleaned from interviews with gambling attorneys, entrepreneurs, researchers and professional gamblers. These experts framed most of their commentary on the broader world of illegal gambling, rather than the saga of Ohtani and Mizuhara. But they also pointed to a variety of additional factors that drive bettors toward bookmakers, including the promise of privacy, the ability to avoid taxes on winnings, the removal of artificial betting limits and the lasting appeal of convenience.

    “The Ohtani situation is a good reminder that there’s still a thriving illegal market, because there’s still folks in the illegal market willing to offer things to consumers that the regulated market can’t or won’t,” Grove said.

    The prosecution team tracking Bowyer is the same group that investigated a different gambling ring run by former minor-league baseball player Wayne Nix, the Los Angeles Times reported. One of the dozen people charged in that probe is former Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, who pleaded not guilty. The Nix probe demonstrated the modernity of the practice. The concept of meeting a bookie in a darkened alley or a seedy saloon is outdated. Nix used a network of bookies who collected bets through a website and a telephone line, according to the Washington Post. 

    The convenience adds to the appeal, especially when placing an illegal bet only requires clicking a few buttons rather than walking into a casino in Las Vegas, said one professional gambler. “The last thing a guy wants to do is go to Circa Sportsbook every day and put down $20,000 on (games),” Ingram said. “Some people just text a person, or they go to the website.”

    Bookies often maintain a personal relationship with their clients, forgiving certain bets, offering free play credits or commiserating over “bad beats,” the unlucky results that bond all gamblers. “They offer customer service that sometimes can’t be offered through an app,” said Timothy Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program.

    Fong, a psychiatrist, studies the causes and treatment options for gambling addicts. Some of those who bet through illegal bookmakers desire anonymity. Others don’t want to pay taxes on a potential jackpot.

    Daniel Wallach, a sports betting and gambling attorney in Florida who has previously written for The Athletic, suggested a sense of loyalty can keep bettors intertwined with bookies. “Those patterns may be hard to break, given all the incentives,” Wallach said. “There may be better lines, better odds” for a regular.

    Bookies also offer bets that legal betting companies either can’t or won’t, depending on state laws or risks of exposure. Some states, for instance, bar betting on their local college teams, and against the backdrop of the March Madness college basketball tournaments, the NCAA is trying to restrict college betting further; last week, NCAA president Charlie Baker urged states to ban prop betting on college athletes entirely. Bookies exist in a world unconcerned by those developments, which can be attractive to bettors looking for specific types of action that legal books might not offer.

    “​​Instead of 30 kinds of cereal that they’re offering,” Fong said, “I can get 100 different kinds of cereal that my bookie is offering.”


    Viewers watch March Madness NCAA Tournament games at the sportsbook at the Borgata Casino in New Jersey this March. (Wayne Parry / Associated Press)

    In the case of Mizuhara and Ohtani, location matters. California is one of 12 states without legal sports betting. In 2022, voters there struck down a pair of competing ballot initiatives to keep it that way, showing just how tough it will be to legalize bets amid an expensive and often bitter fight between tribal casinos and private betting companies. Proposition 26 would have legalized in-person betting at tribal casinos and horse tracks. Proposition 27 would have permitted online sports betting.

    By the time voters rejected those initiatives, Mizuhara was already facing more than $1 million in gambling debt, he told ESPN. Mizuhara said he had met Bowyer at a poker game in San Diego in 2021. To boost his business, Bowyer told associates that Ohtani was his customer, the Los Angeles Times reported. Diane Bass, Bowyer’s attorney, has said her client had zero contact with Ohtani.

    In many cases, a player must be referred to a bookie by an existing client, with the existing client sometimes getting a referral bonus when the new player bets. If the new player does not pay the bookie when needed, the referral will be cut off; peer pressure often serves as enough of a first resort to keep bettors paying their gambling debts.

    Bookies also offer incentives for clients to pay in the form of free play or other forms of free bets; the bettor is incentivized to pay up, and use the free bets to keep chasing their losses and get back into the black. In cases where bettors are deeply in debt, bookies accept partial payments or put clients on weekly or monthly payment plans. Payments are frequently made on cash transfer apps like Venmo or PayPal, though at times cash is mailed, depending on the size of the transaction.

    Mizuhara told ESPN that Bowyer extended him a line of credit that allowed his losses to extend into the millions, which experts described as customary for a bookmaker who felt confident in the bettor’s ability to pay.

    Bookmakers can make a lucrative living, especially if they can attract a few deep-pocketed, high-value clients — assuming they can stay out of the crosshairs of the authorities. Bettors themselves rarely, if ever, face legal consequences for betting with illegal bookies; the government has generally looked to prosecute operators, not clients, when it goes after illegal bookmaking at all. At the same time, though, the lack of government oversight can also come back to sting bettors who win big. If the bookie decides not to pay out a significant win, players are left with few options.

    Some of the largest unregulated betting operations are outside the jurisdiction of U.S. state regulators altogether — because they are based in foreign countries. These so-called “offshore” sites often model themselves to look like regulated American sportsbooks, and have domain names like “.lv” to suggest they are based in Las Vegas (in that example, lv stands for Latvia). These typically do not offer the personal experience that US-based illegal bookies do, generally do not offer credit, and transferring cash in and out can be difficult; some gamblers use cryptocurrency to make transactions with these books. A small subset of bettors have placed wagers on sites like these without knowing they were illegal, having stumbled onto one of the raft of unregulated sites that offer the veneer of propriety.

    “You look at it: it’s clean, it’s fresh, it looks like a regulated thing,” Fong said. “It looks no different than a cheap version of DraftKings or FanDuel. It’s got all the bets on it.” The unaware consumer, Fong explained, “has no idea that what they’re actually participating in is unregulated, unprotected gambling activity.”

    If they do well enough — and can be certain of being paid out — betting with an illegal operation can be lucrative for the bettor, as well; besides taxing a player’s winnings, regulated websites also sometimes limit the action of gamblers perceived to be winners, experts said. The bookmaker may offer more freedom, certainly from taxes but also from limits. “In the illegal market, you’re not likely going to find any restraints or restrictions on the amount you can wager,” said Wallach.

    The evidence suggests Mizuhara was far from a winning bettor. Mizuhara painted himself as an addict unable to win back his losses. In those cases, the usage of credit aids the bookmaker, too.

    “What they do is they let these people go in deep in money that they don’t have,” said the professional gambler. “It’s very predatory. It’s sad, really, because this is how a lot of the world works, in gambling.”

    (Top photo of Mizuhara and Ohtani at a Los Angeles Rams game in December: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

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  • The men who want to buy football clubs: Chris Kirchner, the $25m fraudster

    The men who want to buy football clubs: Chris Kirchner, the $25m fraudster

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    In the first of our series about the men who want to buy English football clubs, this is the remarkable story of Chris Kirchner, who came close to taking over Derby County and was then found guilty of fraud and money laundering.

    This week, we will examine five prospective investors and what their interest in English football says about their ambitions and the game itself.

    Valentine’s Day 2023 and, just after dawn, Chris Kirchner’s world begins to crumble.

    A group of FBI agents have arrived at the gates of his family home in Westlake, Texas, less than a mile from the exclusive Vaquero Country Club, and begin seizing the trappings of his wealth.

    A Rolls-Royce Cullinan and a Mercedes-Benz G-Class are among the items confiscated, along with five luxury watches and a Cartier necklace. Close to $600,000 (£475,000 at today’s rates) is taken from personal accounts in Kirchner’s name, as well as artwork and 57 bottles of wine.

    The FBI arrested Kirchner too, issuing charges of wire fraud after alleging he had sent millions of dollars from the accounts of Slync, a software start-up he founded in 2017, to his personal account. A $16million Gulfstream jet was among the many things bought with the money of others.

    Derby County, the English Football League (EFL) club crowned champions of England in 1972 under Brian Clough, had almost become another of his assets.

    Nine months before his arrest in the United States, Kirchner still believed he could close out a takeover to rescue the club from administration. He had been named the preferred bidder, considered by administrator Quantuma as the man most likely to prevent Derby from going under. He had been depicted as the club’s saviour, drawing the acclaim of fans.

    Like so much of Kirchner’s life, however, it was destined to collapse.

    A “life of luxury” had been built by misappropriating his company’s funds. At Kirchner’s four-day trial, held in January this year, evidence showed he had converted at least $25million in investor money to his personal use.

    A jury found Kirchner guilty of four counts of wire fraud and a further seven counts of money laundering. Sentencing will take place on July 11 and, already denied bail, he is facing a maximum prison term of 150 years.

    The fall of Kirchner has been sudden and spectacular. That he came so close to buying Derby, just a few months after walking away from a similar deal to purchase Preston North End, another Championship club, already seems fanciful.

    Kirchner, though, forms part of a broader problem. English football, flush with money, continues to attract the wrong kind of would-be investors. Fraudsters, fantasists and charlatans are queuing up.

    “Years ago, it was what sort of car or house do you have?” as one person working at an EFL club put it. “Today, it’s about more. Football clubs are attractive. It’s the one thing that gives you real credibility. The worldwide success of English football makes owning a club a trophy to have.”

    Kirchner will not be the first or the last. Many others attempt to squeeze through the vetting process to become football club owners, pushing for control of teams that are better off without the interest.

    “He went down this Walter Mitty path and never really had any touch with reality,” says one well-placed source in the deal to buy Derby who, like others in this piece, remain anonymous to protect relationships.

    In a Fort Worth courthouse, Kirchner’s reality came crashing down.

    Until the gilded walls fell in around him, it could never be said that Kirchner lacked credibility.

    He was a young (still only 36), ambitious American, the bold chief executive of Slync, a tech start-up company backed by Goldman Sachs. Within four years of launching in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, thanks to growth propelled by the Covid-19 pandemic, Slync had been valued at $240million by investors and employed more than 100 staff members.

    Kirchner purposely positioned himself as the company’s figurehead and took Slync to places he, as a golf obsessive, wished to go. Justin Rose, the former world No 1 golfer, was among the company’s first commercial sponsorships and was paid $2million annually. That path led Slync towards becoming a lead sponsor of the Dubai Desert Classic in 2021 in a multi-million dollar agreement.

    The aim was to grow Slync’s brand but Kirchner enjoyed the perks that came with it. He was pictured playing golf with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and would turn out in tournaments, including the illustrious JP McManus Pro-Am at Adare Manor in Ireland.

    Kirchner


    Kirchner with Rory McIlroy in Dubai in January 2022 (David Cannon/Getty Images)

    Kirchner was there in 2022 leading Team Slync three weeks before he was fired from his position as chief executive and removed from the company’s board of directors.

    Plenty appeared to be taken in by Kirchner’s front, including Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), chairman of Newcastle United and another golf enthusiast.

    Kirchner visited the Centurion Golf Club in St Albans, on the outskirts of London, in June 2022, where he had a place in the LIV Golf pro-am tournament, a curtain raiser to the Saudi-backed tour’s inaugural event. Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter, the high-profile European pair, were among Kirchner’s playing partners over 18 holes.

    “I saw with my own eyes the rapport he had with Yasir Al-Rumayyan that day at LIV,” said Nigel Owen, formerly the spokesperson of the Black and White Together Derby fans group, who was invited by Kirchner to the Centurion GC.

    “We came off the fifth or sixth green and, between there and the next tee, there were two huge blokes stood there, bouncers almost. They part and there’s this little guy behind them and then it twigged with me who it was.

    “Chris and Al-Rumayyan greeted one another like long-lost friends. It was a bear hug. If you’re in my shoes, as someone who wanted someone to come and buy Derby County, I’m watching him with people like that and I’m thinking, ‘This guy must be legit’.”

    A large media presence was on site to cover the start of golf’s disruptive new era and Kirchner was caught off guard when walking to the clubhouse. Updates on Derby’s takeover were sought amid reports of its collapse. “No comment on that,” he said.

    Owen, though, was given a different reading on the state of play.

    “It was within an hour of that moment he told me that it was done,” he remembers. “The transfer had been made and it was done. I spent the next hour with him in the clubhouse with Phil Mickelson at the next table. He (Kirchner) was ringing people saying it was done. I went away from there believing the money had been transferred. It was all going through.”

    Derby, by then, were desperate. Close to nine months had been spent in administration after long-standing owner Mel Morris had pulled the plug on his financial support, triggering points deductions and an inevitable relegation from the Championship.

    The future of the club hung in the balance and Kirchner, named as the preferred bidder by administrators in April 2022, offered the only visible promise of salvation. Yet Kirchner always seemed more interested in publicity and acclaim than getting on with the business of making it happen.

    While it might have been anticipated that Kirchner would initiate talks with Morris, the American showed little interest in getting around a table with the owner. Morris had become a hate figure for many Derby fans and Kirchner used that to strengthen his position, repeatedly criticising and questioning the man who held the keys to the club.

    go-deeper

    Morris had suspicions about Kirchner and did not appreciate the American’s hostile and standoffish approach. Nor did it escape his attention that few prospective football club owners gave a running commentary on social media.

    Kirchner was certainly fond of the spotlight. Over several weeks and months, he interacted with supporters on digital platforms, pledging to fix their stricken club. There was even an interview with Derby’s in-house media. “It kinda feels like home to me,” he said, likening Derby’s vista to “the rolling hills” of his hometown Lexington, Kentucky.

    Kirchner attended several home matches across the 2021-22 season and waved to supporters from his padded seat. He would visit pubs on a matchday, accompanied by his wife Ali, and pose for pictures.

    Kirchner also met players and staff at the club’s Moor Farm training complex, wearing Derby-branded clothing. Forward Tom Lawrence was pictured visiting Kirchner at his home in Dallas during the summer break.

    “Derby were looking for a man of the people and he gave that impression,” says Chris Poulter, former leader of Derby City Council, who was pictured with Kirchner at the Peacock pub before a home game late in the 2021-22 season.

    Kirchner had made it his business to ingratiate himself with the council. “He’d completely got them wrapped around his little finger,” says one of the key players in the proposed takeover. “He had charmed them into thinking he was the guy to take Derby forward.”

    “It wasn’t for me or any supporter to do due diligence on whether he actually had the money or where it had come from,” says Poulter. “That was down to the administrators and the league. He was being put forward as the preferred bidder and we had no option but to support him in finishing the job.”

    What followed bordered on the tragicomic. At 8.45am one Sunday, Morris took a call from an intermediary, a banker, to suggest that it might be worthwhile for the two parties to start communicating.

    Kirchner followed that up with a letter to introduce himself and explain that he wanted to buy the club. Morris wrote back to say he found it surprising that it was their first contact but made it clear he was willing to get down to the nitty-gritty of making it happen.

    Morris and Kirchner, it transpired, used the same bank. But when the transfer from Kirchner’s account didn’t arrive, there was a stream of excuses.

    In a remarkable exchange, an exasperated Morris ended up instructing Kirchner’s camp that, if necessary, he could pass on instructions about how to log on, which page to find, which buttons to press, and how to send evidence of attempted transfers.

    But the money was never sent and Morris was left with the overwhelming feeling that the whole operation had been a waste of time. He and Kirchner had not spoken once during the whole process.

    Quantuma, the club’s administrator, was not the only party misled. Kirchner worked with Garry Cook, formerly Manchester City’s chief executive and now of Birmingham City, during the negotiations, as well as Paul Stretford, the agent of Derby’s then-manager Wayne Rooney, who called Kirchner “a very good businessman” in October 2021.

    Derby


    (Left to right) Stretford, Kirchner and Cook at Pride Park in November 2021 (Jon Hobley/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    There was an undoubted veneer of believability about Kirchner. He had hired the respected legal firm Squire Patton Boggs and senior partner David Hull to act on his behalf during negotiations, and background checks undertaken by the EFL indicated there was no reason to doubt Kirchner had the finances to proceed. The backing of Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs also helped entrench the American’s plausibility.

    Rooney offered his public endorsement, too. The manager was popular with the fans and that immediately gave Kirchner an extra layer of respectability.

    So convinced of Kirchner’s credentials was Stretford that Triple S, a company where he is listed as a director, stepped in to cover a monthly wage bill of £1.6million in May 2022. That move was investigated by the English Football Association but it says no further action was deemed appropriate.

    Stretford would later begin legal proceedings against Kirchner in an attempt to claw back that £1.6million. A winding-up petition against 9CK Sports Holdings, a now-dormant company of which Kirchner is the sole director, was lodged two days after the American’s arrest in February 2023. Triple S was listed as the claimant but that pursuit has been unsuccessful so far.

    Triple S said in a statement: “In May 2022, the Triple S Group provided a short-term bridging loan to Chris Kirchner and 9CK. At no point did the Triple S Group provide funding directly to Derby. Recovery of this loan is subject to an ongoing legal process in the UK and U.S. — as such, no further comment can be made.

    “The Triple S Group voluntarily disclosed all information to the FA and cooperated with them fully throughout the entire process. The Triple S Group has been open and transparent about this matter from the start.”

    Stretford and Cook had also been present for Kirchner’s very public pursuit of Preston at the start of 2022. Cook initiated the contact between the two parties once an initial interest in Derby had subsided in the final weeks of 2021 and, by mid-February, Kirchner attended a home game against Huddersfield Town at Deepdale.

    Then came a bid that proposed Kirchner take control of Preston from the club’s long-standing local owners, the Hemmings family. There was a deal to be done at the right price and a willing seller.

    There was even broad agreement but Kirchner chose to walk away and back towards Derby. “Ever buy a car?” he would later ask in a social media Q&A. “If someone raises the price halfway through the deal by 10 per cent over what you agreed then wants to force you to buy options and packages you don’t want/need with the car, would you buy it?”

    Kirchner


    (Cameron Smith/Getty Images)

    Preston were not amused and, privately, considered Kirchner to be a tyre kicker. The club issued a pointed statement, purposely making no reference to the American.

    “The most important point to make absolutely clear is that contrary to suggestions in the public domain, we never increased the asking price from the price and terms included in the originally agreed offer,” it said.

    Kirchner was considered a “chancer” by some of those who worked on the deal at Preston. An offer had been made but no proof of funds was ever shown.

    “Then he goes back to Derby and says he knew all along it was a bigger club than Preston,” said one figure at the club. “Cheeky.”

    Kirchner never hid his ambitions to find a route to professional sport. Golf topped his interests but he followed English football intently. Kirchner claimed it was part of his family upbringing

    “When I joined the company, his story was that he was a lifelong fan of Chelsea, that he was open to sponsoring a hospitality suite at Chelsea’s stadium,” Matt Gunn, formerly chief marketing officer at Slync, tells The Athletic.

    Kirchner had his eyes on a much bigger outlay by the spring of 2022. “When he went to purchase Derby County, he told his executive leaders, myself included, that it was a personal pursuit he was doing outside of the business and it wasn’t business money,” adds Gunn.

    “He said it was a lifelong dream of his to own a football club. To avoid the perception it was a distraction, he even told staff on an all-hands call to the company.”

    There were already misgivings within Slync that Kirchner’s apparent commitment to growing the company’s brand was causing a financial strain. Sponsorship of Dubai Desert Classic, a flagship event for golf’s European Tour, had been announced in September 2021 on a multi-year arrangement that would eventually be scrapped 12 months later. There was also a commercial deal with NHL’s Dallas Stars, with Slync unable to maintain payments by June 2022. It is estimated that project commitments for sports marketing ran to almost $60million.

    Kirchner


    Kirchner with McIlroy during the pro-am in the Slync.io Dubai Desert Classic 2022 (David Cannon/Getty Images)

    “We all knew there was a lot of expense involved,” says Gunn. “He was the sole decision maker for the sports sponsorships — the hockey, the golf, the trips to the Masters — and ran those almost as though they were a separate division of the company.

    “It was his way of making a bet. Software wasn’t sold by software alone. He thought it was about making big relationships with people.

    “Come and play a round of golf with Justin Rose or take them to watch a big tournament like the Dubai Desert Classic. I don’t believe any of his sports interactions led to a single dollar of revenue.”

    Kirchner came to be seen as a contradiction by employees; the man who helped build up Slync and the man whose actions threatened to bring it down. There was no questioning his short-term successes as the company’s chief executive, bringing in $57.2m in two funding rounds. Kirchner presented himself as a personable leader on the good days but those who spent time in his company could not miss the little shows of wealth.

    “The first time I met him in person was when I flew to Dallas for some meetings with executives and Chris decided to pick us up for lunch in a bright red Ferrari,” says Gunn. “That was pretty unusual for me. He showed me his Richard Mille watch, which he told me he had to speak to a financial advisor before purchasing because it was so expensive.”

    Plenty who crossed paths with Kirchner considered him ostentatious.

    “One time after a round, there were 10 or so of us in the locker room,” says one close associate from the Vaquero Club, “and he said, ‘OK I need to go pick up my friend in Kentucky on my jet, then we’re flying back here. Does anyone want to come with me, drink bourbon and play cards?’.

    “He always loved to talk about his money, where he was on his jet, what elite private course he was playing, name dropping celebrities and athletes left and right like they were his best friends.”

    Yet, tellingly, there was also an enigmatic streak to Kirchner. He would claim his source of wealth was cryptocurrency investments, depicting himself as the boy from a blue-collar family who had struck lucky. Kirchner had attended the University of Kentucky but left without graduating, initially working at Best Buy, the American electronics retailer.

    Slync, launched in 2017, became his path towards bigger things. The company’s growth, with DHL and Kuehne + Nagel among its early customers, convinced others to buy in and saw millions raised. Kirchner, for a spell, had legitimacy.

    Golf


    Viktor Hovland tees off at Emirates Golf Club in January 2022 (Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

    The indictment for his arrest, filed on February 5, 2023, claimed he had restricted other Slync employees’ access to financial information, with the chief executive considered the “sole decision maker”.

    All investor funds raised during the A and B rounds for “product development and other general corporate purposes” were wired to a Slync Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) account and before the first of those, made in March 2020, that account was overdrawn by $693.21.

    Between April and November 2020, the indictment alleged that Kirchner initiated 27 wire transfers from Slync’s SVB account to Slync’s Chase account, of which Kirchner was the sole signatory. Those totalled $2.174million and much of it was moved to Kirchner’s private accounts.

    But the money kept coming for Slync. In December 2020, just under $37million was sent to Slync’s SVB account by investors and Kirchner soon moved $20million to his personal account without permission from Slync’s board of directors. He used $16million of that for the deposit and purchase of a Gulfstream G550 private jet.

    The indictment papers also outline how Kirchner initiated another 70 wire transfers between January 2021 and March 2022 totalling $6.8million. The last of those came a fortnight before Quantuma named Kirchner as the preferred bidder for Derby County.

    Cracks, though, were starting to show in an empire built on sand. Staff at Slync were paid late in April, May and June 2022 and Kirchner set about attempting to claw back money. He convinced four groups to inject $850,000 during a round C fundraiser. Kirchner would later sell his private jet to repay the round C investors.

    The end was nigh. Kirchner fired one Slync employee after they had reported to the company’s board that financial performances had been falsely exaggerated and by late July 2022, Kirchner was suspended from his role as chief executive. He then “attempted to delete approximately 18 gigabytes of Slync data, including emails”, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

    “All the warning signs were there and I saw it — directly and indirectly — the person that he was,” says Gunn. “I was glad when he was no longer in a position of power with that company but sad in the knowledge that so many people were impacted because of what he’d done.

    “Chris stayed in character to the end. The company folded when he counter-sued them to get legal fees paid for. That tells you a lot about who he was. He couldn’t move the money he did and not have a dozen red flags pop up. I can’t believe he could not show remorse for that but then it’s not entirely out of character.”

    Slync was wound down at the end of last year.

    Derby County were eventually able to see the collapsed negotiations with Kirchner as a blessing. His formal withdrawal came on June 14, clearing the way for local businessman David Clowes to rescue his boyhood club from the threat of liquidation.

    “You can look back now and it’s almost laughable in a dark way,” says one member of staff. “Did that really happen? But it almost makes you realise how fortunate we are now with the owner. If the Chris Kirchner deal had gone through, what might have happened?”

    A spokeswoman for Quantuma, which selected Kirchner as the preferred bidder to take over Derby, said: “The joint administrators can confirm that the obligations upon them relating to anti-money laundering tests were complied with. The joint administrators are unable to comment on what due diligence processes were undertaken by third parties. There are legal obligations placed upon the joint administrators and other authorities that mean that no further comment can be made.”

    go-deeper

    Derby, almost certainly, would have been plunged into enormous trouble. Everything Kirchner owned was seized within a year and now he waits on a sentencing that could see him imprisoned for decades.

    “I don’t know what his intentions were,” says one senior figure involved in the takeover process. “It was going to go bang at some point. He was introduced by some people inside the club and I suppose that gave him a certain level of credibility that was beyond what he should have been afforded.”

    Kirchner had the charm and confidence but none of the money to maintain his life of fantasy.

    Additional contributors: Melanie Anzidei, Elias Burke

    (Design: Eamonn Dalton; photos: Richard Sellers/PA Images via Getty Images, Robbie Stephenson/PA Images via Getty Images, Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)

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  • Mandel: Nothing brings a split country together like March Madness. Enjoy it

    Mandel: Nothing brings a split country together like March Madness. Enjoy it

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    You can find more of The Athletic’s coverage of the men’s NCAA Tournament here and women’s NCAA Tournament here. Follow live coverage of the 2024 men’s NCAA Tournament second round

    On Wednesday, I boarded a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas for the explicit purpose of watching college basketball.

    Not to attend an actual basketball game, mind you. Those flights were headed to Omaha, Neb., and Charlotte, N.C. In my case, I am spending several hundred dollars for the privilege of sitting (or standing) in various sportsbooks and viewing parties to watch NCAA Tournament games that are readily available on the television in my living room.

    If the inflated hotel prices and $250 tickets for reserved seating are any indication, hundreds of thousands of other sports fans are doing the same.

    Betting is presumably the draw for many of them, but these days you don’t need to fly to Vegas to place a sports bet. Alcohol consumption may be another, but that, too, is readily available for far less than a plane ticket.

    The allure of Vegas for March Madness is much the same as it is for millions of people who fill out brackets and cheer their heads off for schools and players they’d never heard of two hours earlier. It’s because the NCAA Tournament is one our country’s increasingly rare communal experiences.

    In this polarizing time, when even the most innocuous subject can become cause for outrage, there’s still one thing folks from all parts of the country enjoy equally: rooting for the underdog. There aren’t two sides to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson knocking off No. 1 seed Purdue (unless you’re a Purdue fan). There is no political agenda behind Saint Peter’s upsetting Kentucky.

    It is nothing but pure, sheer joy to spend two hours watching a team of complete unknowns who play most of their games in front of 800 people take on a bunch of future pros from a power conference and come out the victor. Or when, with a team’s season on the line, 19-year-old sophomores drain a 3-point buzzer-beater to etch themselves into “One Shining Moment” lore for the rest of their lives.

    No other sporting event manages to deliver so many indelible moments year after year after year. Sure, there are “upsets” in pro sports. But the New York Giants beating the New England Patriots in a Super Bowl is ultimately one team full of multimillionaires beating another. Not exactly Oral Roberts beating Ohio State.

    College football has had its share of Cinderella moments, like Appalachian State stunning Michigan or Boise State toppling Oklahoma. But when it comes to the biggest games at the end of the season, it’s almost always Alabama, Georgia or Michigan beating another Alabama, Georgia or Michigan.

    The NBA has LeBron, Giannis and Jokić. But it doesn’t have Sister Jean.

    But most of all, in all of these sports, there are no teams that the entire country gets behind. People don’t suddenly morph into Philadelphia Eagles fans once the NFL playoffs begin. But if you’ve ever been in an arena where the No. 13 seed is still hanging around in the second half, then you know well the buzz of 20,000 people suddenly turning into rabid Furman fans for the rest of the game.

    The only thing to compare it to is events like the World Cup or the Olympics, when a U.S. team or athlete is competing. But even the women’s national soccer team has become politicized, and the men mostly cause collective angst for being so mediocre. And chances are you don’t even remember the names of most of the gold medalists from the last Olympics.

    Whereas every college basketball fan remembers forever the likes of Bryce Drew, Tyus Edney and Kris Jenkins.

    Which brings me back to Vegas. Though it doesn’t have to be Vegas. It could be your local Buffalo Wild Wings. Or your neighborhood dive bar. Or a close enough sports bar to sneak away to on your lunch break.

    March Madness is the one sporting event best enjoyed in the company of others. Riding the roller coaster of scoring droughts and momentum swings in a room full of other captivated viewers as your Final Four pick tries to survive a first-round scare. High-fiving random people around you if Vermont sinks a 3-pointer to go up by nine on Duke.

    Or racing around the room screaming and hugging strangers if some kid from Long Beach State lays one up at the buzzer to take down Arizona.

    Enjoy the flight — wherever it takes you.

    Get ready for March Madness:

    (Photo: Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

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  • Feeding the ‘demon inside’: Ex-employee tells how and why he stole $22 million from Jaguars

    Feeding the ‘demon inside’: Ex-employee tells how and why he stole $22 million from Jaguars

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    Feb. 2, 2023 began like any other morning for Amit Patel. He was sitting in his cubicle on the ground floor of EverBank Stadium, home to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Patel, a manager in the team’s financial department, was closing out the last cycle of expenses, as he did at the beginning of each month.

    When Jaguars chief financial officer Mark Sirota asked Patel to come to Sirota’s office, he thought it might be to discuss a new project. But then Patel got there and Sirota lowered his voice and asked Patel to shut the door behind him. Sirota then told Patel a delegation from NFL security was in a suite upstairs waiting to talk to him.

    Sirota escorted Patel through the office, then the bowels of the stadium. As they made their way to an elevator, Patel looked back and saw a contingent of human relations officials and team security trailing them. When he arrived on the fourth floor and stepped into a suite, he was met by one of the team’s lawyers and three men in suits, one of whom was sitting behind a laptop.

    “I already knew they had everything on the computer in front of them. My entire gambling history,” Patel, 31, told The Athletic in an interview from his attorney’s office in Jacksonville last week.

    When the NFL security team asked where Patel got the money to place the bets they had discovered, he lied. He said it was from family wealth and cryptocurrency. When they asked whether they could have access to his phone and computer, he looked to the Jaguars’ lawyer for advice, only to realize the lawyer was there to protect the team, not him. He handed his devices over and the lawyer took him for a walk around the concourse. As they walked, Patel feverishly calculated what those security officials might identify as they transferred data from his computer and phone.

    When his boss later asked him for his password to the company’s virtual credit card program, Patel knew it was over. He was caught.

    FBI investigators subsequently discovered that Patel, over a four-year period, had embezzled more than $22 million from the Jaguars by creating fraudulent charges on the club’s virtual credit card and then covering his tracks by sending falsified files to the team’s accounting department. Patel’s attorney said the vast majority of what he stole he gambled away via online sports gambling sites. The government said he also used the money to fund a jet-set lifestyle and to purchase vehicles, a condominium, a designer watch worth over $95,000 and other extravagances.

    Last Tuesday, in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Patel stood before a judge, voice quivering, and said he was “ashamed” of his actions. The prosecution asked for a sentence of 84 months, emphasizing the scale of his fraud, the media attention the case received and the message it would send to others who might “steal millions and live like a king.” Patel’s attorney asked for probation, citing his client’s gambling addiction and subsequent recovery efforts as reasons for leniency.

    Patel received a 78-month sentence.

    In his first interview since he pleaded guilty last year, Patel said that after months of anticipation, dread and unease, he feels a sense of relief to finally face his punishment.

    “I’m dealing with the consequences of something that happened a year and a half ago. I’ve been a completely different person since then through my recovery,” Patel said. “I’m dealing with something that’s happened in the past when I was a different person.”

    Patel had roughly two dozen friends and family on hand at his sentencing, some of whom made statements vouching for his character. His older brother said he was the prototypical golden child who excelled at sports and school only to be derailed by alcohol abuse and gambling addiction. His high school teacher said he was a “model student.” His girlfriend insisted he was a good person who had taken responsibility for his actions and committed to a life of sobriety.

    Government attorneys described him as a fabulist who conned his company and enjoyed the spoils. Court filings included pictures of Patel partying at swanky hotels, flying on private planes and flashing expensive bottles of champagne. In that filing, the prosecutor handling the case wrote that Patel continued to “enjoy the finer things” even after he was fired. Megha Parekh, the Jaguars chief legal counsel, issued a blistering assessment of Patel, stating that his actions invited an inordinate amount of scrutiny on the organization and diverted key resources and time from current employees: “He was our teammate and he betrayed us.”

    Those depictions, while seemingly in contrast, coexist in Patel’s retelling, and he frequently toed the line between expressing remorse for his actions and ascribing those actions to a problem outside his control.

    “I was battling with a secret addiction that nobody knew about,” Patel said. “Everyone thought I was doing great, dandy. You know, on Instagram they see you having fun, you’re with your friends and family, but there’s a mental demon inside.”

    Patel grew up in a strict household where his parents, who immigrated from India, expected academic excellence from their two sons. He said he was impacted greatly by two losses earlier in his life: Patel’s father died of a heart attack when Patel was 13, and one of his best friends died in a car accident nine years later when he was in college. By that time, Patel said his drinking, drug use and gambling were all-consuming.

    But Patel also had an abundance of love and support coupled with ambition and opportunity. He was, as the government attorney described in court, an example of the American Dream. Popular and well-liked among his classmates. Elected class president at the Paxon School for Advanced Studies in Jacksonville. Captain of his high school lacrosse team. And he had an entrepreneurial spirit, dabbling in e-commerce and side projects that suffused him with cash and freedom.

    Like many people his age, Patel was drawn to gambling during the online poker boom of the early aughts and the ubiquity of fantasy sports. He said he first experienced the rush of gambling on a cruise trip to the Bahamas the summer before he left for college. The cruise featured a poker tournament and, though his mom forbade him to enter because he had previously squandered money on online poker by using her credit card, his stepfather slipped him a $100 bill.

    A crowd formed around the poker table and he was in the middle of it all, winning the tournament and a $2,000 prize. He paid his mother back for a portion of the cruise and bought his then-girlfriend a necklace. He later posed for a picture with the money splayed out on a table and made that his Facebook profile avatar.

    Patel enrolled at Florida State in 2010 but said the combination of partying and gambling led him to switch from his major of choice (engineering) to something more manageable (accounting). Poor grades prompted his transfer to Flagler College as he prioritized gambling over all else. He took a bus to an in-person poker tournament at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, where he finished 15th out of about 1,500 entrants, winning almost $7,500. But he was able to return to FSU for an MBA. Out of college, he went to work for Deloitte, and while there he used his corporate credit card to fund his gambling habit. But he avoided trouble because his brother helped him pay it off.

    In 2018, he landed his dream job with the Jaguars, a team he grew up supporting. By that point, he’d progressed from playing fantasy football to betting on baseball via offshore accounts to placing wagers on essentially anything he could. “You wake up in the middle of the night and you’re betting on Turkish women’s volleyball,” he said.

    He’d ignore his mom’s calls, forget to brush his teeth, stay up late into the night, constantly refreshing his phone for scores and highlights while his girlfriend slept next to him. Once, in Las Vegas, he drove to the Nevada/Arizona border just so he could place a daily fantasy sports bet, which isn’t permitted in Nevada. When his bank account was low, he’d sell personal items, donate plasma, take out payday loans or rustle up work doing cell phone repairs. There were times he’d visit the ATM multiple times in a day, depositing and depleting.

    “The worst part is there’s always a win around the corner,” Patel said. “And so that’s what you’re always chasing.”

    In September 2019, Patel, then a mid-level employee with the Jaguars, was in the hole from gambling losses, his credit card maxed out. He was drunk, trying to think of a way to dig himself out of debt and feeling the “itch.” That’s when he allowed himself to consider using funds from the company VCC program he managed.

    “I mean, the devil inside me is like let me just deposit $25,000 from the card. I’ll turn it into $50,000. I’ll put the $25,000 back,” Patel said.

    Given the level of attrition and lack of oversight within the Jaguars’ depleted accounting and finance department, the prospect of getting caught seemed low. In corporate finance, there is a concept called the fraud triangle: Opportunity. Incentive. Rationalization. Patel had all three.

    The hole deepened as Patel’s gambling losses mounted. And so he continued using funds obtained from the Jaguars VCC program to place astronomical bets via FanDuel and DraftKings in hopes that he’d win big and save himself. Patel said his VIP rep at FanDuel would add 10 percent to his account for every $600,000 he spent, in addition to entry fees that were refunded and travel perks he was comped. A spokesperson for FanDuel declined to comment as the company still considers the situation an “ongoing matter.”

    In the early days of the scheme, Patel would see an unannounced meeting placed on his calendar and believe the team had figured out his subterfuge. As the years passed and his actions went undetected, that fear never abated, he said, but he just couldn’t stop.

    He’s not sure what tipped off NFL security early in 2023. (Employees of NFL teams are forbidden from betting on games.) But he recounted some brazen moves he made in the months before his termination. Twice, he bet on the Jaguars – once while he was in Kansas City for a game against the Chiefs — an $18,000 six-way parlay involving five UFC fights and the Jags covering the spread. (The five fights went his way, he said, but the Jags didn’t cover.) Later, he said he bet “a few hundred thousand dollars” on a Jaguars-Titans game, another loss. He also tried to withdraw money from a wire to place bets through FanDuel, which triggered a notification from the anti-money laundering team at the site. (He said his account was suspended after he unsuccessfully answered questions about the source of his funds.)

    “I was so far in the hole I was like ‘Maybe I can win a million really quick on this game and pay them back,’” he said. “I was desperate.”

    In the immediate aftermath of getting fired by the Jaguars, Patel did not stop gambling. Instead, he continued scrambling to try to win and pay the team back. An absurd idea, he recognizes now, considering the sum he owed.

    Patel was in rehab by the time the FBI got involved. His attorney referred him for alcohol and drug abuse, as well as gambling addiction. He cooperated with the government’s investigation and in December 2023 pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and an illegal monetary transaction.

    In the 99 days he spent in rehab, Patel said he felt guilt and shame for the pain he caused his loved ones, friends and coworkers. But he also felt grateful. “I was so glad to be out of that torturous, endless cycle in my head,” he said.

    Gambler’s Anonymous works similarly to Alcoholics Anonymous. You work the 12 steps. Identify the “character defects” that contribute to addiction. Patel still battles those, with perfectionism and ego surfacing more prevalently than he would like.

    He bristled at the suggestion that he was a neophyte and historically bad gambler, as one report suggested. He was bothered by news accounts that only one person attended his plea hearing in his defense. (He told friends and family not to attend, he said.) And he pushes back on the government’s assertion that he was driven solely by greed.

    He contends that he bought some luxury items to flip for profits to subsidize his gambling, while also acknowledging that he was frittering away money on a country club membership, spa services and more. Though the majority of the money he stole from the Jaguars ended up with FanDuel or DraftKings, the government contends that Patel transferred over $5 million to his PayPal and other financial accounts.

    He admits he enjoyed the trappings that came with having access to millions of dollars but said the cost of certain trips and events were reimbursed by the online betting sites, an incentive for him to continue spending with them: “They just give you this illusion that you’re winning because they’re just making so much money off of you that they need to keep you happy and keep you gambling,” he said.

    Patel said he still has urges to gamble — the most recent one came a few months ago when he got an email from the Hard Rock Hotel Casino group, commemorating the opening of its new sportsbook. Patel talked about it in the GA meeting he organized; the group now meets regularly in a local church.

    “Not everyone will get addicted to gambling,” Patel said. “But everyone can get addicted.”

    Patel will continue treatment while incarcerated. He is slated to begin his sentence within the next 90 days. His attorney requested he be placed at the federal facility closest to his family in Jacksonville. When he gets out, he’ll be put on a payment plan – $250 a month directed to the Jaguars. Both the prosecuting attorney and the judge acknowledged he is unlikely to ever pay back the entire sum he stole from the NFL franchise.

    Said Patel: “I’ve just got to deal with these consequences and move on with my life and see how much I can use this to help a lot of other people.”

    (Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos: Don Juan Moore, Julio Aguilar, Perry Knotts, Don Juan Moore / Getty Images; courtesy of U.S. Attorney)

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  • Thirty years ago, Chris Farley and college basketball collided in an unforgettable way

    Thirty years ago, Chris Farley and college basketball collided in an unforgettable way

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    Thirty years later, Christian Laettner isn’t sure he knew it was coming. In 1994, he was in the NBA, his second season with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Maybe someone had informed his agent but he doesn’t think so.

    The former Duke star just one day remembers seeing the commercial on ESPN. Chris Farley, then at the height of his “Saturday Night Live” glory, dressed in Laettner’s No. 32 jersey, recreating his buzzer-beating shot against Kentucky, a signature moment in NCAA Tournament history.

    “All I know is that all of a sudden it was out and it was hilarious and it was awesome,” Laettner told The Athletic.

    Farley did three spots that aired on ESPN, all promoting college basketball, all remembered for the physical comedy and shenanigans that made Farley so beloved and famous.

    In one spot, Farley was Michigan’s Rumeal Robinson, standing at the foul line, needing to sink two free throws to win the 1989 national championship. “And he makes it look … ” Farley says, before firing and missing, not once, not twice but six times, yelling out in famed Farley frustration (“GET IN THERE!”) after each brick.

    In another, he’s North Carolina’s Michael Jordan in the 1982 title game, but instead of sinking the winning jumper from the wing, Farley decides to take a step-back 3 (he was ahead of his time on this), correctly pointing out in the end that college basketball did not have a 3-point line at the time.

    But it’s the Laettner ad that’s so fantastic, so funny, so Farley.

    “OK, I’m Christian Laettner,” the comedian begins, wearing a tight Duke uniform. “1992. Duke-Kentucky. Kentucky’s up by one, Christian’s got the ball. Two seconds left.”

    Farley turns and faces five Kentucky defenders, life-sized cutouts made from plywood. He dribbles and shoots a turnaround jumper, just as Laettner did that memorable afternoon in Philadelphia in the East Regional final.

    Nope.

    “Off the glass!”

    “Gets his own rebound!”

    Miss.

    “Loose ball!”

    Farley dives and knocks over a Kentucky cutout. Finally, he banks in a layup and raises his arms in celebration.

    “Duke wins! Game of the century,” Farley yells. “And that’s the way it happened! … Well, almost.”

    Actually, this is how it happened.

    In 1993, Glenn Cole worked at Wieden+Kennedy, an ambitious advertising firm based in Portland, Ore. Although it’s a global agency today, Wieden+Kennedy back then devoted a bulk of its resources to one client, Nike. It was known for “Bo Knows” and for Mars Blackmon telling Jordan, “Money, it’s gotta be the shoes.”

    A copy writer, Cole, 24, was the youngest at the firm. A former sprinter at the University of Oregon, he loved the creativity and story-telling advertising provided, especially at Wieden+Kennedy. He described himself in that environment as an “idiot who was an intern half a minute ago.” But his superiors thought enough of him to assign him an ESPN campaign that came with a simple task.

    Promote college basketball.

    “Got the keys to this kind of cool car. Nobody’s looking at it,” said Cole, referring to all the attention the firm gave to Nike. “I have an ESPN basketball campaign. I watch a lot of ‘Saturday Night Live.’ And I was obsessed with Chris Farley.”

    Cole had an idea. A common basketball moment — playing solo on a playground. Tie game. Clock winds down. 3 … 2 … 1.

    Yet the shot seldom drops. The countdown resets. No game-winning heroics, only an asphalt do-over.

    “And so I thought that’d be funny to kind of screw with that trope,” Cole said. “And then I was like, ‘Oh my God, Chris would be the perfect person to do that.’”

    Approaching 30, Farley was a rising star. The New York Daily News had called him the breakout performer of SNL’s latest season, one who had brought the same sort of “volcanic, magnetic energy” as Eddie Murphy and John Belushi before him. His talent and comedy had started to transfer to the big screen. “Tommy Boy,” which starred Farley and David Spade, would open in 1995.

    Even better in this case: Farley was a sports fan. Growing up in Madison, Wis., he had played hockey and football. At Marquette, he had played club rugby. At SNL, he played pickup hoops with cast mates at 76th Street Basketball Court at Riverside Park.

    “Chris was a gifted physical comedian,” said Doug Robinson, Farley’s agent. “And a lot of people don’t know that Chris really was a tremendous athlete. He moved really well. He loved sports. So if Chris was going to do physical comedy, he was going to commit to whatever it is that he did.”

    Cole flew to Los Angeles to pitch the concept to Farley. ESPN asked if he had a back-up plan in case Farley declined. “Of course,” Cole said.

    Actually, he did not.

    “I remember thinking, ‘This is a long shot,’” said Beth Barrett, a producer on the campaign. “It was back in the time when it wasn’t as common as it is now for celebrities and celebrity athletes and comedians and musicians to sell out to commercials. It was almost like a bad thing to be in a commercial.”

    Cole met Farley in Farley’s hotel suite. Farley wore a tweed suit, disheveled by design. Cole pitched his vision, and Farley grasped it immediately. The comedian got off the couch and started acting out the Laettner spot. He knocked over a vase, which made Cole instantly realize: “Oh, I have to get something for you to knock over.”

    “Yeah, this sounds like a lot of fun,” Cole remembers Farley saying. “Let’s do it.”

    The spots were shot days later at a Los Angeles studio. Today, a celebrity likely would show up with an entourage of sorts. But back then, Larry Frey, the creative director on the campaign, recalls Farley’s manager arriving early and Farley pulling up later by himself. Spade dropped in around lunchtime.

    “He was literally like a 10-year-old kid, and they just called recess,” Frey said. “Full of energy. Like, ‘Hey, guys! I’m probably going to screw it up today.‘ Super self-deprecating. Super enthusiastic. And just winging it.”

    They shot the Michigan and North Carolina spots first, mostly because Cole knew what Farley had planned for Laettner and did not want to risk his star getting hurt.

    (In addition to the ads, Farley also shot a series of promos that never aired. In the one below, Farley holds two stuffed animals and pantomimes a conversation about an upcoming rivalry game. Of course, the mascots soon attack each other, and then Farley, and the promo ends with a trademark Farley outburst.)

    For the Laettner spot, Cole provided simple instructions.

    “Look, I’m going to put you at the 3-point line,” he recalled telling Farley. “We’re going to start this play the way everybody remembers it in our collective memory. And then look, man, try and make the shot, but if you don’t, just hurry up and try to finish the play and surprise me.”

    Farley, unleashed.

    Farley at his best.

    He barreled through cutouts of former Kentucky standouts Deron Feldhaus, John Pelphrey and Travis Ford, knocking them to the floor.

    “A whirlwind,” Barrett said.

    Good ideas don’t always translate. Cole knew instantly this one did.

    “In every single one of them, right after the first take of every spot — all three — I was like, ‘Ah, f—, this is going to be incredible,’” he said.

    In “The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts,” authors Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby describe this period as the highpoint of Farley’s life.

    The comedian had battled drug and alcohol addiction, but after a trip to an Alabama rehab facility, he was trying to stay clean. Farley was confident and self-assured, the authors wrote, but it ultimately was a losing battle. In 1997, Farley died of an overdose at age 33.

    When Cole and Barrett look back on that day in Los Angeles, the experience stands out as much as the finished product. Farley had performed as usual on camera. (After every take, he’d ask: “Was that funny?”) But he was also personable and engaging the entire eight hours he was there.

    “We’d go hang out in the green room between set-ups and he asked questions and was interested in other people,” Barrett said. “And just (be) kind of a goof. It was just one of those experiences that was pretty rare in advertising where you actually really got to know somebody by the end of the day. It was pretty great.”

    Farley and Cole had connected so well, riffing back and forth, exchanging ideas, Farley had asked him if he had interest in writing for him at SNL. Cole panicked, thinking, “What if I can’t jam out great stuff every week?” It was an incredible offer, but Cole loved what he was doing. He declined.

    “That was my third project in advertising as I recall, but it was the first one where I felt like I was collaborating with somebody to make something better than I or he could make independently,” said Cole, who today is co-founder and chairman at 72andSunny, a global ad agency.

    A year or two after the commercials aired, Laettner walked on a jetway, about to board a plane. He does not remember which airport or where he was headed, but as soon as he boarded he spotted a familiar face sitting in first class. It was Farley.

    Like most celebrities, Farley was looking down, trying not to get noticed, but he made eye contact with Laettner. Farley stood, and the basketball star and comedian embraced and shared a laugh.

    “Awesome commercial,” Laettner told him.


    Chris Farley and Glenn Cole, backstage at the college basketball commercial shoot. (Courtesy of Glenn Cole)

    (Top illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos and videos courtesy of Glenn Cole)

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  • Michael Edwards – the football visionary FSG simply cannot live without

    Michael Edwards – the football visionary FSG simply cannot live without

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    This is an updated version of an article first published in June 2020.

    Perhaps the best place to start is the story Harry Redknapp tells when he is asked about Michael Edwards and the remarkable chain of events that first took a frustrated IT teacher from Peterborough to a position of power and influence at Liverpool.

    Redknapp had been Portsmouth manager when Edwards — or ‘Eddie’, as he is commonly known — was given his big break in football and, over a decade since they last worked together, he got back in touch a while ago to request a favour.

    “I’d met a guy who had only a few weeks to live,” Redknapp says. “This poor guy was in his early forties. He had been married only a couple of years and he knew he was dying. Someone had got in touch and said, ‘Harry, he’d love to meet you. He’s football mad’. So I went round to his house one Sunday and spent a couple of hours with him, his wife and his in-laws. He was an amazing boy, so strong, and he told me it was his dream to go to Liverpool.

    “I rang Michael Edwards and, straight away, he went, ‘Harry, not a problem’. I arranged a car, I got a driver. Eddie sorted everything else. There wasn’t any of the, ‘Oh, Harry, I’m sorry, mate, you know how busy I am’, that you can get sometimes.

    “He put himself out, he organised the full day and treated him incredibly. We have to remember we are in a position where we can make a difference to people’s lives. Sadly, this guy died four or five weeks later. Eddie had got him into the directors’ box, introduced him to everybody — Kenny Dalglish, Jurgen Klopp — the boy had the best day of his life. Loved every minute of it.”

    It was all done with no publicity, of course, because Edwards had a strict understanding with Liverpool that, as far as the media are concerned, he would rather keep everyone a long arm’s distance away and speak about as regularly as Chief Bromden in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

    Edwards was the sporting director who identified Klopp as manager and brought in, among others, Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Alisson and Virgil van Dijk.

    It was the collection of players that helped Liverpool end their 30-year wait for a league title and turned a drifting giant into the champions of England, Europe and the world, surpassing even the achievements of the club’s sides from the 1970s and 1980s.

    Yet the paradox, at a time when one of the banners on the Kop read “Champions of Everything”, was that Edwards did not even have a Wikipedia page. If you typed in his name, the first result was that of an ex-pro from Notts County.

    A lot has changed since then for the University of Sheffield graduate, who has just been persuaded to return to Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool’s American owner, nearly two years since leaving the club. Edwards will be returning to a new, bigger role as FSG’s director of football operations.

    He will have a prominent say in choosing Klopp’s successor and his influence will quickly become apparent when he brings in Richard Hughes, formerly Bournemouth’s technical director, to fill the vacant sporting director position at Anfield. Liverpool, once again, will be relying on Edwards to work his magic behind the scenes.

    There was a long period, however, in his first spell on Merseyside that the only photograph of Edwards in the media’s possession came from a Just Giving fundraising page for the 2018 Manchester half-marathon, for which the list of donations included £5,000 from a certain Mr J Klopp. Edwards could freely walk around Anfield without anybody recognising him and that was exactly how he liked it.


    Jurgen Klopp, FSG president Mike Gordon (centre) and Michael Edwards (John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

    “He isn’t the most stereotypical football director,” Redknapp says. “In fact, he is probably the most un-stereotypical. You won’t often see him in a suit. He isn’t a go-getting, big-personality kind of guy. You look at him, he used to have this spiky hair… a very inoffensive, quiet guy. You’d probably think he should be standing behind the goal.”

    Don’t be mistaken, though. Others talk about Edwards as a fiercely driven, intelligent and ambitious individual who possesses the streak of ruthlessness that is often required to reach the top in football.

    Edwards has upset a few people along the way and was one of the three members of staff from Anfield cited in the alleged hacking of Manchester City’s scouting system in 2013. Liverpool offered a £1million ($1.3m at today’s rates) settlement, including a legally binding confidentiality agreement, to stop the matter going any further. As relations between the two clubs deteriorated over the following decade, Edwards’ presence was one of the reasons there was only a thin veneer of cordiality at boardroom level.

    Not that Liverpool’s owner, John W Henry, or his colleagues at FSG, will have cared too greatly about that detail when they finally got wind that Edwards was, after all, open to the idea of leading the club into the post-Klopp era. 

    Edwards was a youth and reserve-team footballer at Peterborough United who never fully made the grade and, having been released at the age of 18, trained to be a teacher before getting his first job in a local high school. He is the lorry driver’s son who grew up in Fareham, Hampshire, and developed a fetish for numbers and statistics. The “laptop guru” as he was called in one headline.

    There is one story that should make it clear how highly the 44-year-old is regarded at Anfield. It goes back to the night — June 25, 2020 — when Manchester City lost 2-1 at Chelsea and the defeat meant Liverpool had won their first title since 1990. 

    When the final whistle sounded at Stamford Bridge, the Liverpool chairman, Tom Werner, pulled out his mobile phone to get in touch with the people who had made it happen.

    And the first person to receive a congratulatory text from Liverpool’s chairman? Klopp, perhaps? No, it was Michael Edwards.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Transfer savvy and Edwards bond: Why Liverpool want Hughes as sporting director

    After everything that has happened since Klopp arrived on Merseyside, it can feel like a trick of the imagination that Liverpool gave serious consideration to hiring Eddie Howe rather than the man who, eight and a half years later, counts as Anfield royalty.

    Howe was on a three-man shortlist with Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti for the manager’s position and it was part of Edwards’ job, then as Liverpool’s technical director, to determine who had the outstanding credentials to replace Brendan Rodgers.

    Ancelotti passed all the criteria in terms of his record in the Champions League and the statistics relating to his teams at Juventus, AC Milan, Chelsea and Real Madrid, but his transfer record counted against him because the system devised by Edwards and Liverpool’s analysts deliberately placed less emphasis on a manager’s recruitment in his first year.

    Their theory was that a manager might not have the ultimate say when it came to transfer business during his first season but, in years two, three, four and five, that manager’s influence would be greater and signings would not happen without his input.

    A lot of Ancelotti’s recruits were deemed to be on the older side and that jarred with Liverpool’s thinking. Edwards wanted players aged 26 or under who were approaching their peak years and would still have a re-sale value three or four years later.

    Howe, now at Newcastle United, was managing Bournemouth and had a reputation for developing younger players and playing attractive football.

    He had also been a player at Portsmouth when Edwards was starting out at the south coast club. Their friendship, however, never came into it. Howe did not have the experience of competing in the Champions League, whereas Klopp ticked every box in terms of achievement, transfer business and playing style. Edwards made his recommendation to FSG and left them to get on with the business of making it happen.

    Since then, perhaps the best indicator of Edwards’ influence is to consider Klopp’s line-up for his first Liverpool game — a goalless draw at Tottenham Hotspur on October 17, 2015 — and compare it to the team that is now taking on Manchester City and Arsenal to win the title.

    Simon Mignolet was Liverpool’s goalkeeper that day behind a back four of Nathaniel Clyne, Martin Skrtel, Mamadou Sakho and Alberto Moreno. Lucas Leiva, Emre Can and James Milner formed the midfield and the front three had Adam Lallana and Philippe Coutinho on either side of Divock Origi. Liverpool’s substitutes were Adam Bogdan, Kolo Toure, Jerome Sinclair, Joao Carlos Teixeira, Connor Randall, Jordon Ibe and Joe Allen, who never did fulfil Rodgers’ description as “the Welsh Xavi”.

    Edwards helped Klopp build virtually an entirely new XI but, first of all, he had to get the confidence of the manager and create a relationship where they fully understood one another.

    “It is a very good relationship,” Klopp said. “He is a very thoughtful person. We don’t always have to have the same opinion from the first second of a conversation, but we finish pretty much all our talks with the same opinion. Or similar opinions.”

    It was Edwards, for example, who pressed Liverpool to sign Salah and convinced Klopp to disregard the fact the Egyptian had struggled previously with Chelsea.

    Klopp’s preference was said to be Bayer Leverkusen’s Julian Brandt, a future Germany international he knew well from his time managing Borussia Dortmund, but Edwards persisted in his belief that Salah was the better option. Klopp listened, took it in and decided to trust his colleague. Salah has since established himself as an authentic Premier League great and a serial breaker of scoring records.

    Edwards’ success cannot just be measured by the players Liverpool have signed when some of his more spectacular business has revolved around the ones the club have moved out — and his ability to get some huge transfer fees.

    Coutinho’s £142m transfer to Barcelona was the biggest deal, but Liverpool also raised significant sums by offloading fringe players. Ibe and Brad Smith went to Bournemouth for a combined £21m. Kevin Stewart moved to Hull for £8m. Leicester City paid £12.5m for Danny Ward and Crystal Palace paid £26m for Sakho.

    All this was masterminded, to a large degree, from Edwards’ first-floor office at Liverpool’s training ground. His door was always open. It was directly opposite Klopp’s office and the poster-sized “Class of Melwood” picture on the wall was because every year the entire staff — from the security and kitchen workers to the first-team players and manager — posed for an all-in-it-together photograph.

    Edwards and Klopp, the older man by 12 years, were described by one colleague as “kindred spirits”, freely wandering in and out of each other’s offices. During the transfer window, Edwards’ television would be switched on to show the rolling news coverage. The two men swapped opinions, they debated and sometimes they disagreed. They also spent many lunchtimes playing padel after getting hooked on the sport during a winter training camp in Tenerife. They even arranged for a court to be built at the training ground.

    Edwards, Klopp, Gordon


    Edwards, left, Klopp and FSG president Mike Gordon (John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

    The two men, it is understood, were no longer as close by the time Edwards announced his departure in the form of an open letter that surprised many people given he had never wanted to speak publicly before.

    “I had always planned to cap my time at the club to a maximum of 10 years,” he wrote. “I’ve loved working here, but I am a big believer in change. It’s good for the individual and, in a work setting, good for the employer, too. Over my time here, we have changed so many things (hopefully for the better) but someone new brings a different perspective, new ideas and can hopefully build on (or change) the things that have been put in place beforehand.”

    Edwards went on to eulogise about his assistant, Julian Ward, who was taking over as sporting director, while praising his other colleagues in the recruitment department as “geniuses… without doubt the best in their field in world football.” And Klopp? “Being manager of Liverpool is probably harder than playing (the shirt hangs heavy, so they say), but he has delivered so much joy to the fans and reasserted so many of the club’s historical values that he will go down in history as one of the club’s managerial greats.”

    Rodgers, in contrast, had seen Edwards as a threat to his authority at a time when the workings of Liverpool’s “transfer committee” had created all sorts of politics behind the scenes. It was an awkward title and an awkward time. Rodgers was not a fan of the setup and it became a source of regret inside Anfield that the club’s owner had ever coined the name.

    In reality, it was the kind of operation that could have been found at just about every major club, where there was an understanding that the manager was too busy to go on overseas scouting missions himself and become embroiled in negotiations that could take months. Edwards was part of a group that included the then chief executive, Ian Ayre, along with the analytics team, senior coaching and scouting staff and sometimes representatives of the club’s commercial department.

    Rodgers still had the power to veto transfers and, early on, was probably entitled to question Edwards’ knowledge. Liverpool had made a flurry of signings — Iago Aspas, Luis Alberto and Tiago Ilori, to name but three — who passed through Anfield without making a favourable impact. Lazar Markovic was the most expensive failure, costing £20m, and not everyone appreciated Edwards’ occasionally blunt, very matter-of-fact manner.

    Markovic


    Markovic cost Liverpool over £1m per league appearance (Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

    Scouts were moved out, some unhappily. Mel Johnson, the talent-spotter who had recommended Jordan Henderson, claimed in one interview that Liverpool missed out on Dele Alli because the club relied on their “computer and stats-led” approach. The sport, Johnson complained, was “not played on a computer”, pointing out that experienced football people were being edged out. “Some of these IT guys have come straight out of university and landed jobs at top clubs, despite having no football background whatsoever.”

    The politics eventually contributed to Rodgers, now at Celtic, losing his job on Merseyside. Ultimately, though, he might have to accept that he underestimated Edwards, particularly when it came to the £29m signing of Roberto Firmino from Hoffenheim.

    Rodgers had not been keen on Firmino whereas Edwards and the scouting team were certain the Brazilian would be an ideal wearer of Liverpool’s colours. Chief scout Barry Hunter had tracked him in Germany and the numbers showed how, by being involved in 45 league goals in the two seasons up to 2015, Firmino was the second-highest performing Brazilian in Europe, second only to Neymar, then at Paris Saint-Germain. Rodgers remained unconvinced and, to begin with, Firmino was used on the right wing.

    But it didn’t work out badly. “One of the questions I always get asked is: ‘Who was/is your favourite player?’,” Edwards wrote in his open letter. “That’s a really difficult question to answer, so I won’t even try. All I will say is my dog is called Bobby.”

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    GO DEEPER

    ‘He made us smile’: What Firmino means to me – by team-mates, coaches and his dentist

    When Barry Fry was asked if he had any particular memories of Michael Edwards, the former Peterborough United manager had to apologise.

    “I’m embarrassed to say no,” Fry, now the League One side’s director of football, told The Athletic. “I don’t remember the boy at all, I’m sorry.”

    Edwards had been part of a junior football academy in Southampton before being recommended to Peterborough for their youth system, going on to sign a two-year apprenticeship at London Road.

    “Probably not the most talented, but he worked hard,” is the verdict of one former team-mate. “A proper squad player, who made the best of what he’d got. He was never going to be a star but he was always quite dependable. And very clever. He was probably old for his time, the way he thought about everything and the way he spoke. You could tell he had a good head on his shoulders.”

    Edwards was a right-back who would occasionally be moved into a holding midfield role and, though he was not regarded as loud or a shouter, there was one occasion when he turned on two team-mates and accused them of thinking they were “big-time”.

    “There were two colleges in the area,” another former Peterborough player says. “Some of us — the ones who never got the better qualifications — went to Huntingdon College. Michael went to Cambridge to do leisure and tourism with the more intelligent lads, one day a week. Academically, he was very able. On the pitch, you could see he understood the game.”

    It didn’t work out, though. Edwards left Peterborough without making a first-team appearance and had to make a new career for himself. He went back to college and enrolled for university, obtaining a degree in business management and informatics. He returned to Peterborough to start his first teaching job in the town, but colleagues say he missed being around football and was not enthused by his new profession.

    His breakthrough came in 2003 when Portsmouth agreed to take on Prozone, the football data company. Other clubs had already signed up and Simon Wilson, one of Edwards’ former Peterborough team-mates, was in the relevant department at nearby Southampton.

    “I said to Simon we had won a contract with Portsmouth and needed an analyst,” Barry McNeill, then Prozone’s business development manager, says. “He rolled off a few names and said, ‘There’s one guy I know who’s probably not happy where he is, why don’t you have a chat with him?’.”

    Edwards was in his early twenties. “We found him working as an IT teacher,” McNeill says. “He clearly had pretty low motivation for that vocation. I interviewed him at a service station between Peterborough and the M1. I explained Prozone, showed him the technology and within a month he was on-site at Portsmouth’s training ground.”

    Though Edwards might not have enjoyed teaching, McNeill thinks the experience hardened him for the football business. “The first few years (of teaching) are the toughest because you are totally out of your depth. You need a spine. That was probably great preparation.”

    This was a time when data was still relatively new to football and, all these years later, it is strange to hear one of Edwards’ fellow analysts say that “it was only the Sun on a Monday that had passing and possession stats”.

    Redknapp had been persuaded by his assistant, Jim Smith, that Prozone was worth a go. Smith had been the first-ever manager to take it on at Derby County. Steve McClaren, one of Smith’s assistants at Derby, then took it to Manchester United. Sam Allardyce, then at Bolton Wanderers, was another advocate. And, as soon as word got out that Sir Alex Ferguson was using it at Old Trafford, other clubs started to follow.

    “I would be in Sam’s (Allardyce) office after games,” McNeill says. “If they had beaten Portsmouth, Sam would say to Harry, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Why have you not got this? Why don’t you have it? It is as expensive as your cheapest squad player’. He would almost embarrass people to jump on the bandwagon. Harry would have taken a lot more of that from his peers and Jim Smith would have been having a word in his ear.”

    Even so, it took a while for Redknapp to get to grips with it.

    “There is a famous story where ‘Eddie’ is trying to get through to Harry,” one of Edwards’ former associates says. “This is folklore in analyst circles. Harry said, ‘Does your computer say we are going to win today?’. Eddie said ‘yes’ quite flippantly. They lost and Harry quipped, ‘Maybe your computer can play next time’. Nobody even knows if it is true, but we all repeat it.”

    Redknapp


    Smith, left, convinced Redknapp that Prozone was the future (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)

    In Edwards’ early days, Redknapp called to ask why he could not get anything out of a CD-ROM filled with player data. It turned out Redknapp had put it into the CD player of his car.

    Edwards had his own office at Portsmouth and was of an age when he could mix with the players without it seeming unusual. “On the team bus, for example, he would be with the lads and we would play Mario Kart,” Gary O’Neil, their former midfielder, says. “You might have an eight-person league and Ed would be in it. He didn’t overstep the line, though. He wouldn’t be on lads’ nights out because he was, technically, staff. We were good friends and he came to my wedding.”

    O’Neil, now the manager of Wolves, remembers Redknapp never previously being stats-oriented, but something must have gone right because Edwards followed Portsmouth’s manager to Spurs in 2009.

    “Michael came to Portsmouth as a very young analyst,” Redknapp says. “I remember a massive game, the year we stayed up (2005-06), at Fulham. We were second-bottom and he put this video together to play on the coach. He was scared to show it because it took the mickey out of me. I thought it was a great laugh. He was a smashing lad and when I went to Tottenham I took him with me.”

    Edwards stayed at White Hart Lane for almost two years before Damien Comolli, then Liverpool’s director of football, headhunted him as part of FSG’s instructions to implement a new data-led approach, in keeping with their management of baseball’s Boston Red Sox.

    Comolli had previously been at Spurs, whose chairman, Daniel Levy, was dismayed to discover Liverpool had taken away another of their key men.

    Spurs had an exclusive agreement at the time with a data company called Decision Technology and Liverpool wanted to see if they could muscle in. Edwards, however, persuaded his new bosses to leave Decision Technology alone and target Dr Ian Graham, the data scientist who helped run their operation.

    The two men were on the same flight to an analytics conference in Boston, Massachusetts. It was an eight-hour flight and, 37,000 feet in the air, Edwards convinced Graham to join him as Liverpool’s head of research. The task was aided by the fact Graham was a boyhood Liverpool supporter. Graham, who held a Cambridge doctorate in theoretical physics, informed Spurs when he returned to England and that began a working relationship that continues to this day.

    Graham took a key role at Anfield until quitting in November 2022, Liverpool’s worst season of the Klopp era, to start his own venture. A couple of months later, he launched Ludonautics, a sports advisory business, and was reunited with the man with whom he had shared so many professional highs. Edwards took a consultancy role, giving him a level of independence that was not always there during his years at Anfield. 

    What people sometimes forget about Klopp’s title-winning season at Anfield is they did it while spending considerably less than the majority of Premier League clubs.

    Liverpool’s net transfer spend of £92.4m from the previous five years was less than Watford’s, not even half that of Brighton & Hove Albion or Aston Villa and a fair bit behind Mike Ashley’s Newcastle United. There was only Crystal Palace, Sheffield United, Southampton and Norwich City from England’s top division with a lower net spend in that time. Manchester City’s total was £505.6m, Manchester United’s £378.9m. And that, in no small part, was due to Edwards’ expertise.

    All of which makes it easier to understand why Liverpool have been almost obsessive in their attempts to persuade him to return to the club.

    As one person with inside knowledge of analytics told The Athletic in 2020, speaking anonymously to protect their relationships: “They have barely had a failed signing. I don’t think that can continue, I don’t think anyone is that good. If you get 15 out of 15 transfers right, it can’t always be that way. He (Edwards) is over-performing and it will regress to a mean at some point.”

    It was certainly a far cry from the time, in 2017, when an online petition was set up by a disgruntled Liverpool fan campaigning for Edwards to be sacked. The petition rustled up 36 votes and the first comment — “he’s useless, just useless” — did not age well.

    It was Edwards who convinced Liverpool about the potential of Andy Robertson at Hull City to flourish at a higher level and become one of the outstanding full-backs in world football.

    It was Edwards again who insisted when Barcelona signed Coutinho in 2018 that a one-off clause was written into the deal to stipulate that the Catalan club would have to pay a £100m premium to sign any other Liverpool player over the following two years. He knew Barca might come after their elite players and had the foresight to make sure it could not happen unless it meant some mind-boggling sums.

    Colleagues talk about the period in 2018 when Edwards had it in mind that Real Madrid, their opponents in that season’s Champions League final, might increasingly be attracted to the idea of signing Salah, Firmino or Mane. Liverpool’s response was to tie all three to new contracts, none with release clauses.


    Michael Edwards (circled) in the 2019 Champions League celebrations (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

    Edwards can be tough. He was unflinching when Can, coming to the end of his contract, told the club he would sign a new one but wanted a release clause in it. There was a stand-off. Edwards refused to budge and Can was allowed to leave on a free transfer rather than the club setting a precedent.

    What will never change, it seems, is Edwards’ reticence when it comes to letting us hear what his voice sounds like.

    “You’d never imagine the guy sat in the tiny Prozone portakabin at Portsmouth would go on to be the guy who plays such a big role at the biggest club in the world,” says O’Neil.

    Good luck, too, trying to find a photo of Edwards on the pitch with the Champions League trophy from the night Liverpool beat Tottenham to become six-time European Cup winners, adding Madrid, 2019, to the list of Istanbul, 2005, as well as Rome, 1977 and 1984, plus Wembley, 1978, and Paris, 1981.

    Klopp invited all his staff onto the podium to join in the celebrations. Edwards, however, preferred to keep to the edges and take photographs of the jubilant Liverpool supporters. He consoled some of his former colleagues from Tottenham, including Levy, and helped make sure Liverpool’s kit man got a picture with the trophy.

    Then the quiet man of Anfield disappeared into the background, just the way he likes it.

    (Top photos: Michael Edwards, left, and John W Henry; by Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • The Caitlin Clark business is booming. Here’s how her WNBA sponsorships are lining up

    The Caitlin Clark business is booming. Here’s how her WNBA sponsorships are lining up

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    Last fall, representatives from Gainbridge, an Indiana-based annuities seller, reached out to Caitlin Clark’s marketing agents at Excel Sports Management to discuss a sponsorship deal. The company was launching a new product line and its executives believed Clark could help them reach younger customers.

    Minji Ro, Gainbridge’s chief strategy officer, is also a longtime WNBA fan, and she knew that the Indiana Fever had a 44.2 percent chance of winning the WNBA lottery in December. Gainbridge holds the naming rights to the Fever’s arena, and Clark would be the presumptive No. 1 pick if she declared for the draft.

    But Ro said that the company didn’t even discuss the decision with Clark during the months of negotiations that finally ended in February with a signed contract. Ultimately, Ro said, she didn’t care where Clark would play, whether it was in the WNBA or at the University of Iowa for one more season. She just wanted to be in the Caitlin Clark business.

    “We were in no matter what,” Ro said. “Because that’s the power of Caitlin Clark. So she plays in Indiana, that’s great, but it doesn’t actually matter where she plays because she’s gonna sell out everywhere.”

    When Clark finally declared for the draft last week, as had long been expected, she set an end date to her record-setting college career. The WNBA awaits, and the Fever won the No. 1 pick in December, putting them in prime position to land a player who is rising and who has shown herself to be a marketing powerhouse, with a sponsorship portfolio of blue chip companies and more than 1 million Instagram followers.

    Laced throughout that lively conversation about what Clark can do for the league, there has also been fretful, speculative discussion of what the decision would mean for Clark financially, and if being in the WNBA would amount to a pay cut.

    The consensus among a coterie of people involved in women’s basketball and involved with her directly is that Clark’s income, and her marketing potential, would not suffer once she jumps to the WNBA this summer. Instead, they say, she seems likely to surpass what she earned this season at Iowa.

    “It’s a bad narrative,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said of the idea that Clark would be sacrificing by playing professionally.

    “Pre-Caitlin Clark, I’ve been trying to correct the media that NIL deals, when they’re national sponsors like Caitlin and Angel Reese and Cameron Brink, those are just called endorsements in the pros. I just find it funny that nobody ever said this about LeBron James, or Michael Jordan who made a lot more money with their endorsements than they did in their salary in the NBA. Nobody ever said that. Now, all of a sudden, because it’s women’s sports, people are saying that. That’s absolutely untrue when you have these national brands.”

    The dilemma is one that male college basketball players rarely have to reckon with. A job in the NBA usually comes with a multi-million dollar salary, and lucrative marketing deals for the top picks. But it has followed Clark, and other top women in college basketball, for the last three years as college athletes have been able to profit off their name, image and likeness rights. Today, the choice to head to the WNBA comes with a head-to-head comparison: a rookie pro salary and endorsement prospects versus the NIL income from local collectives and businesses associated with college sports.

    While top NBA prospects often leave for the league as soon as possible, the choice for top women’s players lingers. Paige Bueckers, a projected top-3 pick, recently said she would return for a senior season at the University of Connecticut.

    Clark, however, is in a class of her own. At a time when women’s sports is ascending, she is the rising tide lifting those boats even higher. She added two new national sponsors just this week and is expected to sign a new sneaker deal that will be one of the biggest in the WNBA, according to two people briefed on the situation.

    Her marketing infrastructure has expanded in kind. This fall, she signed with Excel for marketing representation, sharing an agent with Peyton Manning, helping to pile up the endorsements.

    Gainbridge rolled out her arrangement on Tuesday. She joins Billie Jean King and Annika Sörenstam in promoting the company’s latest annuities product for women. Panini said Wednesday that Clark is the first woman it has signed to an exclusive trading card deal.

    Panini engaged Clark’s camp in October. Jason Howarth, Panini’s senior VP of marketing, said the two sides completed the contract more than a month ago but waited until the right time to announce it. It will take effect on April 1. Clark had previously had a deal with Topps.

    “Caitlin is a transcendent athlete, and we think that she is going to be special whether she stayed at Iowa or whether she decided to go to the W,” Howarth said. “We were willing to commit to that. We knew exactly whatever her decision was, we’d be comfortable with it and we’d lean in on it and figure out what we’re going to do and how we’re going to present it.”

    The most high-profile of her endorsements will keep her under contract past her Iowa days and into the start of her WNBA career. Her contracts with Gatorade and State Farm extend into her WNBA career, one person with knowledge of her marketing deals said.

    Jeff Kearney, Gatorade’s head of sports marketing, said the company has a multi-year deal with Clark. A sponsorship deal with Hy-Vee, the grocery chain, will run past 2024, Tina Pothoff, Hy-Vee’s vice president of communications, said. State Farm did not respond to a message seeking comment. A spokesperson for Buick replied after initial publication to note that it does not currently have a sponsorship deal with Clark, though it did previously feature her social media campaign.

    “It’s gonna be harder,” Kearney said. “You know the competition is going to be tougher. Players are faster. The players are better. But again, I think she has an it-factor and is driven to succeed. So it certainly doesn’t change the approach that we have of trying to celebrate this phenomenal athlete and tell her story. It doesn’t matter what jersey she has on.”


    “It doesn’t matter what jersey she has on.” Clark’s worth is expected to see more gains in the WNBA. (David Berding / Getty Images)

    Though many of her deals will continue to run, she is on the precipice of making even more money than she did this season at Iowa. Clark did not take any money from Iowa’s main collective, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    She will make a salary in the WNBA — the No. 1 pick is guaranteed $76,535 in her first season — unlike at Iowa. She can also avail herself of up to $250,000 in a league marketing deal and up to $100,000 in a team marketing contract if she eschews playing abroad next offseason, or she can sign what is likely to be a high-paying contract to play for a team in Europe or China.

    She has a deal with Nike, which is one of the WNBA’s financial partners as part of its Changemakers program. The league often pushes those companies to use its stars in marketing campaigns, especially those who have a league marketing deal. Some have signed individual endorsement deals after the league’s run out, and Engelbert said other companies could soon get financially involved.

    “I suspect we’ll have some of our huge partners step up here too as huge players come in with the followership,” she said.

    One WNBA agent was strident that Clark, or any top player entering the league, would make more as a professional.

    “If you’re the right type of talent, it doesn’t matter if you’re in college, the pros, in Indiana, L.A.” the agent said. “All these things help, of course. It’s not that you have to take a pay cut to go pro.”

    Engelbert pointed out that several WNBA players, like A’ja Wilson, Jewell Lloyd and Arike Ogunbowale already have sizable endorsement deals.

    Clark will still retain her large Instagram following, and her fan base from Iowa will likely continue to root for her. A new city — Indianapolis — will adopt her. Clark has also become such a nationally beloved brand that her marketing potential is not constrained by one market.

    The most significant new business opportunity is likely to be her upcoming sneaker and apparel free agency. Clark’s deal with Nike will end after the conclusion of this college basketball season, a person briefed on the deal confirmed, a detail first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

    Though Clark was with Nike in college, her market was likely muted compared to what she could draw as a pro, industry insiders said. Iowa already had an apparel deal with Nike, so Clark was going to wear those sneakers on the court regardless of any individual deal she signed. And she would have been unable to wear the sneakers of another company for her record-setting feats if she signed with a company other than Nike. (LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson has a Puma endorsement even though the school wears Nike, but she cannot wear them when she plays for the Tigers.)

    Clark will be unconstrained in the WNBA and she is expected to draw a significant contract for the upcoming WNBA season. Nike, Adidas and others are expected to pursue her. Multiple sources with knowledge of the sneaker industry said Clark is set to sign a deal for more than $1 million annually, which would be one of the richest among WNBA players.

    “She’ll be regarded as one of the greatest gets of all time for the brand that gets her,” one sneaker company executive said.

    Sara Gotfredson, who was once a marketing and sales executive at ESPN and Disney, said that brands have been shy to deploy money on NIL deals compared with what they spend in endorsements for professionals.

    But some women’s college basketball players may see their popularity, and earning power, peak during those years, with a dedicated collective and local businesses ready to engage them in a market where they are one of its top athletes, then lower profiles when they reach the WNBA. That will not be true for Clark, said Gotfredson, who is now a co-founder of Trailblazing Sports Group.

    “The NCAA is a great springboard for these athletes, and especially for such a superstar like Caitlin Clark,” she said. “But I don’t subscribe to the theory that the NCAA is sort of the pinnacle of these women’s careers. I think if anything she’s going to get more visibility, more brand deals, gain more popularity in the W.”

    There has been little concern among her sponsors that Clark will become less marketable when she gets to the WNBA. Instead, there is intrigue and optimism that she may be able to help the league.

    While ratings have improved in the WNBA over the last few seasons, they have gone up even higher in college basketball. Last year’s NCAA Tournament championship game between Iowa and LSU averaged 9.9 million viewers and was the most watched women’s college basketball game ever. The Iowa–South Carolina semifinal game drew 5.5 million viewers. WNBA Finals games last season averaged 728,000 viewers.

    Attendance at her games has regularly trumped WNBA games as well. The league averaged 6,615 fans per game last season — a five-year high — while Iowa averaged 100.7 percent capacity at home with 14,998 fans per game, according to NCAA data, the second-highest in women’s college basketball. The Hawkeyes drew 55,651 fans to the school’s football stadium in October for an exhibition game — the largest attendance for a college basketball game this season — and three of the other eight most well-attended women’s college basketball games this season were at road arenas when Iowa visited Big Ten opponents.

    Clark, and Iowa, have been a ratings machine this season as she chased college scoring records. Three Iowa games have been among the top 10 most-watched college basketball games this season, men’s or women’s. Sunday’s regular-season finale drew 3.39 million viewers — the sixth-highest viewership for a basketball game this season, including the NBA. A Fox executive tweeted Tuesday that women’s college basketball games have averaged more viewers than men’s games on the network this season.

    Kearney said in his discussions with Engelbert, there is already interest in how often and when Clark’s games will air on nationally televised broadcasts. When she joins the WNBA, Clark will be just one of three WNBA players with a Gatorade endorsement. Engelbert has stressed to its marketing and broadcast partners that the league is trying to create household names and asks for their help, but with Clark they are getting a ready-made star.

    “It’s one of those things where you get an athlete like this who is doing things that are maybe extraordinary isn’t the right word, but the people are paying attention — male, female, old young,” Kearney said. “That’s gonna carry over if she keeps doing what she’s doing. People are gonna tune in and you’re gonna see the numbers rise.”

    (Top photo of Caitlin Clark: Matthew Holst / Getty Images)

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  • When your landlord bats leadoff: Inside the cliquish world of baseball real estate 

    When your landlord bats leadoff: Inside the cliquish world of baseball real estate 

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    Shortly after haggling his way out of free-agent purgatory and into a new contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kiké Hernández asked his wife, Mariana, to investigate another market. She contacted former Dodger Rich Hill’s wife, Caitlin, with a request: Could the Hernándezes live in the Hills’ house again? 

    The Hills had bought the property, located in the Toluca Lake neighborhood, in 2017, soon after Rich signed a $48 million contract. The family decided not to sell it after Hill’s final season with the team in 2019. The house has since become a popular destination among Dodgers personnel. Catcher Austin Barnes lived there one season. Manager Dave Roberts has inquired about its availability. When Hernández rejoined the team at last year’s trade deadline, he moved into the house, which is a convenient 20-minute drive from Dodger Stadium, with access to three different highways. 

    “It’s very appealing, because of the location,” Hill said. 

    But that’s not its only selling point; almost as important is that the homeowner understands his tenants’ nomadic baseball lifestyle.

    When searching for a place to live, players often rely upon each other’s recommendations, connections, and familiarity with baseball’s unique schedule and travel. That has led to a different kind of hot stove market each winter, when baseball players buy, sell and trade homes amongst themselves — swapping houses, directing young players to the right spots and passing certain key properties down as the cycle repeats itself.

    It is not uncommon for players to report to spring training without a residence for the regular season. Sometimes free agents sign later than expected; sometimes trades happen without warning. In the final days of February, Toronto Blue Jays infielder Justin Turner was still looking for a lease in the suburbs of Toronto to sync up with his one-year, $13 million contract. Caleb Ferguson, a New York Yankees reliever acquired in early February, was scrambling to find somewhere on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with a park nearby for his newborn son. Surprised by a Feb. 11 trade from the Miami Marlins, Minnesota Twins reliever Steven Okert said he had “no idea” where he would live in the Twin Cities. “I’ve never even been there before,” Okert said. 

    The primary problem is the length of the lease. The regular season lasts about six months. Renting a house often requires a longer commitment. “It’s always a pain,” Yankees infielder DJ LeMahieu said. He described the process of finding housing as “throughout my time in professional baseball, one of the hardest things to do,” which is why his wife, Jordan, takes care of it. Spouses often shoulder the load: Yency Almonte, the reliever who was traded from the Dodgers to the Chicago Cubs in January, will live this summer in the Chicagoland home of Joe Kelly, the reliever who was traded from the Chicago White Sox to the Dodgers last summer; their wives brokered the deal.


    Yankee Stadium is DJ LeMahieu’s on-field home; he rents another residence to his fellow ballplayers. (Alex Trautwig / MLB via Getty Images)

    In the offseason, LeMahieu lives in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham, Mich., where he owns two homes. For nearly a decade, he has rented out the secondary residence to various Tigers. So many players have stayed there that LeMahieu has lost track. The first tenant was second baseman Ian Kinsler. The longest-standing resident was pitcher Daniel Norris. “I think they all left the places better than they found them,” LeMahieu said. “I came back and there was new stuff. Super clean. I was like, ‘Wow, this worked out really well.’”

    In 2022, his final year in Milwaukee, reliever Brent Suter lived in a home once occupied by former Brewers teammate Corey Knebel. Suter rented a townhouse through VRBO for his 2023 season with the Colorado Rockies. When he signed for 2024 with the Cincinnati Reds, his hometown team, Suter did not need to search for a house. But he did have the ballplayer network to thank.

    A few years earlier, while pitching for Cincinnati, Wade Miley purchased a four-bedroom home in nearby Anderson Township, Ohio. An older couple started building on a lot across the street. Miley eventually learned his new neighbors were Suter’s in-laws. He called his former teammate. “When I’m done with the Reds, I’m selling you this house,” Miley told Suter. Suter laughed at the offer. When Cincinnati placed Miley on waivers after the 2021 season, Suter received another text: “Go check out the house. We’ll open the garage for you.” Miley, Suter explained, “hooked us up with our dream house for life.”

    During his time with the Cleveland Guardians, first baseman Carlos Santana lived in Bratenahl, Ohio, an affluent suburb on the shores of Lake Erie. After Santana signed a three-year, $60 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies heading into 2018, he rented his home to former teammate Edwin Encarnación. Santana did not last long in Philadelphia. The Phillies shipped him to the Seattle Mariners in December of 2018. Less than two weeks later, the Mariners traded Santana to Cleveland — in exchange for Encarnación. Santana moved back into his old house.


    Edwin Encarnación and Carlos Santana were Cleveland teammates in 2017. After that, things got more complicated. (Duane Burleson / Getty Images)

    Do not take total pity on these athletes, who play in a league where the big-league minimum salary is $740,000. Teams provide them resources, recommendations and real estate agents. Their own agents often do the same. The collective bargaining agreement contains provisions that compensate them for their living expenses if they are cut or traded. 

    Their privilege still contains complications, and not every serendipitous swap ends happily. In the summer of 2005, the Boston Red Sox acquired an infielder named Alex Cora from Cleveland in exchange for fellow infielder Ramón Vázquez. The two Puerto Ricans were friends. They agreed to trade houses. “The price was the same,” Cora said. He had been living in a four-bedroom, two-story place with a yard. He was aghast when he moved into Vázquez’s apartment near Faneuil Hall. “It was a one-bedroom, a f—ing matchbox,” Cora said. 

    The dollar does stretch further away from the coasts. Ferguson, the Yankees reliever, grew up about 20 minutes outside of Columbus, Ohio, the home of Cleveland’s Triple-A affiliate. He harbors dreams of renting his home there to one of the Clippers. He joked about his willingness to pay the utilities for potential tenants as long as they paid his mortgage. “I don’t want to make money off of you — I just want to stop losing it,” Ferguson said. 

    Rich Hill stumbled into his role as the landlord of the Dodgers. During the 2021 season, Hill heard Barnes was commuting about two hours roundtrip to the ballpark. Barnes and his wife, Nicole, had a newborn son. The driving was draining. Hill mentioned that his place in Toluca Lake was empty. “It’s a really nice house,” Barnes said. “He just let us live there.” 

    Barnes had better luck than Roberts, who found the house occupied when he asked Hill about renting it. Hernández met the same fate after signing his new deal with the Dodgers. Hill was already renting to a family for 2024. Turns out, non-ballplayers need houses, too. 

    “As much as I want to rent it to the guys,” Hill said, “I can’t kick the people out who are there right now.”

    (The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya, Chad Jennings, Zack Meisel, C. Trent Rosecrans and Sahadev Sharma contributed to this report.)

    (Illustration by Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photo of Kiké Hernández: Michael Zagaris / Oakland Athletics / Getty Images; Photo of Rich Hill: Will Newton / Getty Images; Photo of Wade Miley: Frank Jansky / Icon Sportswire )

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  • NFLPA releases team-by-team report cards

    NFLPA releases team-by-team report cards

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    INDIANAPOLIS – For the second consecutive year, the NFL Players Association on Wednesday released its team-by-team report cards, which assess players’ working conditions and environments throughout their seasons and offseasons.

    The Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, Green Bay Packers, Philadelphia Eagles and Jacksonville Jaguars rounded out the top five in terms of overall grades.

    Meanwhile, for a second straight season, the Washington Commanders received the lowest grades in the league while the repeat Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs ranked 31st overall. The Los Angeles Chargers (30th), New England Patriots (29th) and Pittsburgh Steelers (28th) round out the bottom five.

    Team grade categories included their training room, training staff, weight room, strength coaches, team travel, head coach and ownership. Owners were graded on players’ beliefs their ownership groups operate with a willingness to invest in team facilities.

    The survey data was gathered from August to November of the 2023 season. A total of 1,750 players (up from the roughly 1,300 participants in 2022) took part in the survey. NFLPA leaders said they were encouraged by the increase in participation this year. Roughly 77 percent of all NFL players took part in the survey. Players were instructed to grade their teams and from there, the grades were tallied and ranked.

    The Tampa Bay Buccaneers received an F on team travel largely because players with four seasons or less and non-starters have to have roommates on road trips and are charged $1,750 per player if they desire their own room.

    The Chiefs received low grades as a result of frustrations by players after ownership had promised to upgrade the out-of-date locker room.

    However, for a second consecutive year, Clark Hunt and Kansas City didn’t make upgrades to the locker room besides replacing the stools players were given to sit on in front of their lockers with chairs with backs on them. Chiefs players were told there was no time to adequately upgrade the team facilities because their season extended into February due to their Super Bowl run in 2022.

    Kansas City tied for first with the Detroit Lions and Vikings in terms of head-coaching grades. Andy Reid, Dan Campbell and Kevin O’Connell each received A-plus grades. The coach to receive the lowest grade was Josh McDaniels, whom the Las Vegas Raiders fired during the season.

    “I would say things have improved and we’re glad that they are,” NFL Players Association president J.C. Tretter, a retired offensive lineman, said. “Our whole goal of this … (involves) highlighting the good teams, highlighting the team that could improve and a drive for change to make things get better for players, both immediately and long term.”

    NFLPA leaders hope the report cards serve as a tool to ensure accountability and prompt team owners and leadership teams to provide their players with improved facilities, adequate nutrition, medical care, accommodations for families and more.

    Lloyd Howell, the NFLPA’s new executive director, spent much of last season traveling to meet with owners of all 32 teams and discuss working conditions. Some of those conversations centered on the findings of last year’s results. Howell said many owners are receptive to improving conditions.

    “This is not a shaming exercise,” Howell said. “This is really an opportunity to recognize those teams and environments that are doing well — that are doing all the right things. This is players talking about their working conditions and what they like and what they’d like to see improved.”

    The findings of the survey, which was conducted by a third-party survey service, are fascinating, but interestingly enough, the union found no correlation between winning and losing and the quality of the grades teams received.

    This year, the union added several categories, which included ownership, head coach, nutritionists and dietitians.

    Dolphins owner Stephen Ross received the highest ownership grade, while Hunt received the lowest.

    A year after ranking among the worst teams in the league, the Jaguars opened a new team headquarters. The rat infestation that prompted complaints and low grades in 2023 is no longer an issue. The Cincinnati Bengals ranked among the worst in terms of cafeteria grades in 2023 because meals weren’t provided throughout the day. A year later, the team began offering three meals a day on Wednesdays but still has a ways to go before players feel adequately cared for.

    The Commanders ranked among the worst overall under Daniel Snyder last season and now have a new owner in Josh Harris. The ownership grade increased, but the facilities grades improved only slightly, which is understandable given the fact Harris, who bought the team in late July, has had limited time to execute upgrades.

    Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys dropped from fifth to 12th, with frustrations over limited resources and understaffed training staff causing the drop in player satisfaction.

    One of the greatest areas of concern for players is adequate resources and staffing of the training rooms. Many teams are short-staffed in this department, and the NFLPA has been engaged in conversations with the NFL about the need for a threshold for the number of trainers employed by a team to ensure an adequate trainer-to-player ratio that would ensure players receive adequate care for injuries.

    The NFL released a statement saying the league and the teams “encourage and solicit player feedback to help improve all facets of their NFL experience. We look forward to getting the opportunity to review the union’s questionnaire, and the data supporting it.”

    The league added that it invited the union to join it “in a rigorous and third-party scientific-based survey as we have previously done.”

    Required reading

    (Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

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  • The business of Sarah Nurse: She’s one of the faces of hockey, but her sights are set on more

    The business of Sarah Nurse: She’s one of the faces of hockey, but her sights are set on more

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    TORONTO — Sarah Nurse was driving home from a recent PWHL Toronto practice when she got a bit of sage advice.

    It wasn’t from a podcast or a friend on the phone. The advice came courtesy of a billboard on the side of the road in Canada’s most populous city, featuring her own face with the Adidas slogan “You got this.”

    “I was like, yeah, I do,” Nurse said with a laugh.

    The billboard she drove past is one of many across the country, including a massive advertisement at Yonge-Dundas Square — Toronto’s closest approximation to Times Square in New York City — that pairs Nurse with Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes and World Cup champion Lionel Messi.

    Nurse, 29, has had major partnerships in the past. In 2020, Tim Hortons and Mattel collaborated to make a Barbie doll in her likeness. In 2022, she was featured on a Cheerios box. But in the two years since her breakout performance at the Beijing Olympics — in which she broke a record for points in a single tournament (18) — Nurse has become one of the biggest faces in women’s hockey.

    She became the first woman to appear on the cover of an EA Sports hockey video game with NHL 23. She was a key figure in the launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League as a member of the player-led bargaining committee that struck a first-of-its-kind CBA in women’s professional hockey. This month, she starred in a Canadian Super Bowl commercial and was one of the busiest athletes during NHL All-Star Weekend, appearing at several league and partner events.

    “Everywhere you turn, it’s like, there’s Sarah,” said Canadian national team defender Erin Ambrose.

    Nurse’s eight major endorsement deals put her ahead of virtually every other professional hockey player, outside of a handful of NHL stars. Among women and players of color, she is in uncharted territory.

    Her ascension has been years in the making — all part of a carefully crafted business plan developed by Nurse and her team at Dulcedo Management, a talent agency, to make Nurse not just one of the faces of the game, but someone with the kind of celebrity that transcends her sport.

    “You don’t need to follow basketball to know who LeBron James is,” said her agent, Thomas Houlton. “That’s what we want to do for Sarah.”


    Sarah Nurse holds the Barbie dolls inspired by herself and Marie-Philip Poulin in 2020. (Courtesy of Tim Hortons)

    When Nurse signed with Dulcedo in 2019, her reputation as a player was already strong.

    At 24 years old, Nurse had already been a star at the University of Wisconsin, won an Olympic silver medal and been drafted with the No. 2 pick in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League. In those early days, Nurse was often discussed as one of the newest branches of an impressive athletic family tree.

    Her father, Roger, was an elite lacrosse player. Her aunt, Raquel, was a celebrated point guard at Syracuse University who married Philadelphia Eagles legend Donovan McNabb. Her cousins include Kia Nurse, a two-time Olympian and WNBA all-star, and Darnell Nurse, a defenseman for the Edmonton Oilers.

    With Nurse’s multifaceted appeal, several agents came calling.

    But after the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, Nurse, who graduated with a business degree, was looking to explore her interests in fashion and beauty — fields that are typically outside the areas of expertise for traditional sports agencies. Nurse, however, wasn’t playing in a typical sports landscape.

    In the CWHL, players were paid only small stipends — Nurse said she made $2,000 as a rookie in the league — which meant playing women’s professional hockey was not a main source of income.

    Dulcedo, which launched as a modeling agency but has since expanded into other industries, including sports, could give Nurse more opportunities to branch out.

    “She didn’t just want to be known as Sarah Nurse, the hockey player,” explained Houlton. “And not just as a piece of the (family tree). … It’s been clear from the beginning that she really wanted to have her own legacy.”

    “When I first signed with them,” Nurse said, “I did this glamor photoshoot, and I’d never done anything like that before because I’m a hockey player — nobody gives me fake eyelashes or puts lipstick on me. I was like, this could be the start of something great, because I felt like they got me.”

    Houlton signed Nurse to blue-chip sports partners like CCM and Adidas but also worked on building up her social-media profile to position her in areas outside of hockey. “No skincare brand is going to want to work with you if we don’t see skincare anywhere,” he explained.

    On the ice, Nurse was in another Olympic cycle with Team Canada leading up to the 2022 Games in Beijing and in the middle of a period of upheaval in women’s professional hockey. The CWHL folded in March 2019, and most of the players banded together to sit out of professional hockey until a better league was formed. Then the 2020 women’s world championships were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The stakes were high in the year leading up to the Olympics. For athletes without big-ticket professional contracts, the once-every-four-year window the Games provide is a critical moment to make money — and a name for themselves. A knee injury during tryouts put into question whether Nurse would be healthy enough to play.

    “I came out of the world championships in Calgary and I was on the fourth line — that’s not a safe place to be. Then I blew up my knee,” Nurse said. “So I’m going into Olympic tryouts and I’m like, I don’t know if I can make this team.”

    To the coaching staff, despite the fact she couldn’t skate in the months leading up to the tournament, Nurse had more than proven her worth to the Canadian national team.

    “We knew that she was going to be a big part of our program if she was healthy enough to go,” said Canada’s head coach, Troy Ryan. “The combination of her work ethic and the medical staff did a great job getting her back.”

    “What I love about Sarah, as a teammate and as a hockey player, is that she does the little things right. She’s versatile in the sense that she can play center and play wing. She can win draws, she’s hard to play against, you can trust her in tough matchups,” said Ambrose. “For so long with the national team, that was her m.o. Whatever you needed, she was there.”

    Nurse made the team and was healthy in time for the start of the tournament. She also secured Olympic campaigns with General Mills, Sportchek, RBC and more.

    Team Canada rewrote the record books in Beijing, going undefeated in the tournament to win a gold medal. Nurse, who started the tournament on the fourth line, worked her way up to the top line with Marie-Philip Poulin and Brianne Jenner, and broke Hayley Wickenheiser’s Olympic scoring record with 18 points in six games. She set a record for assists in a single tournament (13) and became the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in hockey.

    “That was really the catalyst for her to take that next step,” said Houlton. “And really propelled us into what was the next phase of her life.”


    Sarah Nurse attends a postgame conference after the PWHL three-on-three showcase at Scotiabank Arena during NHL All-Star Weekend. (Kevin Sousa / NHLI via Getty Images)

    Ninety minutes before the NHL All-Star red-carpet event, Nurse was in a hotel room in downtown Toronto doing her hair, getting her makeup done and shooting content for her social media channels — nothing she wasn’t used to.

    Her All-Star weekend responsibilities had started days before, with media and promotional appearances. Earlier that morning, she was on the ice for an outdoor practice with the PWHL players chosen to represent the brand-new league at the NHL’s tentpole event. She then made a surprise visit to a girls hockey team with teammates Renata Fast, Natalie Spooner and Adidas.

    After leaving the hotel, she’d walk the red carpet, surprise another girls hockey team — this time with Canadian Tire and Poulin — and, 12 hours after her day started, play in the PWHL three-on-three showcase at Scotiabank Arena. That part of her schedule doesn’t include the NHL skills competition, which Nurse was on the ice for on Friday night, or the regular-season PWHL game she played on Saturday.

    “That whole week was a blur,” Nurse said.

    “I don’t even know if we were anticipating what occurred there in terms of, like, you can’t even walk a couple of steps without someone stopping and saying, ‘That’s Sarah Nurse, can I get a picture?’” Houlton said. “It was amazing to see how far she’s come.”

    Everything about Nurse’s NHL All-Star weekend suggests the plan has worked. In the last year, Nurse has gotten so busy that Dulcedo added Phoebe Balshin to the team as a senior athlete manager in January 2023. Her job was to create a more strategic plan for Nurse’s brand and help her take the next step.

    “When I first came on, a big conversation was: Sarah works with so many brands, but what is her brand? Who is she? What is her mission and vision?” Balshin said. “So we basically built out a five-year plan with her to take us through Milan (the 2026 Olympics.)”

    To refine the process, Nurse identified four specific intersections of her own interests and growth opportunities: hockey, fashion and beauty, entrepreneurship and community. A potential partnership must move the needle in at least one of those categories.

    “If something doesn’t align with me, we’re not going to do it,” Nurse said.

    Nurse now has eight major sponsors: Adidas, CCM, RBC, Canadian Tire, Tim Hortons, EA Sports, Chevrolet and, most recently, Dyson. She’s also signed other paid partnerships with beauty brands such as Dove, L’Oréal and Revlon.

    Brands targeted Nurse after her Olympic performance, but that’s just one part of the total package. She’s outgoing with an affable charm, an infectious laugh and an ease on camera.

    “It comes down to personality, and Sarah is very much one-of-one,” Houlton said. “Sarah can show up on set straight out of bed and look amazing, sound amazing, and give the brand the best performance they’ve ever seen.”

    Nurse is a biracial Black woman and is vocal in her support of increased representation in a predominantly White sport. Her team is cautious about the intentions of potential sponsors. “I need to ask all the right questions to make sure that this brand is not just using her so they check their diversity box,” Houlton explained.

    They’ve also worked with partners that Nurse already had in her portfolio to ensure that her goals are being met — not just the brand’s own objectives.

    During All-Star weekend, Nurse did a shoot with RBC that included Poulin and Toronto Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews, which oriented  Nurse as a professional athlete — not just as a women’s hockey player. Her Adidas campaign has her aligned with big names outside of the sport, such as Mahomes and Messi. “Our goal is to get her neck and neck with the best,” Balshin explained.

    Last week, Nurse launched “Nursey Night,” in which she will host young Black girls at PWHL Toronto games, meet with them postgame and mentor them throughout the year. The idea started as a way for Nurse to give away her brother’s season tickets every once in a while but it ended up with a $50,000 donation from Rogers and a partnership with Black Girl Hockey Club, a non-profit organization focused on making hockey more inclusive.

    “People want to be involved in anything she does,” Balshin said. “That’s kind of how we snowball things over here.”

    On top of promotional appearances and events, Nurse posts paid promotions on social media and has gotten more active on TikTok, posting videos while doing her makeup or skincare, or providing motivation to young girls and women who visit her channels. Everything gets put into a content calendar that Balshin manages, and every morning she sends Nurse a text outlining “everything we have to worry about today.”

    “She has made our lives a lot happier,” Nurse said. “We got to a point where there was just too much happening and we couldn’t facilitate everything.”

    With everything going on off the ice, it’s easy to forget that Nurse is one of Canada’s best hockey players and a face of the PWHL in Toronto. She’s also the vice president of the PWHL Players Association and is on the Hockey Canada player committee.


    Sarah Nurse skates against PWHL Montreal’s Mariah Keopple at Scotiabank Arena. (Mark Blinch / Getty Images)

    “I would love to sit down and see her calendar,” Ambrose said. “I am in awe of what she does away from the rink. I am in awe of what she does at the rink. I truthfully don’t know how she does it but I love her for it.”

    Nurse knows it sounds like there’s a lot on her plate but insists she’s very good at compartmentalizing. Ryan, also her coach with PWHL Toronto, says Nurse’s other responsibilities have “never negatively impacted who she is as a player.”

    “I think she’s found ways to actually use it to make sure she still has an impact in the game,” he said. “She’s under a spotlight and under a microscope so much. I think that sense of pride she probably gets with that has probably forced her to do the extra work.”

    “I’m very conscious of the fact that for me to do all of this other stuff, I need to perform my best on the ice,” added Nurse, who scored two goals on Tuesday night, including the game winner against Minnesota.

    Gone are the days of players such as Nurse making only $2,000 a season to play hockey. In the PWHL, the minimum salary $35,000, with some top players making as much as $100,000. Still, even the league’s best players aren’t getting rich playing women’s professional hockey.

    “The marketing does mean a lot to them and is a main source of income,” Balshin said.

    The work that Nurse is putting in is also laying the track for life after hockey, whenever that comes. It would take something unforeseen for Nurse to not be at the 2026 Olympics.

    Nurse has thought about pursuing several paths, from real estate investment to launching a clothing line or a production company. “I definitely have aspirations to expand and grow into different sectors,” she said.

    “We want her to be a face of hockey, period, not just women’s hockey. And of inclusion in sport,” Balshin said. “She wants to show young girls that they can be so many things.”

    (Illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Mark Blinch / Getty Images, Nicole Osborne / NHLI via Getty Images)

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  • Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaving NBC for Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery

    Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaving NBC for Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery

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    The biggest name in NASCAR is on the move.

    Dale Earnhardt Jr. is leaving NBC and heading to racing newcomers Amazon Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, sources briefed on his decision told The Athletic.

    Earnhardt is expected to take this season off and then resume his broadcasting career in 2025 when WBD Sports and Amazon begin their coverage.

    The move figures to give WBD Sports and Amazon instant credibility when they start their series. Each will have five races a season. WBD Sports’ races will be broadcast on TNT, streamed on Max and have a Bleacher Report component. NASCAR complements WBD Sports’ robust NBA, NCAA Tournament, MLB and NHL programming schedule.

    GO DEEPER

    NASCAR’s new media deal, explained: Why Amazon, who gets what races and more

    Amazon Prime Video’s subscription service already features exclusive NFL games on Thursday nights and it is a leading contender to add the NBA when the league decides its partners in its upcoming negotiations.

    Earnhardt informed NBC of his decision last week, according to sources familiar with the conversations. While Earnhardt is expected to take the year off, he does own the flexibility to do another deal with one of the two broadcast partners, which are Fox and NBC. There are no substantial talks at this point with either.

    “Dale Earnhardt Jr. is beloved in the NASCAR world and has made numerous contributions to NBC Sports, from his work as an analyst on our NASCAR coverage to his experiences as a correspondent at major events like the Indianapolis 500, the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl and the Olympics,” an NBC Sports spokesperson told The Athletic. “We thank Dale and we wish him the best going forward.”

    Earnhardt said on his podcast in early February that he hoped to remain with NBC, even as he acknowledged he is without a contract for 2024.

    “I definitely love being in the broadcast booth and want to continue doing that,” Earnhardt said on his podcast, “Dale Jr. Download.” “We’ve had some great conversations with all of NASCAR’s TV partners. My home and my love is at NBC, and I’d love to be back with them. So we’ll see where it goes.”

    Earnhardt, 49, joined NBC in 2018 immediately after retiring from racing.

    NASCAR moved to four partners in its latest TV contracts, remaining with incumbents NBC and Fox, who will continue to air 14 races in 2025 to go along with WBD Sports and Amazon’s combined 10. The overall NASCAR deals are for seven years and an estimated $7.7 billion dollars in total. The current season remains exclusively on Fox and NBC.

    In 2025, Amazon and WBD Sports will join the coverage and they each will build around Earnhardt.

    Required reading

    (Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)

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  • How should broadcasts handle court-storming?

    How should broadcasts handle court-storming?

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    Throughout a three-decade career as a prominent ESPN play-by-play broadcaster, Dave Pasch says he has been on the mic for two college basketball games that ended in a court-storming. One occurred earlier this month as unranked LSU upset Kentucky as time expired at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, La. Pasch recalled this week a conversation he and analyst Jay Williams had with an LSU athletics department staffer prior to the game.

    “We asked, if they beat Kentucky, will they storm the court?” Pasch said. “He was like, ‘Nope, we don’t storm the court here. We’ve beaten Kentucky before.’ Well, they won on this crazy, last-second shot and, of course, they stormed the floor.”

    In the game’s final sequence, you can clearly hear Williams say, “Didn’t we talk today about if LSU has the right protocol in place for a court storm?” as ESPN’s cameras aired a wide shot of LSU fans spilling onto the court.

    The issue of court-storming went national this week after Wake Forest fans ran onto the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum floor following a win over Duke on Saturday. Cameras picked up video of multiple fans making contact with Duke star Kyle Filipowski, who ended up limping off the court, prompting Duke coach Jon Scheyer, fuming in a postgame press conference, to ask, “When are we going to ban court-storming?” Last month, Iowa star Caitlin Clark collided with an Ohio State fan after the Buckeyes’ upset of the Hawkeyes in Columbus, Ohio.

    GO DEEPER

    Should court-storming be banned — or at least made safer? ‘It’s a tough challenge’

    ESPN producer Eric Mosley and director Mike Roig estimated they have worked 16 to 18 college games where fans of a team have stormed a court. A number of those court storms occurred when a team had a home upset of perennial heavyweights Duke, Kansas or Kentucky. Roig directed Arkansas’ 80-75 win over Duke on Nov. 29, and you can see the wide shot cut by Roig as fans flooded onto the Bud Walton Arena Floor.

    Mosley said production planning for court-storming happens long before tip time. ESPN production crews pre-scout where they can find a safe place for their reporter and camera operators to interview a winning coach and player. Directors such as Roig hold meetings hours before games with camera operators to go over protocol and various scenarios including the storming of a court. The camera setup is such that viewers potentially get access to a lot of entry points. For a regular-season college basketball game, there are usually five non-manned hard and robotic cameras. Those are located in positions safe from the crowd. Then there are three hand-held cameras which are helmed by operators situated on the baselines and centre court. (The overhead camera for Wake Forest-Duke got the best shot of what happened to Filipowski.)

    “One of the first questions we ask when we get on-site with the (sports information director) for certain games is whether there is an appetite for a court storming or if security kind of allows that,” Mosley said. “We find out where the student section is and what the security situation is there. We ask where can we get our cameras and reporter to meet a coach and star player for that postgame interview? We try and get ahead of that stuff as early as possible because we don’t want to get caught in a position where our folks like Holly Rowe, Jess Sims, Kris Budden and our camera folks are unsafe. We don’t want them trapped and trampled. For the most part, we have been pretty successful.”

    The play-by-play broadcaster for the Duke-Arkansas game was Dan Shulman, who estimated he has called 20 to 25 games that have involved court-storming during his career as an ESPN broadcaster. (Shulman is also the TV voice of the Toronto Blue Jays.)

    “As fun as they can look on TV, I have always been worried about what could happen,” Shulman said. “I remember a court-storming at a Louisville-Charlotte game I was doing, and Doris Burke, who was the sideline reporter on the game, was trying to get an interview with the Charlotte coach, and I was worried for her safety. It was complete chaos on the court.

    “Whenever there is a court-storming, it’s hard for us at our table really to see much of what is going on. All we can really see are the people closest to our table. Sometimes the student section may be behind our broadcast location, so knowing they are heading our way to the court can obviously be a bit disconcerting as you are trying to navigate a broadcast. I think for the most part, people in television hope that when these do happen, it is all good fun, and no one gets hurt. There’s no question it’s a good visual on TV, which is enjoyed by a lot of viewers. But to me, the risk outweighs the reward.”


    Wake Forest fans took over their home court after Saturday’s win. An injury to Duke’s Kyle Filipowski has reignited discussion around court-storming. (Grant Halverson / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

    Bob Fishman agrees with Shulman. Fishman retired from CBS Sports last year after 50 years of employment between CBS News and CBS Sports and directed 39 NCAA men’s Final Fours, including Michael Jordan’s title-winning shot in the 1982 title game and North Carolina State’s upset of Houston the following year. Fishman said he has thought a lot recently about court-storming and would never tell a camera operator to run onto the court during one, making sure they held a position under the basket and shot what they could.

    “I’m pretty firm on what I think should be done — you can’t ignore it,” Fishman said. “It’s not like a streaker running across the field at a football game, which you don’t show. I think that you have to show it because it’s part of the story and especially now since players have been injured. How I would do it is throw up a wide shot of some sort, maybe from a backboard camera or from a high beauty camera as we call it. Then I would make sure that my cameras on the court were recording everything and that stuff was being fed into a tape machine. I would never put that on the air. But I do think you have to show something, which would in my mind (be) a high shot.”

    Broadcasters and production crew, especially at a 24/7 news outlet such as ESPN, have to follow the story until its conclusion, whether they are live on air or not.

    “We have to keep in mind that the documentation continues even when we’re off the air,” Mosley said. “We have to treat it as a news story. For example, some of the Filipowski stuff happened after the crew had already signed off and the network transferred to another game. We’re taught and told repeatedly that we need to stay there and document as long as we can. That’s because somebody is going to be looking for that stuff.”

    Mosley and Roig say they often think about how to navigate documenting a court-storming without glorifying the action.

    “It’s a hard question to answer,” Roig said. “You’re both documenting and kind of glamorizing it at the same time. As a director, you’re toeing that line. We’re always taught as directors when that one person comes onto the court or the field, you don’t show them. Because more people will do it if you show them. It’s go wide and away. But this is a little different animal, right? We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of people coming onto the court. … You blur the line of documentation or glorifying it. You have to have the mindset of you are documenting it, but at the same time, you have to be careful of how you document it.”

    During a segment on ESPN’s “First Take” on Monday, longtime ESPN college basketball commentator Jay Bilas was critical of sports broadcasters glamorizing court-storming.

    “Years ago when fans would run out on the field or court during a game, it was network policy not to show that because we didn’t want to encourage it,” Bilas said. “So what does that say about the way we in the media use these images now? We can’t deny that we encourage it. Or at least tacitly approve of it. Everybody has to accept some responsibility for this. I don’t think it is the right thing to allow this, but I know it’s going to continue.”

    Said Roig: “It’s really a touchy point because as directors, it’s a great scene, right? You want to showcase that. But I’ve never had one prior to seeing the one last week (with Wake Forest-Duke) where it got to that point where it was not fun anymore.”

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Calling Caitlin Clark: Broadcasters on the honor and challenge of announcing history

    (Top photo of the scene after Saturday’s Duke-Wake Forest game: Cory Knowlton / USA Today)

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  • The public shouldn’t pay to rebuild Old Trafford for a billionaire

    The public shouldn’t pay to rebuild Old Trafford for a billionaire

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    “I think if it’s a national stadium and is a catalyst for the regeneration of that part of southern Manchester… there has to be a conversation with the government.”

    While much of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s round of media interviews on Wednesday, after his acquisition of 27.7 per cent of Manchester United was finally confirmed, may have excited United fans, there were more than a few elements that caused surprise.

    Among lines about “knocking Manchester City and Liverpool off their perch” and nice stories about chumming around with Sir Alex Ferguson, his comments on women’s team made them sound like an afterthought, merely offering that “if it’s a team wearing a Manchester United badge on their shirt, then it’s Manchester United and they need to be focused on winning and being successful.” But to offer the benefit of the doubt, these are early days and perhaps there are big plans afoot.

    His answer to the question about Mason Greenwood and making a “fresh decision” on the forward’s future also set alarm bells ringing, but it’s probably only fair to judge him on that matter when the nature of the “fresh decision” is made clear.


    Ratcliffe highlighted this picture as one of his favourite United moments this season (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

    What also stuck out were his comments regarding Old Trafford and either the potential renovation of United’s home stadium or the possible construction of a new one.

    Ratcliffe suggested that, when the time comes to either rebuild or replace Old Trafford, he would seek out some sort of public funding, also suggesting that it would be part of a potential regeneration of that area of Manchester.

    Ratcliffe said: “People in the north pay their taxes and there is an argument you could think about a more ambitious project in the north which would be fitting for England, for the Champions League final or the FA Cup final and acted as a catalyst to regenerate southern Manchester, which has got quite significant history in the UK.”

    The easy (and not unreasonable) gotcha is that Ratcliffe invoked the UK taxpayer while not being one himself. He was asked about his residency in the tax haven of Monaco, to which he replied: “I paid my taxes for 65 years in the UK. And then when I got to retirement age, I went down to enjoy a bit of sun.” A happy coincidence that the only possible place “to enjoy a bit of sun” also happens to be where the income tax rate is zero per cent.

    But while true, that distracts from the main issue, which is trying to guilt-trip the taxpayer into subsidising a new stadium for Manchester United.

    Fans of U.S. sports will be familiar with the tactic: a sports team owner pressures the local government into providing millions of dollars worth of funding or tax subsidies for a new stadium, earnestly promising that it wouldn’t really cost anything at all because it would bring a raft of economic benefits to the local community.

    However, multiple studies in America have exposed this claim as, at best, hugely exaggerated and, more realistically, complete nonsense.

    There are many examples of this, but one is the Atlanta Braves: in 2013 the Cobb County authorities committed $300million (£237m) to the construction of Truist Park, the team’s prospective new home (which replaced Turner Field, itself only constructed in 1996), which came with a series of other surrounding retail and residential developments. The suggestion was that the whole thing would be a sound public investment. In 2022, a report from JC Bradbury, an economist from Kennesaw State University, found that while there were increases in things such as sales tax, it didn’t cover the money initially invested by the authorities.

    Bradbury wrote that ‘the evidence does not support the widespread claim that the $300m invested by the County to fund the stadium was a sound financial investment’ and that ‘the stadium runs significant annual deficits, which will likely continue for the remaining 25 years of the County’s commitment.’

    That example is cited because at least there has been enough time to judge the benefit or otherwise — but it’s only increasing. The Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, which recently hosted the Super Bowl, cost $1.9billion, of which $750m came from public funding. A recent NBC report stated that over the last 50 years, around $33billion in public funds was spent to either build new stadiums or renovate old ones.

    Ratcliffe doesn’t have the same leverage as those U.S. owners, because invariably the threat they leave hanging over the authorities is that they will move their team to a city more amenable to providing them with a shiny new home. Even hinting at the vague possibility that he could potentially consider anything like that, would be the easiest way to violently torch any goodwill towards him from pretty much anywhere.

    Public subsidies for stadiums are a mess that is entrenched in US sports, but cannot be allowed to take hold in the UK. For a start, where would the money come from?

    A Manchester Council budget process report recently revealed that they could be looking at a budget gap of £71.9million in 2026-27, which by coincidence will probably be right around the time that work on Old Trafford could begin, if Ratcliffe gets his way.

    There will no doubt be wrangling over which public authority would provide United with the funding, not least because Old Trafford is technically not in Manchester, but the point remains: at a time when councils around the UK are going bankrupt (often, funnily enough, because they got involved in ill-advised and economically unsound construction projects), which means basic services are catastrophically affected, how can anyone justify committing public money to spruce up a football club’s stadium or buy a new one?


    Ratcliffe believes a new or revamped Old Trafford is key to United’s advancement (Simon Peach/PA Images via Getty Images)

    Ratcliffe isn’t wrong when he mentions the southern (by which he means London) bias when it comes to national sporting venues in England.

    He’s also right that the north of England has been historically neglected and ignored by the UK government.

    But even though Ratcliffe has a point, it’s hard to take it seriously because we know he’s being disingenuous, at best. He’s not asking for a separate ‘Wembley of the north’ to be constructed for the benefit of the people: he’s asking for the redevelopment of his own club’s stadium to be (at least partly) paid for by the people.

    United don’t need the money. They brought in £648million in the last financial year, up 11 per cent on the previous one. They were fourth in the recent Deloitte Money League rankings of the richest clubs in the world. They would, you’d imagine, easily be able to secure funding based only on the increased revenue that would come from a new or refurbished stadium. They even have an elite recent example in Tottenham, who managed to build their new stadium without public money. The spending wouldn’t even harm their profit and sustainability calculations, as infrastructure costs are exempt.

    And at the most basic level, it’s hard to take seriously a man personally worth £29.7billion, according to the most recent Sunday Times rich list, suggesting that his latest acquisition needs a new home and that you should pay for it, which would also increase the value of his investment.

    Ratcliffe’s were just early suggestions, and there’s no indication that any public body would actually be amenable to it. But even so, the idea that public money should be used to help renovate or rebuild Old Trafford should be stopped as early as possible.

    go-deeper

    (OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images)

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  • Sir Jim Ratcliffe on Man United, Old Trafford, Sheikh Jassim and Mason Greenwood: Full transcript

    Sir Jim Ratcliffe on Man United, Old Trafford, Sheikh Jassim and Mason Greenwood: Full transcript

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    On Tuesday evening, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS completed their purchase of a minority stake in Manchester United, as the British billionaire acquired a 27.7 per cent stake in the Premier League club in a deal worth over $1.3bn.

    On Wednesday, Ratcliffe spoke to the written media for the first time about his decision to take a minority investment, for which he has received control of the club’s sporting operation. Inside a boardroom at INEOS’ offices in Knightsbridge, London, Ratcliffe sat at the head of the table and took questions from 13 assembled journalists from the British and international media.

    Along the way, Ratcliffe answered every question, including:

    • His ambitions to restore Manchester United to the summit of English and European football, knocking the “enemy” Liverpool and Manchester City “off their perch”
    • How INEOS will make a fresh decision this summer on the future of Mason Greenwood
    • Insight into the year-long battle to secure a stake in Manchester United, “odd affair” of Sheikh Jassim’s rival bid and how INEOS previously thought they had won the battle nine months ago, opening a bottle of champagne to celebrate at the Monaco Grand Prix in May
    • Why Manchester United have targeted Newcastle’s sporting director Dan Ashworth and the club’s battle to prise him away
    • His ambitions to create a ‘Wembley of the North’ as Manchester United seek to redevelop Old Trafford or build a new stadium, including his argument for the British state to support funding plans for the project

    Has the last decade been quite painful? 

    Sir Jim Ratcliffe: “It’s been a complete misery really in the last 11 years and it’s just frustrating if you’re a supporter during that period of time. That’s football isn’t it? It has its ups and its downs. I remember pre-(Sir Alex) Ferguson it wasn’t great for quite some time — for a more extended period of time, actually, for about 25 years.

    Is that your incentive for investing: to transform Manchester United into what it used to be?

    “Fundamentally, you want to see your club being where it should be. It’s one of the biggest clubs in the world. It should be playing the best football in the world and it hasn’t been doing that for 10 or 11 years. So it’s certainly related to the decision (to invest).”

    Do you have a time frame for achieving success?

    “It’s not a light switch. it’s not one of these things that change overnight. We have to be careful we don’t rush at it, you don’t want to run to the wrong solution rather than walk to the correct solution. We have two issues: one is the longer term, getting Manchester United to where we would like to get it but there’s also the shorter term of getting the most out of the club as it stands today.

    “We would like to see the Champions League for next season if we can. The key challenge here is that, longer term, we need to do things well and properly — and thoroughly. So it’s not an overnight change. It’s going to take two or three (seasons). You have to ask the fans for some patience. I know the world these days is about instant gratification but that’s not the case with football, really. Look at Pep Guardiola at Man City; it takes time to build a squad.

    “What you need are the foundations to be in a good place for Manchester United to be successful, which means you need the right organisational structure. It means not having a coach reporting to the chief executive, for instance.

    “Then we need to populate all the key roles with people who are best in class, 10 out of 10s, and there’s clearly a lot of interest in these roles in Manchester United because it’s one of the biggest clubs in the world but also it’s one of the biggest challenges — because you’re taking it from a difficult place to hopefully where it should be at the top of the pyramid.

    “Thirdly, you need to create this environment which is driven and competitive. It is going to be intense at times, but equally it needs to have warmth and friendliness and be a supportive structure because the two things marry together well. They probably haven’t had that environment for the last 10 years. If we get those three things right, then you have to believe the results will follow.”

    “If you look at a club like Manchester City, you see they’ve got a very sensible structure. They’ve got a really driven competitive environment but there’s a bit of warmth to it. There are two clubs not very far from us who have been successful and have got some of those things right, and United don’t.”


    Ratcliffe and his INEOS company have spent £1.3billion to buy a 25 per cent stake in Manchester United (Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)

    How is a minority stake going to work? What do you get to drive?

    “We have a really good relationship with Joel and Avram (Glazer), who are the only two of the siblings that we’ve got to know and have met. And there’s a fair amount of trust between those two parties. And they obviously are very comfortable with us running the sports side of the club.

    “This is going to be a very sports-led club, it’s all going to be about performance on the pitch. I’m still a significant shareholder even in respect of all the other things in the club.

    “We’re obviously going to be on the ground, whereas the Glazer family are a fair way away. So I don’t see an issue in us being able to influence the club in all the right ways going forward, to be honest.

    “I don’t think we’re going to be taking the legal agreements out of the bottom drawer. I just hope they gather dust and we never see them. Which it should be. It should be on the basis of a relationship.

    “As long as we’re doing the right things, then I’m certain that relationship is going to go very well.

    “One of the things I’d add is that the transaction was quite challenging, as you know. We met all sorts of obstacles on the way, a lot of them in relation to hedge funds, and SEC, American (regulations) and a few with the Qataris and all those sorts of things. It obviously it was a rocky road for quite an extended period of time.

    “And the Glazers really, from the beginning, preferred ourselves to the Qatari option — which, in a way, for them was a much easier option because they could just sell the whole thing and they would have walked away and financially done quite well.

    “But they stuck with us through the whole process. Our offer was a bit more complicated and that sort of adversity, that rocky road for a year, has forged a relationship between ourselves and the other shareholders.

    “We’ve all got to know each other. You get to know people better in adversity than when the whole thing is going swimmingly.”

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    INEOS and Ratcliffe finally have the keys to Old Trafford. What does it mean for Man United?

    Did you always have confidence that you would end up here? Were there moments when you thought about walking away?

    “How long have you got? Time and time again. I remember at the Monaco Grand Prix, which was in May, we opened a bottle of very expensive champagne and all celebrated. That was in May — but that was a false dawn and we went through several more false dawns after that.

    “We had a few surprises on the way. Not at the Glazers’ making. We just kept bumping into problems, particularly with the non-executives on the board.”

    How would you rate the scale of this challenge? You are up against clubs linked to nation-states, financial fair play, it has not been a great season, etc…

    “I don’t know about the biggest thing in my career. But certainly, the biggest challenge in sport that we’ve undertaken. It’s enormous — and the club is enormous. The tentacles reach around the world. Everywhere I go in the world, it’s Manchester United. It affects an awful lot of people on the planet, and getting it right is not easy.

    “We’ve got to get so many aspects of that club right. And the right people doing the right thing at the right time and doing it well. It’s a very complex problem, football – which is surprising considering it’s just putting 11 players on a football field, and they run around. But it’s very complex getting there.”

    Part of the INEOS mantra is a compass which says you “don’t like losing money” — but you have spent so much for a 27 per cent share…

    “To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever lose money. For me, it’s not about a financial investment. The objective was to get involved and be influential in the future of Manchester United.

    “I don’t believe I’ll ever lose money in it and I’m not interested. I’ve just put that aside. It’ll sit there forever but I don’t see that the value is going to devalue. I don’t believe that. In that sense, I don’t think I’ve been financially stupid but it’s not my motivation in life at all.”

    What do you think the biggest growth is financially, in terms of the ability to grow revenue?

    “We’re really, really clear about that: it’s football-led. So if we’re successful on the pitch, then everything else will follow.

    “Manchester United (has been) a bit, I think, in the last 10 years or so, that if you’re really good in commercial and you make lots of money, then you’ll be successful in football because you’ve got lots of money to spend.

    But I think that’s flawed because it only starts for a certain while and you start to degrade the brand if you’re not careful. But we’re really clear that football will drive the club. If we’re really successful at football, then commercial will follow. And we’ll make more money.”

    And how do you take on the challenge of those nation-states? It’s now almost viewed as impossible to take them on…

    “I don’t agree with that. Firstly, the nation-state bit helps to a degree but FFP limits the degree by a considerable margin, doesn’t it? Ultimately, it becomes about how successful the club is because that dictates your FFP.

    With FPP, you have to operate the club within its own means. So clearly that means that if you’ve got a bigger club it ought to be more successful than a smaller club, by definition, because you’ve got more means that you can spend more money and recruitment.

    How much is FFP an issue for United (particularly ahead of the summer)? How patient will fans need to be with the damage that’s been done before — i.e with what’s been spent?

    “Firstly, FFP has become a new aspect of running the football club, and it’s clearly a really critical part of running a football club. And you have to think about how you can manage FFP to the benefit of the club. But ultimately, FFP says you have to operate the club within its own means. Effectively, it takes into account your prior expenditure, and the club’s spent quite heavily in the last couple of seasons. So that does impact FFP going forward because they’ve used quite a large part of their allowance.

    “I don’t know the full answer to that question at the moment. It’s obviously related to sales as well as purchases, and so we need to get our heads around that well before the summer window — there’s no question that history will impact this summer window.

    You have been heavily linked with Newcastle’s sporting director Dan Ashworth in the media in recent weeks. Would it be fair to say that identifying player sales and purchases is an area that United can make a real improvement on?

    “Recruitment in the modern game is critical. Manchester United have clearly spent a lot of money but they haven’t done as well as some other clubs. So when I was talking about being best in class in all aspects of football, recruitment is clearly top of the list.”

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    Dan Ashworth – the sporting director Manchester United want to lure from Newcastle

    What do you make of the recruitment under the current manager? Because it seems like he’s had quite a lot of sway…

    “We don’t benefit too much from thinking about that. I’m thinking about getting recruitment in a good place in the future. There’s not much I can do about what’s happened in the past. Our thinking is all about how we become first in class in recruitment going forward. Which means you need the right people.”

    You talk about being best in class… is it a five-year plan or is it a 10-year plan?

    “It’s not a 10-year plan. The fans would run out of patience if it was a 10-year plan. But it’s certainly a three-year plan to get there.

    “To think that we’re going to be playing football as good as Manchester City played against Real Madrid last season by next year is not sensible. And if we give people false expectations, then they will get disappointed. So the key thing is our trajectory, so that people can see that we’re making progress. I think it’s the club’s 150-year anniversary in 2028… if our trajectory is leading to a very good place in that sort of timeframe then we’d be very happy with that. Because it’s not easy to turn Manchester United into the world’s best football team.”

    Is it the aim to win the Premier League and then the Champions League?

    “The ultimate target for Manchester United — and it’s always going to be thus, really — is that we should be challenging for the Premier League and challenging for the Champions League. It’s one of the biggest clubs in the world. There are six who are probably the six biggest clubs in Europe: three in the north west (of England), two in Spain and one in Germany. United should be in that small group. It hasn’t been for a while. And so, therefore, it must be challenging for the Premier League. And if we’re not, then in a way, we’re not doing what we saying we ought to do.

    Does FFP influence your thinking about the need for a modern stadium? 

    “You have to think about how you can optimise the football club in FFP terms — and a stadium is one of those. You can increase your revenues by building a new stadium, rebuilding a stadium or putting all the facilities in. You have to think practically because money doesn’t grow on trees. The two most talked-about issues at Manchester United are number one, the football, the performance on the pitch and the second one is the stadium.

    “What we can see so far is a really good case to refurbish Old Trafford, probably about £1billion in cost. You finish up with a great stadium, it’s probably an 80,000-90,000-seater. But it’s not perfect because you’re modifying a stadium that is slap-bang up against a railway line and all that type of stuff, so it’s not an ideal world. But you finish up with a very good answer.


    The Trafford Park area around Manchester United’s stadium is a far cry from the modern surroundings of Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    “Manchester United needs a stadium befitting one of the biggest clubs in the world and, at the moment, it’s not there. Old Trafford maybe was 20 years ago but it’s certainly not today. There’s this wider conversation with the community as to whether you could use a more ambitious project on-site as a catalyst to regenerate that Old Trafford area, which is quite an interesting area in a way because it was the heart of the Industrial Revolution — it is the oldest industrial park in Europe, it was the first industrial park in Europe. And it’s still one of the biggest ones. And they obviously built the Manchester Ship Canal to service it. That’s where all the coal came in, the cotton. And that’s why they built Old Trafford there.

    “People would finish their shift and then walk to the ground; there was no transport in those days. That’s the history of why the club is there. But today it’s a bit run-down and neglected in places. There’s a strong case for using a stadium to regenerate that area, like with the Olympics, as Sebastian Coe did with that part of east London quite successfully. City have done it and they’ve done quite a good job.”

    But both of those had some state funding… (There have been reports suggesting United may seek state support) 

    “The people in the north pay their taxes like the people in the south pay their taxes. But where’s the national stadium for football? It’s in the south. Where’s the national stadium for rugby? It’s in the south. Where’s the national stadium for tennis? It’s in the south. Where’s the national concert stadium? It’s the O2, it’s in the south. Where’s the Olympic Village? It’s in the south.

    “All of this talk about levelling up and the Northern Powerhouse. Where is the stadium in the north? How many Champions Leagues has the north west won and how many Champions Leagues has London won?

    “The answer to that is the north west has won 10 — Liverpool (six) have won more than us — and London (Chelsea) has won two. Where do you have to go if you get to the semi-final of the FA Cup and you’re a northern club? You have to schlep down to London, don’t you? So what happened to HS2, which was going to be a substantial amount of investment in the north, what happened to that? They cancelled that. And where are they going to spend that? They’re going to spend it on the rail network in London.

    “People in the north pay their taxes and there is an argument you could think about a more ambitious project in the north which would be fitting for England, for the Champions League final or the FA Cup final and acted as a catalyst to regenerate southern Manchester, which has got quite significant history in the UK.”

    Might your tax status, having relocated to Monaco, pose a challenge in the optics of requesting state support? 

    “I paid my taxes for 65 years in the UK. And then when I got to retirement age, I went down to enjoy a bit of sun. I don’t have a problem with that, I’m afraid.”

    Do you prefer a new ground or a refurbishment? 

    “In an ideal world, I think it’s a no-brainer, a stadium of the north, which would be a world-class stadium where England could play and you could have the FA Cup final and it’s not all centred around the south of England. So in an ideal world, absolutely, that’s where I would be, but you’ve got to be practical about life.”

    Is there a financial estimate of what that might be?

    “In broad terms, a refurb is one (billion) and a new stadium — both of these would include the campus so, you know, the museum’s crap and the shop is too small and you’d have the Xbox thing for entertaining the fans. So in other words, the fans could come there and do some stuff. So include the campus in both cases, in very simple terms you are talking about one versus two (billion).”

    And how long would it take to happen?

    “I think the refurb would take longer than the new one because it’s more complicated, because obviously you’re building and you have to build over a main railway line which is quite complicated and expensive.”

    And a stadium for the women’s team as well?

    “If you use that as a centre of regeneration, a bit like the Olympic Village, then I think what you probably finish up doing is Old Trafford would end up being reduced in size to a smaller facility still in the same footprint but a smaller facility which can be used for all sorts of community things, be it a concert or whatever. The ladies’ teams could play there. The academy teams could play there. Some of the local teams could play there and Old Trafford could sort of become a community asset and then you’d have this world-class stadium next door to it.”

    What’s your vision for broader control of Manchester United? Would you like to increase your stake?

    “We spent well over a year getting to where we are. We got to where we could do. I’m really pleased we are here and we are going to be able to influence the future, to be in charge of the sports side. I haven’t had the energy to think about the future or worry about it because I’m focused on the problem today — not what I might do in three, five, 10 years.”

    In the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filing, it said that if the Glazers received an offer for a complete buyout within 18 months, then they could force you to sell…

    “There’s all sorts of scenarios. We might get hit by an asteroid. There’s been lots of opportunities for someone to come in and buy United in the last 12 months.”

    What are your ambitions for the women’s team?

    “I know we have been around since Christmas but we only took over today. What I would say is that if it’s a team wearing a Manchester United badge on shirt then it’s Manchester United and they need to be focused on winning and being successful.”

    Dan Ashworth, are you confident you will get him?

    “Dan Ashworth is clearly one of the top sporting directors in the world. I have no doubt he is a very capable person. He is interested in Manchester United because it’s the biggest challenge at the biggest club in the world. It would be different at City because you’re maintaining a level. Here it’s a significant rebuilding job. He would be a very good addition. He needs to decide if he is going to make that jump.


    Dan Ashworth has been placed on gardening leave by Newcastle United (Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)

    “We have had words with Newcastle, who would be disappointed. They have done really well since their new ownership. I understand why they would be disappointed, but then you can’t criticise Dan because it’s a transient industry. You can understand why Dan would be interested because it’s the ultimate challenge. We’ll have to see how it unfolds.”

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    Ashworth placed on gardening leave at Newcastle amid Man Utd interest

    There have been reports of a £20million asking price. Does £20m seem strange for a sporting director?

    “A bit silly, personally. I won’t get dragged into that. What I do think is completely absurd is suggesting a man who is really good at his job sits in his garden for one and a half years. We had a very grown-up conversation with City about Omar Berrada. When things got done, we sorted it out very amicably. They could see why he wanted to take that challenge.

    “You look at Pep and when he’s done with one of his footballers: he doesn’t want them to sit in the garden for one and a half years. He doesn’t do that. That’s not the way the UK works or the law works.”

    One of the main stories at Manchester United last year was what the club would do with Mason Greenwood (who is on loan at Getafe). That is now a problem on your doorstep as you control the sporting operation…

    “I can talk about the principle. I am not going to talk about Mason. I am familiar with it. The principle is the important one. We will have other issues going forward. You are dealing with young people who have not always been brought up in the best circumstances, who have a lot of money and who don’t always have the guidance they should have.

    “What we need to do when having issues like that is understand the real effects — not the hype. Then we need to make a fair decision in light of the club’s values. That’s what we need to do and that’s how we will deal with it.”

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Man United will make fresh decision on Greenwood, says Ratcliffe

    Will that be a fresh decision then? 

    “Yes, absolutely. We will make a decision and we will justify it.”

    So it’s feasible he could still have a future at Man Utd?

    “All I can do is talk about the principle of how we will approach decisions like that.”

    What are the values you are defining? 

    “Is he the right type of footballer? Is he a good person or not?”

    We don’t want to misquote you or take this out of context… Are you saying you are not closing the door on Mason?

    “He’s a Manchester United footballer, so we are in charge of football. So the answer is ‘yeah, we have to make decisions’.

    “It’s quite clear we have to make a decision. There is no decision that’s been made. He’s on loan obviously, but he’s not the only one. We’ve got one or two footballers that we have to deal with and we have to make a decision on, so we will do that. The process will be: understand the facts, not the hype, and then try and come to a fair decision on the basis of values, which is basically: is he a good guy or not, and answer could he play sincerely for Manchester United well and would we be comfortable with it and would the fans be comfortable with it?”

    Is the INEOS ownership of French club OGC Nice an issue for playing in the Champions League if you both qualify under UEFA’s regulations? 

    “We’ve spoken to UEFA. There are no circumstances upon which an ownership of Nice would prevent Manchester United from playing in the Champions League — I’ll be crystal clear on that.

    But at the moment, the rules say you can’t…

    “It says you have to change the ownership structure. So it’s all about influence and positions on the board and that sort of thing. So, a) the rules are changing, and, b) there are shades of grey, not black and white. Manchester City will probably have the problem before we have the problem because they’ve obviously got Girona who are doing well in the Spanish La Liga.

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    Inside Girona’s unlikely rise: Pep Guardiola’s brother, Manchester City and table football

    You tried to buy Chelsea when they were for sale in 2022…

    “We have a collection of quite interesting sports clubs, Formula 1, America’s Cup, cycling etc. but we’ve always recognised that the biggest sport in the world is football and the Premier League is the biggest league in the world. So we’ve always had an interest in having a Premier League club — but they don’t come up very often, and at the time we had no inkling that Manchester United might ever be sold. So that’s how we finished up in that Chelsea equation.”

    Dave Brailsford is the director of sport at INEOS. Can you talk about what his role will be, how important he is and what his attributes are? Some will look at his history in cycling and query his role at United amid the criticisms…

    “Well, I think he will be critically involved in the future of Manchester United. He’s interested in elite sport and performance, which is what Manchester United is and I think he’s been very, very successful in sport in cycling, but he’s generally viewed as one of the world’s best thoughtful people on the subject of sports performance.

    “It’s for good reason. I’ve known Dave now for quite a few years. He is obsessive about performance in elite sports, and he is going to be very successful at Manchester United.”

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    What will Brailsford, Ratcliffe and Man Utd’s new faces do? And who could follow?

    Rival fans will bring up the parliamentary select committee and (his role in) questions about Team Sky previously…

    “I’m not interested in all that. Really, I’m not. You can keep harping on about the past, but I am not interested in the past. I’m interested in the future. My view is he is a really good man and is really good at his job.

    “That, for me, was all nonsense, in the past. I’m not interested.”

    Chelsea was a very busy process but there seemed to be fewer bidders for United. Why was that?

    “Good question, that.”

    There was this Qatari guy (Sheikh Jassim) that no one’s ever seen. It was very odd…

    “Still nobody’s ever seen him, actually. The Glazers never met him… he never… I’m not sure he exists!” (laughs). I would say this but there is no comparison between Chelsea and Manchester United. The scale of Manchester United is incomparable to any of the London clubs, to be honest with you.”

    The SEC filing suggested Qataris did not provide proof of funds…

    “No, they didn’t. No.”

    Were they really bidding against you, or were you potentially the only bidder?

    “I don’t know. They were they were obviously there and there was a whole host of people on the team in their squad… I didn’t ever meet them. But it was it was a very odd affair.”

    There seemed to be a lot of background briefings. Did they play clean?

    “I’m not going to comment on that. I know what the answer is.”

    They claimed the bid was a lot higher than it was…

    “Yeah, that’s correct.”

    Do Chelsea show how not to do things given their recent spending?

    “I don’t want to finish up criticising Chelsea but what I would say is that, in having bought other clubs in Lausanne and Nice, we have made a lot of cock-ups. We’ve made some really stupid decisions in both those clubs. There are a lot of organisations in the world where, if you make a mistake, you get shot, so nobody ever puts their head above the parapet.

    “But at INEOS, we don’t mind people making mistakes — but please don’t make it a second time. So with that, we’re much less than sympathetic when they make the same mistake twice. We have made mistakes in football, so I’m really pleased that we made those mistakes before we arrived here at Manchester United. If we hadn’t, this would be a much tougher job for us. Because it is huge and it’s very exposed.”

    What sort of player do you want at the club? Youngsters or superstars?

    “We’re probably still debating what precisely is the style of football we want to play. If you look at Manchester City, they know precisely what the style of football is they want to play and all 11 teams at the club play the same formula. We need to do that, but I think in terms of the nature of the players, you want Manchester United types of players: attacking football, exciting football, bringing the youth through. You want players that are committed. You want players that play 90 minutes — those are the types of players you want playing for Manchester United.

    “The academy is really, really important for us. It’s probably the most successful academy in football in terms of number of players that have come through.”

    “We’ll decide that style, plus the CEO, sporting director, probably the recruitment guys, what the style of football is and that will be the Manchester United style of football, and the coach will have to play that style. We’re not going to oscillate from a (Jose) Mourinho style to a Guardiola style. That’s not the way we’ll run the club. Otherwise, you’re changing everything all the time, you change your coach, you’ve got the wrong squad — we won’t do that.

    “In modern football, you need to decide what’s your path and stick to your path.”

    You are doing something today that has been very rare at Manchester United in recent decades: communicating. How important is it to reconnect the fans and the club? 

    “Again, I have a very simple view of a football club. It’s a community asset. The club is owned by the fans, that’s what it’s there for: for the fans. We’re guardians or stewards for a temporary period of time. I’m not going to be there forever. It is important we communicate to the fanbase. We underestimate how important an aspect it is of their life and how it affects their life.

    “On a wet Monday morning in Manchester, that’s the first thing you talk about when you go into the office or the factory: how did we do at the weekend? And you either start off with a good week or a bad week depending on how it went. It’s beholden upon us to… It’s not my job to do it on a frequent basis but it was quite important today that we are seen by the true owners, who are the fans really.”

    You are sitting in front of a jersey in here where there is a No 7 on the back and the collar up. It looks like an Eric Cantona shirt.…

    “He was a maverick, obviously. He was the catalyst for change in Ferguson’s era… and that kickstarted everything off. He was a talisman.

    “There has always been a bit of glamour attached to Manchester United which has been lacking a bit in the last few years. You’ve had George Best, Bobby Charlton, Eric the King. At the end of the day, we are in the entertainment business. You don’t want to watch bland football or characterless football. And to be honest, since Christmas, with the young lads, they have played some fantastic football. There have been some great matches.

    “I can’t remember many matches at the beginning of the season that I was really excited by. The three young lads sitting on the hoarding at the side; that was a good picture. So I think that’s the Eric point, really. We are cognisant of the fact you do need a bit of glamour in this.”

    go-deeper

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    Garnacho, Mainoo and Hojlund – the Man Utd picture that is a marketing person’s dream

    How would you assess the job Erik ten Hag has done during his time at Old Trafford?

    “I’m not going to comment on Erik ten Hag because I think it would be inappropriate to do that. But if you look at the 11 years that have gone since David Gill and Sir Alex stepped down, there have been a whole series of coaches — some of which were very good. And none of them were successful or survived for very long. And you can’t blame all the coaches.

    “The only conclusion you can draw is that the environment in which they were working didn’t work. And Erik’s been in that environment. I’m talking about the organisation, the people in the structure, and the atmosphere in the club. We have to do that bit. So I’m not really focused on the coach. I’m focused on getting that bit right. And it’s not for me to judge that anyway — I’m not a football professional.”


    Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford visited Erik ten Hag and others at the club’s Carrington training base in January (Manchester United via Getty Images)

    Have you spoken to Sir Alex Ferguson much? 

    “I have. He was the first person I met when I went up there, which I think was the second week of January. I had a meeting from 9am to 10am at his house and I left at 1pm.

    “He never stopped. He’s got a lot of experience, a lot of stories to tell and a lot of thoughts about the club.

    “I don’t think he has been encouraged to get involved but he is still very thoughtful about the club and he has an immense amount of experience. He really understands the values and traditions of the club and what it’s all about. He’s still fiercely competitive, Alex Ferguson.”

    You have mentioned Manchester City an awful lot in this conversation…

    “Well, they are one of the best teams on the planet.”

    Are they a blueprint?

    “Blueprint? (laughs) We have a lot to learn from our noisy neighbour and the other neighbour. They are the enemy at the end of the day. There is nothing I would like better than to knock both of them off their perch.

    “Equally, we are the three great northern clubs who are very close to one another. They have been in a good place for a while and there are things we can learn from both of them. They have sensible organisations, great people within the organisations, and a good, driven and elite environment that they work in. I am very respectful of them but they are still the enemy.”

    Would it help if they were found guilty of 115 breaches they are accused of by the Premier League?

    “I would not wish that upon them. I don’t understand any of that. I just want to smash them on the football field.”

    When you refer to knocking them off their perch… is that a knowing nod to Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous comments about knocking Liverpool off their perch?

    “It is, actually. He was the first one who came out with that expression. I am in the same place as Alex — 100 per cent. He was fiercely competitive and that is why he was successful. We have to be the same.

    “Queen Victoria was present at the first America’s Cup when we (the UK) challenged America in 1851. They sent a yacht across called America. We had 11 yachts and we had a race around the Isle of Wight. It was hosted by the Royal Yacht Squadron. In the end, the American boat won the race. Queen Victoria turned to the commodore and said ‘Did we come second?’ And the commodore said: ‘There is no second’.”

    (Top photo: Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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    The New York Times

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  • Super Bowl 2025 odds: 49ers are early favorites; Chiefs, Ravens and Bills among top teams

    Super Bowl 2025 odds: 49ers are early favorites; Chiefs, Ravens and Bills among top teams

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    The Chiefs beat the 49ers in overtime to win Super Bowl LVIII. 

    Is it too early to start looking ahead to Super Bowl LVIX held in New Orleans? Never. The San Francisco 49ers are Super Bowl favorites at +500 on BetMGM, despite losing to the Kansas City Chiefs (+700 to repeat) in Super Bowl 58. The Baltimore Ravens (+850), Buffalo Bills (+1200) and Detroit Lions (+1200) have the next-best odds.

    Of course, the Chiefs are still one of the favorites to win the AFC. It’s assumed that general manager Brett Veach will do everything in his power to find help for Patrick Mahomes after the offense’s struggles for most of the regular season.

    Along with the Chiefs, the Ravens, Bills and Bengals are the favorites from the AFC. The Jets have worse odds now (+3000) than they did at this time last season (+2500), and that was even before they had acquired Aaron Rodgers from Green Bay, though rumors were already swirling that Rodgers wanted out of Wisconsin and into the Big Apple.

    Of the teams with new head coaches, the Los Angeles Chargers (+2500) have the best odds with new coach Jim Harbaugh. Los Angeles is $45 million over the salary cap for next season, according to OverTheCap.com.

    If you’re looking for teams that can make a splash in free agency, the Commanders, Titans, Patriots, Bengals and Colts have the most salary cap room right now.

    Detroit (+1200) has completed its 180 turn from lovable losers to now a favorite in the NFC. Dallas and Philadelphia are still near the top of their respective conferences, but there will be changes for both teams this offseason. Dallas lost defensive coordinator Dan Quinn to Washington and Philadelphia hired Kellen Moore to be its new offensive coordinator and Vic Fangio to lead its defense.

    The Carolina Panthers, Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots all have the worst odds of winning the Super Bowl. All three teams will have new coaches next year.

    Putting bets on favorites this far out probably isn’t a good betting strategy, though. Consider that the Chiefs had worse odds entering this year’s playoffs (+1000) than they did after last year’s Super Bowl win (+600).

    Super Bowl 59 odds (@BetMGM)

    To help understand where these teams might be going this offseason, especially around expectations, we checked in with our beat writers to gauge how they view the teams going into the offseason.

    GO DEEPER

    Super Bowl 2025 odds: Texans, Eagles and Falcons have biggest swings from last preseason

    Detroit Lions +1200

    The Lions have the fifth-best Super Bowl odds in 2024, and that feels just about right. In their first postseason run together, with the fifth-youngest roster in the NFL, the Lions reached the NFC Championship game and held a 24-7 lead. Had they made the necessary plays to win the game, it would’ve been them in Las Vegas hoping to hoist the Lombardi. Instead, they’ll use a disappointing loss as motivation and work to get there next season. Detroit’s best talent — Penei Sewell, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Aidan Hutchinson, Sam LaPorta, Jahmyr Gibbs, etc. — should only get better with age. QB Jared Goff has now taken two teams to NFC Championship games and is coming off another strong season. Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson is back for another year, turning down head coaching opportunities yet again. And the Lions will look to improve a secondary that needs an influx of talent. Detroit’s schedule and division look tougher on paper, but considering all the Lions have going for them, they’re well-positioned for another deep postseason run.  —Colton Pouncy, Lions writer

    New York Jets +3000

    The Jets, as much as any team on this list, have the ability to swing wildly in either direction. That’s the Aaron Rodgers factor. The Jets have a lot of holes to fill on offense (offensive line, wide receiver) and problems to overcome (offensive coordinator) but ultimately how far the Jets go (or not) depends largely on what version of Rodgers they get. He will turn 41 this season and is coming off Achilles surgery, so it’s fair to be skeptical that the Jets will make noise — but they still have one of the best NFL defenses, which will mostly remain intact, and bring back two stars on offense in Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall. —Zack Rosenblatt, Jets writer

    Green Bay Packers +2500

    I’m surprised the Packers’ odds are that long, considering how they finished the 2023 season. After starting 3-6, they made the playoffs, dismantled the Cowboys in the wild-card round, and gave the 49ers a fight in the Divisional Round. In his first season as the full-time starting quarterback, Jordan Love showed why he can be the guy for Green Bay for the next decade-plus, and most of his supporting cast, on an offense that flourished in the second half of the season, will return in 2024. The big questions are in the other two phases. Can the Packers straighten out their kicking game (pun intended), and can new defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley maximize the talent on his side of the ball in a way Joe Barry couldn’t? If Green Bay can do both, there’s no reason the Packers can’t be in contention to bring the Lombardi Trophy back home. —Matt Schneidman, Packers writer

    To take the Dolphins as serious Super Bowl contenders, they have to beat teams on the same level as them or better on a semi-consistent basis. That didn’t happen in 2023, with only one win against a team that finished with a winning record — Dallas Cowboys in Week 16. The 2024 schedule will be tougher, too, playing the AFC South, NFC West and the Packers outside of Miami’s AFC East opponents.

    Tua Tagovailoa, as of now, will enter the final year of his rookie contract in 2024. Will Miami take care of its quarterback before Week 1? Plus, you have to wonder if the defense can come together after numerous injuries, specifically at edge rusher, which took a toll late in the 2023 campaign. Then you have to wonder if the Dolphins are the best or even second-best team in the AFC East with the Bills as the reigning champs and Aaron Rodgers set to take more than a handful of snaps at QB like last year’s injury-plagued season. —Larry Holder, NFL senior writer

    You know the Texans will be one of the sexiest bets heading into the 2024 season — two of the top young players at premium positions with quarterback C.J. Stroud and edge rusher Will Anderson. Throw in budding star coach DeMeco Ryans and an improving roster, and Houston has all the makings of the team ready to take the next step.

    Now, the Texans won’t be facing a bottom-barrel schedule this season after winning the AFC South. So they’ll get the Chiefs, Ravens and Bills, along with the AFC East and NFC North joining their AFC South slate — throw a healthy NFL Draft compadre, Anthony Richardson, back for the Colts. But the Texans seemed to stand tall against all comers during the 2023 regular season before falling flat against the Ravens in the AFC divisional round. I expect the Texans to improve in 2024 and for Stroud only to get better after one of the strongest rookie QB campaigns in recent memory. If that happens, you never know … —Holder

    (Top photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)



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  • On the Super Bowl’s biggest play, Tony Romo freelanced and lost

    On the Super Bowl’s biggest play, Tony Romo freelanced and lost

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    When Tony Romo became the biggest sensation in NFL broadcasting, it was because he was a gunslinger as an analyst, predicting plays with an unconventional style that eventually led to a 10-year, $180 million contract, then the richest known deal in sports media history.

    These days, four years into that deal, after all the criticism of Romo, CBS clearly went into his third Super Bowl as a TV analyst looking for a game manager instead of a game changer. But old habits die hard.

    On the final call to end the Super Bowl LVIII overtime classic between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, Romo and play-by-play partner Jim Nantz’s lack of teamwork showed up at the worst time.

    At first, Romo did a fine job with the Chiefs down three points and inside the 5-yard line late in overtime, explaining that it did not matter as viewers watched the clock wind down toward zero — the game would not end and would just roll into a second quarter of OT. But Romo kept talking too long.

    This blocked Nantz from properly setting up the final play. As the winning touchdown was scored, Nantz said, “First and goal, Mahomes flings it! It’s there! Hardman! Jackpot! Kansas City!”

    Romo first muttered in the background of Nantz’s call as if he were a yahoo on local radio. After Nantz finished, Romo started in, “This was the Andy Reid special. …” And then on and on.

    For 30 seconds, as CBS showed reaction, Romo talked about the play when the best analysis would’ve been silence, which would have allowed the crowd and pictures to tell the story. It should have been Nantz’s broadcast moment, if anyone’s.

    Nantz and Romo were once supposed to be the next Pat Summerall and John Madden but have fallen so far that their disjointed performance Sunday was one CBS will likely take. Before the final play, the broadcast was far from perfect, but it was mostly manageable. Maybe not one to overnight to the Sports Emmys, but, on the production side, it had its moments.

    Nantz and Romo make the big money — a near $30 million a year between them — so, like quarterbacks, they receive the most credit and blame. Their quarterback rating was not high enough, missing obvious big themes.

    The duo failed to ever explain why the defenses — especially the 49ers on Travis Kelce in the first half — were having their way for so long with the offenses. They also were very underwhelming when CBS’s production team expertly spotted Kelce bumping and screaming at his 65-year-old head coach. They rarely spoke about line play. And the overarching themes of the game were often missed. There were no threads.

    The grading for the Super Bowl broadcast is the highest level because it is the most prestigious assignment in American sportscasting. Nantz has called the game six times, but his partners, first Phil Simms and now Romo, have regressed under his watch. A bad trend.

    Meanwhile, Romo lacks consistency in his thoughts. With 10 seconds left in regulation and the Chiefs at the 49ers’ 11, Romo said, “If you have six seconds, you feel comfortable taking another crack at it.”

    After an incomplete pass, there were six seconds left, and Romo opined, “If he had seven, I’d do it,” adding Kansas City should kick.

    Umm, but, Tony, you just said …

    Never mind.

    The inconsistency happens too much with Romo, causing CBS Sports executives to put on a brave face publicly and privately, defending him, but actions are almost always where the truth lands, and their truest thoughts seemed evident in their approach.

    Early, it was clear, CBS’s game plan was to simplify the offense. In the first half, it cut down on the overuse of too many voices, sticking mostly to Nantz and Romo. Romo seemed chilled. It wasn’t bad.

    The production team came up big in the second quarter. After Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco fumbled, it found a sideline shot in which Kelce accosted Reid.

    “He goes, ‘Keep me in,’” Romo said, apparently lip-reading. “What happened is, on the fumble, he was not in the game. Noah Gray went in, and he had to block. Noah Gray, the tight end, had to block (Deommodore) Lenoir. Lenoir made him swim and actually created the fumble. And I think Kelce is like, ‘Just keep me in there, even if we are running the ball.’”

    Let’s put to the side we needed to consult Google Translate to go from Romo to English to understand what, “(Deommodore) Lenoir made him swim and actually created the fumble” might mean, the story is Kelce nearly knocking down his coach.

    It wasn’t Latrell Sprewell on P.J. Carlesimo, but it was Taylor Swift’s boyfriend in front of about, give or take, 115 million viewers. We kind of needed the former All-Pro Cowboys quarterback to weigh in if that was kosher or not.

    The best part of Romo is his unscripted fun personality. Non-hardcore fans can like him because Romo comes across as — and from all first-hand reports is — a genuinely nice guy. He would be cool to have a beer with, a good quality in an announcer.

    Sunday, the most personality Romo showed was when he sang Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” to break, channeling another Cowboys great turned broadcaster, Don Meredith. Romo would do it again in the third quarter, trying to entice Nantz — who is a broadcaster from a Peter Jennings/Tom Brokaw anchor era — for a singalong to Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas.” Romo even did a little Beastie Boys late with “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)!”

    As for Nantz, he sounded extra amped to open the game, maybe overcompensating for some less-than-enthusiastic early calls in the playoffs. On the two Romo-isms of the first half, Nantz did correctly challenge him. Romo said a fumble might be a lateral in the second quarter, and then late in the period, with the scoreless Chiefs down 10, he said they might be in four-down territory. Nantz rightly threw the challenge flag on both.

    In the end, the problem with the tandem is that despite all their “pal” and “buddy” talk, not to mention their over-the-top, on-air, “I love yous,” they don’t sound on the same page.

    That disconnection shows up in the biggest spots, when the world is watching, when what you have done all season is on display.

    Nantz and Romo should have the broadcast strategy of that last play down. Romo’s appeal may be that he is like a fan, but he’s doing the Super Bowl broadcast and being paid handsomely to do so.

    He just needed to get out of the way to allow Nantz to make his complete call, then wait until after the pictures and sounds had their moment to note that Mahomes is Michael Jordan.

    It wasn’t time for the gunslinger. CBS had the right plan, and Nantz and Romo executed at times. But, on the biggest play of the season, Romo freelanced and lost.

    (Photo of Tony Romo and Jim Nantz: Rob Carr / Getty Images)



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  • Welcome to the ‘Doink Cam’: How CBS’ Super Bowl TV innovation came to life

    Welcome to the ‘Doink Cam’: How CBS’ Super Bowl TV innovation came to life

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    Harrison Butker has earned his reputation as one of the NFL’s great kickers. The two-time Super Bowl champion has made all 14 of his kicks in the Kansas City Chiefs’ postseason victories this season and has become as dependable in his art as Stephen Curry is at his.

    But in a bit of great irony, it was a Butker missed field goal at last year’s Super Bowl that prompted an epiphany from Jason Cohen, a CBS Sports vice president of remote technical operations.

    With 2:24 left in the opening quarter of Super Bowl LVII between the Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, Butker’s 42-yard field goal attempt smashed the top of the left upright at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. (Said Fox broadcaster Kevin Burkhardt in describing the play: “So a good drive ends with the ‘doink!’”)

    It just so happened that Cohen and Mike Francis, a vice president of engineering and technology at CBS Sports, were sitting in the end zone where the kick was missed. As the sound of the miss reverberated in their section, Cohen and Francis looked at each other with excitement.

    “The ball ricocheted off the pole and made this very loud sound — a ‘doink,’” Cohen recalled this week. “We looked at each other and I said, ‘We need a camera in the uprights.’”

    Immediately after Butker’s miss, Cohen texted NFL’s senior director of broadcasting, Blake Jones, who was, well, working. He excitedly told Jones that he wanted to place a camera in the uprights at this year’s Super Bowl when CBS was airing the game. An amused Jones texted Cohen back immediately and said they should talk after the Super Bowl.

    Months of planning and testing has produced a set of  “doink” cameras for Sunday’s game. The CBS broadcast will feature six total 4K cameras that have been inserted into the Allegiant Stadium uprights of both end zones. Two of the cameras on each upright are positioned to face out to the field on a 45-degree angle. Another faces directly inward to get a side profile shot of the ball as it flies through. They have high-resolution zoom capabilities and super slow-motion replay capabilities. CBS will be able to get fantastic replays of any field goal or extra point, but the dream will be if someone hits the post for the doink.

    “The doink camera isn’t just if it hits the upright,” said CBS Sports executive producer and executive vice president of production Harold Bryant. “If there is a field goal that’s tight, we have three different angles on each upright, so we can see it in three different positions.”

    Immediately after he texted Jones, Cohen started digging around the internet and found a company, Sportsfield Specialities, that designs and manufactures sports construction equipment including football goalposts. He sent in a LinkedIn request during the game to the company’s director of sales. Cohen and his team ultimately spent months composing engineering drawings and schematics to make sure that the integrity of the uprights would not be compromised. Sportsfield helped CBS with the engineering of the pole and cutting holes. Cohen said Fletcher Sports, a speciality camera-capture company that often works with CBS Sports, designed the inserts that go into the uprights and figured out how to make the cameras fit.

    The proof of concept initially came in a preseason game between the New York Jets and Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Aug. 19 at MetLife Stadium. Cohen and his group consulted with kicking analyst Jay Feely to get his perspective on where he thought might be a good place for the cameras.

    “We presented our ideas early enough on this where we had a preseason plan,” Cohen said. “The NFL had time to evaluate the plan, and then come back to us with their feedback after the preseason test.”

    The next live test came at Allegiant Stadium in October for a Week 6 game between the New England Patriots and Las Vegas Raiders. There had been plenty of trial and error to get to this point, but the doink cameras made their television debut for a successful kick.

    Ryan Galvin, the lead replay producer for this year’s Super Bowl, explained how the process of a doink camera replay getting on the air would work in practical terms. At the Super Bowl, production specialist Amanda Smerage will run the machine that controls the six cameras from the uprights. They call it “DOINK” in the production truck. Steve McKee, who normally produces the team of Andrew Catalon, Matt Ryan and Tiki Barber but is working as a replay producer for this year’s Super Bowl, will monitor those cameras. He will alert Galvin if DOINK produces something memorable.


    Doink Cam fits inside the uprights to give a unique view of field-goal and extra-point attempts. CBS will have three of them in each goalpost. (Courtesy of Jason Cohen)

    Galvin, who has 60-something replay feeds at his disposal, ultimately has to decide what replays to use, including the doink cameras, in real-time throughout the game. Galvin loves the technology but is quick to point out that ultimately you have to produce the game in front of you and rely on the people around you.

    “A brand-new look for the viewer can be tricky,” said Galvin, who will work his seventh Super Bowl. “Will it be slightly confusing? Can people ‘get it’ in six seconds? I’m not smart enough to answer that. I know that Jason Cohen and our entire operations team work incredibly hard to fill a toolbox of cameras and replay machines for our crew. My job is to get the best replay on the air when appropriate.”

    Jones said that the NFL is always trying to identify the next broadcast innovation. For instance, pylon cam is now standard for major NFL games across all the broadcast partners. The Super Bowl often lends the opportunity to do something unique, and sometimes what debuts at a Super Bowl can become a standard in-game production.

    Ultimately, such broadcast innovations are dictated by the networks because they are the ones that have to invest the budget and research and development. If the viewing public immediately falls in love with a certain camera, the NFL’s other media partners would certainly take notice.

    “It used to be that sky cam was something you would only see at the big prime-time games,” Jones said. “Now that’s going into the more regular Sunday afternoon games. We’ll learn a lot after this week. In the end, these are network decisions that we’re supporting and facilitating rather than necessarily saying you have to have cameras X, Y, and Z. This one is a pretty unique use case, and you need a certain part of the game to happen a certain way to get that ‘wow’ factor. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.”

    “There is no history to go off of as to what is the perfect camera to catch the perfect doink,” Cohen said. “A part of this is going to be luck. Where will a ball possibly strike? What I’ll tell you is that we put cameras in different positions for the preseason game in August and the game in October where we looked at every possible angle, trying to see what the pros and cons were. … What we came up with is what we think are the right height, angle and wide-angle lens.”

    Doink Cam


    A Doink Cam in place and ready to go inside a goalpost, with Plexiglass cover. (Courtesy of Jason Cohen)

    Cohen said what testing revealed was it’s not just about the image of the football coming toward viewers, but viewers also needed to see the other goal post as a frame of reference to see if the ball went through or not. Sportsfield Specialities was able to get the cameras where CBS wanted them through custom fitting. There is a camera cylinder tube with a piece of unbreakable Plexiglass that gets slid into the pole through a back opening of the upright. “Think of it like there’s like a little door or a chamber in the back of the upright, and this little camera slot gets kind of inserted inward,” Cohen said. “Then a piece of Plexiglass that’s curved and gets pushed forward so that it’s completely flush with the rest of the upright.”

    The doink cameras and proper wiring were placed inside the Allegiant Stadium uprights on Wednesday. Testing was scheduled for Thursday night, when the final field installation happens. There will also be a run-through on Friday. Cohen said he will be sitting in one of the CBS production trucks on Super Bowl Sunday with other CBS brass. He admits he’s rooting for a doink.

    “Look, you never root for someone else’s misery, and I don’t want to put bad karma on the world and hope that field-goal kickers don’t do their job,” Cohen said. “But this is the kind of innovation that if someone hits the post and our cameras get a great look, it’s going to make us really feel happy about all of the work and effort we put into inventing this angle. So as they line up for kicks on Sunday, I’m definitely going to be holding my breath a bit.”

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Super Bowl broadcast Q&A: Jim Nantz, Tony Romo and Tracy Wolfson on the big game

    (Top photo of a monitor showing the view from “Doink Cam” during a test at a preseason game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New York Jets: Courtesy of Jason Cohen)



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