BACK in 1987, Andre Dawson, a star outfielder in Major League Baseball (MLB), was looking for a change of scenery. After spending a full decade with the Montreal Expos, he was at last a free agent, able to sign with any team he chose. The Expos had finished third-to-last in attendance during the previous season, and their stadium featured an artificial-turf playing surface that aggravated his balky knees. At 31 years old, Mr Dawson surely had at least a few more productive years in him. Nonetheless, not a single club save for his previous employer made him an offer. Still unsigned when spring training began that March, he sent a contract to the Chicago Cubs with a blank space where...
EVER since 1998, when North America’s National Hockey League (NHL) began putting its season on hold to allow its players to participate in the Olympics, men’s ice hockey has been a signature sport at the winter games. Elite squads from Canada, the home country of nearly half of the players in the NHL, took gold medals in 2010 in Vancouver and 2014 in Sochi. And from 1998 to 2014, every men’s ice-hockey medal has gone to Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Sweden, or the United States—not coincidentally, the six countries best represented on NHL rosters.For this year’s games in Pyeongchang, those half-dozen nations were forced to assemble their teams without their biggest stars. NHL owners, sceptical of the benefit...
THE English Premier League (EPL), football’s wealthiest division, has long seemed like an ever-quickening fountain of riches. Between 2010 and 2017 the EPL’s annual income doubled to roughly £4.4bn ($6.2bn) according to Deloitte, a consultancy. The fastest growth in that period came from domestic broadcasting revenues for live matches, which almost trebled, from £594m a year to £1.71bn. This year’s auction for the right to show games on British television between 2019 and 2022 was expected to deliver yet another rise, thanks to an increase in games on sale from 168 to 200 and rumoured interest from online giants like Amazon and Facebook. Instead, the EPL revealed on February 13th that it had accepted underwhelming bids from its usual customers...
FANS of winter sports are used to paying close attention to forecasts. Few would fancy taking to the slopes in howling gusts of 50mph (80kph) or temperatures that have fallen to -26˚C (-14˚F) with wind chill. Such conditions have caused the postponement of several events at the winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which opened on February 9th. Increasingly warm winters are threatening the futures of many ski resorts around the world, but in Pyeongchang the artificial snow cannons are firing for the opposite reason. The air is so cold and dry that snowfall is scarce, with just seven days of it in February last year.Yet weather readings are not the only forecasts that Olympic teams are monitoring in South...
FOOTBALL fans have become used to seeing transfer records broken, as Europe’s top clubs have enjoyed a decade of rapid growth in revenues. The latest transfer window, a month-long mid-season affair which closed on February 3rd, offered further proof of a bull market. The teams in Europe’s “big five” leagues, in England, Spain, Germany, France and Italy, spent an unprecedented £815m ($1.15bn) on acquiring new players. The three most expensive transfers ever have all been completed in the last six months. Yet despite this prolonged spree, one long-standing milestone has yet to be passed. The record for the most expensive goalkeeper is still unmoved after 16 years.That player, Gianluigi Buffon (pictured), is now 40 years old. His €53m ($66m) move...
