Five months into Las Vegas Lights FC and there’s almost too much to process here — which is entirely fitting for a club calling Vegas home. It began with the naming of the United Soccer League expansion team via an online poll back in August, with the Lights moniker beating out competition from other potentials like Viva Vegas and Club Vegas.
According to FIFA, 8.4 million requests have been made for seats at the 2018 FIFA World Cup after two sales phases. The second phase saw a total of 4,905,169 tickets requested, with the majority of those applications coming from Russia. While the top five for requests is rounded out by Germany, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil, the percentage of Icelandic people requesting tickets is absurd.
For most sports in the United States, transfer fees are a foreign idea. Athletes in basketball and American football move as free agents or in trades, but rarely are they outright sold for a lump sum. While Major League Soccer maintains some of these cultural ideals, transfer fees are still commonplace. The most expensive MLS transfer fees highlight some of the league’s most ambitious clubs.
The Boston Breakers, formerly the longest-continuously-operating women's soccer team in the United States, has folded. Players were notified on Wednesday.
You’ll see the subtweets. Official word coming soon. Breakers will fold ahead of the 2018 season. Players and staff have been notified. https://t.co/qFHUvdX21y
— Anthony DiCicco (@DiCiccoMethod) January 25, 2018
Arsene Wenger, the Professor with an economics degree, is dipping Arsenal’s pocket book into the crypto-currency markets. The club reached an agreement Wednesday with California-based CashBet, which will thus be allowed to advertise at Emirates Stadium. Now Gunners fans can watch ads for fake money while cheering for fake trophies. The Arsenal crypto-currency deal might just be the most Arsenal thing ever.
Owning your own home is a great way to build wealth. Any smart money person will tell you this. Instead of paying someone else's mortgage while renting, home ownership allows individuals to build equity in their dwellings, turning a living situation into an investment. Home ownership is one of the easiest pathways to wealth and financial stability, but many people either can't afford a down payment for a mortgage or neglect home ownership altogether out of ignorance.
Philippe Coutinho is finally a Barcelona player after months of speculation, two dubious injuries during transfer windows and several rejected bids from Barcelona. No secret was made of the Brazilian international's desire to move from Liverpool to Barcelona, but few could have foreseen Coutinho's desire being so desirous that he reportedly paid out of his own pocket to help finance the deal, one of the most lucrative in history.
It’d been clear for a couple days now, but a formal press conference at the Country Music Hall of Fame confirmed Nashville as one of two expansion franchises that could begin play as early as 2020 in Major League Soccer. With Los Angeles FC set to join the league in 2018 as the 23rd club, Nashville is now MLS’s 24th side and the third team in the Southeastern United States (Atlanta and Orlando being the other two).
The most expensive buyout clauses prove there is good money in soccer. Think about how many millionaires (and now billionaires) from across the world invest in football clubs. Perhaps one of the most immediate parameters to understanding just how much dough is going around the soccer market is to consider the most expensive buyout clauses in world football.
It turns out spending millions of dollars on manager Andre Villas-Boas and immediate want-aways Carlos Tevez and Jackson Martinez amounts to little more than burning money for the Chinese Super League. According to a recent audit by accounting firm PwC and as reported by Goal, the CSL’s clubs are currently in a combined debt of over $600 million.