$400 million. That’s how much Fox Sports paid to wrestle the English-language World Cup broadcasting rights away from ESPN. That total includes both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, but Fox’s plans for the 2018 edition took a massive hit last night when the United States was eliminated from contention by Trinidad and Tobago, a country trumped in population numbers by Hawaii.
Two of Real Madrid's hot young things, 21-year-old attacker Marco Asensio and 24-year-old center back Raphael Varane, have signed contract extensions that will keep them at the club until 2023 and 2022, respectively.
The National Football League returns to England on Sunday as the Baltimore Ravens face the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium, a now biannual feature as the league is desperate to gain British NFL fans. Meanwhile, soccer leagues across Europe are considering bringing regular-season games to the U.S.
Isco, the best player in the world on current form according to The18's Connor Fleming, has agreed to a new contract at Real Madrid that runs through the 2021-2022 season.
Here's Real Madrid's official statement:
AS Monaco is a bit of an enigma. A French club not actually in France, Monaco’s rebirth dating back to 2011 has taken the club from the bottom of Ligue 2 to the top of Ligue 1, from one extreme of the transfer market to the other.
In an absolutely stunning revelation, UEFA announced Friday it has launched a financial fair play investigation into Paris Saint-Germain.
Since Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in June 2003, the London club has been known as one of the more extravagant spenders in the transfer market. But since shelling out $70 million to Liverpool for Fernando Torres in January 2011, the Blues have been fairly conservative in the transfer market in stark contrast to the rest of England.
This isn’t to say the Blues have stopped spending — in fact they’re spending as much as they ever have — but in a market where everyone else is paying massive sums for every player, Chelsea’s transfer business has stayed relatively the same.
There’s nothing Cristiano Ronaldo loves more than himself. Who can blame him? He’s one of the best footballers in the world, looks like a more attractive version of Adonis and is the highest-paid athlete on the planet.
So when Ronaldo was asked to sponsor a company that was presumably modeled after his chiseled abdomen, he jumped at the opportunity as he would at a teasing cross or being asked to take off his shirt.
Every football club in the world wants to buy Lionel Messi, but there are only a few that can even begin to think about maybe trying to buy him, because Messi would cost a truly absurd amount of money. We'll start with Lionel Messi's $352.7 million release clause, a sum so insanely high that until a few weeks ago it was unfathomable that anyone would ever pay it, even for the best footballer ever.
Barcelona is on the market for a new beau. The club is on Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, everything searching for someone to fill the hole in its left wing heart left by Neymar. But Barca sees Neymar smiling and laughing with a new love in Paris and gets angry.