The World Athletics Ultimate Championship has ten million dollars and no medals
Three nights in Budapest, 28 finals, a record ten million dollar purse — and no medals. Read the format and you can see exactly what athletics built it for.
Golf’s civil war: the $15 billion sport caught between LIV and the Majors
For more than ninety years professional golf ran on a stable structure: the PGA Tour in America, the European Tour internationally, four major championships as the crown jewels, and a clear hierarchy in which the best players competed for millions while the sport maintained its genteel self-image. Then Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund launched LIV…
Athletics: the sport the world watches every four years and forgets in between
Athletics is big – once in a while. Its is not fair. It has deserved so much more attention. Like 2026 in Budapest. The Olympics? That gets attention, but in general from week to week?Athletics faces the cruellest commercial reality in sport: people care desperately about running, jumping and throwing during the Olympics, and then…
MMA in 2026: The Dagestan Pipeline to the UFC
Dagestan. The unexpected MMA pipeline of surpreme talents Dagestan has become one of the most remarkable talent-producing regions in modern mixed martial arts. From Khabib Nurmagomedov to Islam Makhachev, Umar Nurmagomedov and a growing generation of fighters, the small Russian republic has produced an extraordinary concentration of elite grapplers and MMA competitors. MMA in 2026…
Global rugby’s split identity: the $10 billion sport that competes with itself
Global rugby’s biggest challenge isn’t competing with other sports. It’s competing with itself. The sport split into two codes in 1895 — Rugby Union (15 players, amateur until 1995, the traditional establishment game) and Rugby League (13 players, professional from the start, working-class origins) — and that century-old schism created parallel universes that confuse casual…
Boxing versus MMA: the rivalry for combat sports supremacy
Boxing and MMA are locked in a struggle for combat sports supremacy that has run for the better part of three decades. Boxing carries two thousand years of history, Olympic prestige and deep cultural weight. MMA has youth appeal, organisational coherence and modern marketing. Which one prevails will decide the shape of an entire industry….
Professional cycling’s one-race problem: the Tour de France, and everything else
Professional cycling has a structural problem: almost all of its cultural weight and commercial value concentrates in a single three-week race. The Tour de France is cycling. Everything else — the Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta a España, the World Championships, the five Monuments — matters enormously to cycling fans and barely registers with anyone else….
Tour de France 2026: Pogačar Closes In on Another Yellow Jersey as the Final Week Begins
With only a handful of stages remaining, the Tour de France 2026 is entering its decisive phase. Three demanding mountain stages and the traditional finish in Paris remain on the calendar, but Tadej Pogačar has placed himself in a commanding position to claim another yellow jersey after dominating much of this year’s race. Following Stage…
England’s Fatal Caution Hands Messi and Argentina a World Cup Final Rematch
Argentina Book Their Final Rematch Argentina are back in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, and once again they got there the hard way. Down 1-0 to England with the clock running out, the defending champions scored twice in the final ten minutes to win 2-1 and set up a title decider against Spain on…
The World Rugby Nations Cup: Rugby’s New July Tournament and the Road to Australia 2027
Rugby’s international calendar has introduced a significant new fixture, arriving with minimal notice for casual followers of the sport. On 4 July, Uruguay hosted Georgia in Montevideo, marking the inaugural match of the World Rugby Nations Cup. What the Nations Cup actually is The Nations Cup addresses a specific challenge posed by the expanded Rugby…
