‘I’m left wondering what price The Hundred franchises could one day fetch’ June 30, 2022 “What does Ed Warner know about tennis?” What indeed? My critique last week of the Lawn Tennis Association’s performance drew this feisty query in the Sport inc. comment section from Tom (no surname provided). It also garnered a response column in CityAM from the LTA’s CEO, Scott Lloyd. Both Tom (no surname provided) and [...]
Ed Warner: Wimbledon shows that the Lawn Tennis Association gets too much money June 23, 2022 If you want to know what’s wrong with tennis in Britain, look no further than Wimbledon. Blame the Championships for being such a phenomenal success that they bequeath the Lawn Tennis Association more money each year than it appears to be able to handle effectively, while simultaneously raising the public’s hunger for the LTA to [...]
Ed Warner: Team sportspeople like Gareth Bale are held to double standards over loyalty June 9, 2022 Commentary stat of last weekend for me was that Gareth Bale has spent more time on a football pitch for Wales this season than for Real Madrid. Having run down his lucrative contract with the Spanish club, Bale is now a free agent – the footballing equivalent of the golfers signing up for this week’s [...]
Ed Warner: ECB may buck financial trends but must turn playing claims into reality May 26, 2022 Fourteen million people participate in cricket in England and Wales. Yep, you read that right! How do we know that a quarter of the population play, attend or follow the sport? Because the ECB told us so last week in its annual report. Looks like the governing body has adopted a Westminster approach to big [...]
Ed Warner: It is time we sent London 2012 to the back of the cupboard May 12, 2022 It took me 20 minutes from the Central Line platform via Peloton Avenue to cover the half mile to the Lee Valley VeloPark. Admittedly I wasn’t exactly walking at Tom Bosworth pace, and a few hazy-memoried wrong turns out of Westfield didn’t help as I went in search of ‘10 Years On’, a new exhibition [...]
Ed Warner: The metaverse, Web3 and what it means for football club valuations May 5, 2022 In this week’s column, Ed Warner delves into the metaverse’s possible ramifications for the business of sport and considers the latest twists in the Chelsea sale saga. It was the shoes that put me in my place. Queuing to enter the SportsPro Live jamboree at The Oval last week, I scanned the footwear of my [...]
Ed Warner: Russia ban shows Wimbledon chiefs have backbone – and other sports will take note April 28, 2022 Fans at the Wimbledon Championships aren’t prone to booing, even in the face of a Nick Kyrgios meltdown. And for now they have been spared the challenge to their usual decorum of a Russian or Belarusian player striding onto Centre Court this summer – to the chagrin of the men’s and women’s tours, not to [...]
Ed Warner: The higher the price for Chelsea, the sooner their new owners will feel the strain April 21, 2022 Unless the media have been blindsided by a canny investment bank, it seems that there are no sovereign wealth funds or squillionaires left in the running to buy Chelsea. No Musk, Bezos, Chinese tech magnate or gas-rich autocracy. The three remaining bidders, as reported, are all consortia. Let the game theory commence. The selling bank, [...]
Ed Warner: Docuseries triumph may drive wedge between media and sport April 14, 2022 “Please please please please just go away!” The letter writer signed off with his PS in green ink, only months into my stint as chair of UK Athletics in the days before tweets were a thing. I wish I’d kept it, the only time I’ve seen green ink scrawled in cliched anger. Sports leaders are [...]
Ed Warner: Trans debate has echoes of Semenya legal row but ‘meaningfulness’ may be buzzword April 7, 2022 It’s a pity Emily Bridges was blocked from competing in the National Omnium Championships in Derby last weekend. Yes, the cyclist would have been at the centre of an unsavoury media scrum, but we would have gathered one more valuable data point with which to try and balance the febrile debate about transgender women in [...]
