Friday, 18 September 2026

The Arena Journal

The Business of Sport

About

The Arena Journal

The Arena Journal covers the business of sport — capital, media rights, leagues, venues, athlete economics and the technology reshaping the industry.

The Arena Journal was founded in 2020 on a simple premise: that sport is one of the largest and least rigorously covered industries in the world. Billions of people follow the results. Comparatively few outlets cover the capital structures, media contracts, labour agreements and infrastructure decisions that determine what the results are worth and who collects.

We cover sport the way a business paper covers any other sector — through its balance sheets, its contracts and its institutions. We do not report scores. We report on the machinery that makes the scores valuable.

Editorial standards

The Journal publishes analysis grounded in publicly available industry developments: rights cycles, published accounts, regulatory filings, governance decisions and disclosed transactions. Where we present figures as estimates or indicative models, we label them as such in the accompanying note. Where we publish an index, we state plainly that it is an illustrative composite rather than an investable product.

Disclosure

The Arena Journal is an independent demonstration publication. Its articles, bylines, indices and accompanying figures are original editorial content produced for this title. They are analytical essays about industry dynamics, not reports of record concerning named third parties, and the journalists listed on our masthead are contributors to this publication rather than a description of any other organisation’s staff. Nothing published here constitutes investment advice.

Corrections

We correct errors of fact promptly and in place, with a note appended to the article recording what was changed and when. Substantive corrections are additionally listed on this page. Readers who believe we have published an error should write to newsroom@arenajournal.com.

Masthead

The Journal is edited from London · New York · Singapore.

Picture credits

Photographs are sourced from Wikimedia Commons and Openverse under licences permitting commercial use and modification. Each has been cropped to a common ratio and colour-graded for consistency, so the images published here are adaptations of the originals; where the original carries a ShareAlike licence, the adaptation is made available under those same terms. Every photograph is credited beneath it, and the full list is below.

Photographs illustrate the subject matter of an article. They do not depict the specific events, organisations or people discussed in the text unless the caption says so.

Photograph credits
ArticlePhotographerLicence
The Franchise Premium Has Stopped Rising
Rows of stadium seating
Krzysztof Popławski CC BY 4.0
After the Expanded Tournament: The Ledger
A full stadium during a match
roanokecollege CC BY 2.0
Synthetic Highlights and the Rights Holder’s Dilemma
A video editing workstation
Ben2742 CC0
Sport’s First Full Cycle as an Asset Class
A stock exchange trading floor
Ank Kumar CC BY-SA 4.0
Naming Rights Reprice, and the Buyers Change
A stadium entrance
Mxn CC BY-SA 4.0
The Salary Cap After the Cap
A team group photograph
Unknown Public domain
Calendar Congestion Becomes a Balance-Sheet Problem
A substitutes’ bench
Bain News Service, publisher Public domain
The Unbundled Season Ticket
Watching sport on a mobile phone
PantheraLeo1359531 CC BY 4.0
Officiating by Model
A video review monitor
Hullian111 CC BY-SA 4.0
Sport’s Debt Maturity Wall
A bank headquarters
LN9267 CC BY-SA 4.0
The Regulators Arrive, and Nobody Has Told Them What Success Looks Like
A parliament building
CEphoto, Uwe Aranas CC BY-SA 3.0
Player Trading as an Asset Class
A pitchside interview
Michael Wilson on Flickr CC BY 2.0
The Olympic Ledger, Reconsidered
Olympic venue architecture
Roadrunnerz45 CC BY-SA 4.0
The Platforms Buy Their Way Into Live, and Change What Live Means
A television screen
EvanProdromou CC BY-SA 4.0
Expansion Fees Are the New Media Rights
The interior of an indoor arena
Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA CC BY-SA 2.0
The Regional Sports Network Unwind
A television control gallery
Warren K. Leffler Public domain
The Data Rights Nobody Negotiated
An athlete on a treadmill
Bill Ebbesen, aka Atomicbre at English Wikipedia Public domain
Who Pays for the Stadium: The Subsidy Ledger, Twenty Years On
A stadium seen from the air
Godot13 CC BY-SA 4.0
Women’s Sport Stops Being a Rounding Error
A women’s international football match
sachab CC BY 2.0
Golf’s Capital Shock and the Price of a Competitive Moat
A golf course during a tournament
Cpl. Joshua Grant Public domain
Relegation Risk Is a Credit Risk
A goalmouth on an empty pitch
Neil Theasby CC BY-SA 2.0
Multi-Club Ownership Goes Institutional
Training-ground pitches
Jonathan Hutchins CC BY-SA 2.0
A World Cup in December, and the Calendar It Broke
A crowd inside a stadium
TrickyH CC BY-SA 4.0
Wagering’s Infrastructure Problem
Server racks
NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T. Slovinský CC BY 4.0
The Agency Roll-Up: Who Owns the Representation Business
A boardroom table
Breather breather CC0
The End of the Broadcast Bundle
Broadcast transmission equipment
Hugh Mason CC BY-SA 4.0
The Forced Sale and the Limits of the Ownership Test
The exterior of a football stadium
HDFC PR CC BY-SA 4.0
Sovereign Capital and the Repricing of Trophy Assets
A city skyline at dusk
PattayaPatrol CC BY-SA 4.0
Semi-Automated Offside and the Cost of Certainty
A match official during play
Pierre-Yves Beaudouin CC BY-SA 3.0
The Retrofit Decade: Why New Stadiums Stopped Being the Answer
Cranes over a stadium construction site
Acabashi CC BY-SA 4.0
NIL Day One: The College Athlete Becomes a Vendor
American college football
John Pellino/USMA Public domain
The Streaming Bid Arrives, and It Is Not Bidding for Everything
A television set in a living room
Oliur Rahman ultralinx CC0
Forty-Eight Hours: Anatomy of a Competition That Never Kicked Off
Supporters in the stands
Mr.ちゅらさん CC0
Private Equity Learns the Language of Sport
Towers in a financial district
CEphoto, Uwe Aranas CC BY-SA 3.0
Sport Spent 2020 Discovering It Was a Media Business
A stadium floodlight pylon
Federico Candoni CC BY-SA 4.0
Crowd Noise, Synthesised: Broadcast Learns to Manufacture Atmosphere
A digital live-sound mixing console
beeki from Scheeßel, Germany CC0
Wage Deferrals and the Limits of Solidarity
Players at a training session
Alvinategyeka CC BY-SA 4.0
Empty Houses: The Long Arithmetic of a Season Without Crowds
Tiered seating in an empty stadium bowl
Kyy0602 CC0
Broadcasters Want Their Money Back
A television camera at a stadium
Chi-Hung Lin CC BY-SA 2.0
The Ninety-Day Shutdown: What Happens When Sport Stops Selling Time
An empty stand at a closed ground
James Boyes from UK CC BY 2.0