Manchester dominance of English Football continues

Manchester, a city in the north of England, has a proud football (soccer) tradition. There are two professional teams based in the city. Manchester United Football Club is commonly referred to as Man United, or just United.  United's nickname is the Red Devils and they were founded in 1878.  In 1880, Manchester City Football Club was founded.  They are referred to as Man City, or just City.  I've written about these two teams before, for good reason.  Last year Man City won the "continental treble" - the English Premier League, the FA Cup and the UEFA Champions League final.  The only other English team to have achieved that are their local rivals, Man United.

Female athlete inks groundbreaking NIL Deal

Livvy Dunne, a 21-year old gymnast from New Jersey, is now by far the highest paid female collegiate athlete in the US.  She just signed a deal with Passes (www.passes.com), a small internet publishing company based in Miami and LA.  This content creation company offers a platform that allows for creators to engage with their audiences via subscription, paid DMs, 1-1 calls, and livestream, etc. As recently as one month ago the company raised $40 million in a Series A funding round, enabling them to go after athletes like Dunne with multi-million-dollar deals.  

The best club rugby in the world gets complicated

A big weekend of global sports is upon us. 

Singapore hosts the Rugby Sevens and LIV Golf. F1 comes to Miami.  SailGP comes to Bermuda. There are NSL events in Rhode Island and Nashville.  The Investec Champions Cup rugby semifinals happen in Ireland and in France.  Finally, the Challenger Cup semifinals take place too on Saturday.  This is the second division of European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR).  

The EPCR Challenger Cup semis are both being contested in England.  The matchups are the Sharks (Durban, South Africa) vs Clermont (Central France) and Gloucester (west of England) vs Benetton (outside Venice, Italy).  After the finals are played on May 24th one of these four teams will emerge victorious and thereby qualify for the Investec Champions Cup next season, the "Champions League" of European rugby, and the strongest club rugby competition in the world.

But how does it all work, you may wonder?