Five-a-side: The ISL's Last-Minute TV Deal, A Record NFL Night In Rio And Nagoya's Expensive Asian Games
02 October 2026
Football: FIFA Counts Its Reserves, While In India, The ISL Lands A Last-Minute TV Deal
Another week of global football headlines, and Five-a-side is across it all. Manchester City’s guilty verdict is dominating coverage in the UK and, on Monday, Gianni Infantino wrote to FIFA’s six confederations to say that he had instructed FIFA to determine how much more of its reserves it can pay to the 211 member associations. UEFA and Concacaf have forecast the reserves at about US$6 billion and want FIFA to award at least US$10 million per association over the next three years.
The FIFA Council will decide the amount at its meeting on 15th October. Incidentally, there is still no rival candidate for the FIFA presidency, despite UEFA’s president Aleksander Čeferin telling Europe’s clubs on Monday that, where Infantino is concerned, “the emperor is naked”.
Looking through our global lens, we see that the ISL, the Indian Super League, starts its new season next week and has only just agreed a TV deal. This season, the 13 clubs hold the commercial rights for the first time, through their own company while The All India Football Federation remains in charge of the rulebook.
The Bridge, an Indian sports site, reported on Thursday that the clubs have reached an agreement with Sony Sports Network for the tv rights and, on the digital side, with Google for YouTube, which will stream every match for free globally, for the next two seasons. The contracts are not yet signed; the rights fee hasn’t been disclosed, but it will most likely be a revenue share. Sadly, the rights fees continue to fall for the ISL. In its first nine seasons, up to 2023, Star Sports paid about ₹250 crore a year, then Viacom18 paid ₹275 crore for the 2023/24 season, Last season, FanCode, an Indian sports streaming service, paid just ₹8.62 crore.
Kaleidoscope Productions and Services look set to continue their production contract, but this season the clubs will be paying them. YouTube was chosen mainly for its reach and viewing data, which the clubs will see for the first time. As we wrote last week, the IPL cricket franchises want Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon at the table, and expect them to pay. Indian football, however, is doing this out of necessity. It will be interesting to see whether a free-to-air deal on YouTube brings new fans to the sport in India and attracts the global diaspora.
NFL: A Record In Rio, And The US Streamers Are Coming To Latin America
To the American version of football now and the NFL. Baltimore beat Dallas 34-31 at the Maracanã in front of more than 70,000 people. Alongside this, the league saw yet another set of strong viewing figures. The Baltimore Banner reported an average of 24.9 million viewers on CBS, peaking at over 30 million. This is the largest audience for an NFL game played outside the United States. In Brazil, 21.4 million watched the action across Globo’s platforms. Rio is just one hour ahead of New York’s timezone,so the match was broadcast in the Sunday afternoon prime time slot in the States. According to Front Office Sports A storm on the East Coast may have helped too.
For Brazil’s fans, the NFL is very popular, but the question remains whether a game a year is enough. Brazil has strengthened TSP’s argument, made last month, that the NFL should turn the international series into a separate competition.
The NFL isn’t the only American league looking south. The viewing figures have caught the attention of the major US streaming companies. In August, Amazon’s Prime Video announced that it would spend US$2 billion in Latin America between 2027 and 2030, including 200 NBA games in Brazil and Mexico and 38 of Mexico’s national football matches, after more than 20 million households in the region watched sport on the service in 2026. Sunday’s viewing figures will have done nothing to change their mind. Latin America is becoming the streamers’ next battleground for sports rights, just as it has been for the traditional broadcasters.
Japan’s Asian Games: Gold For Pereira, But A Costly Games For Nagoya
Readers of A Fan’s View will have seen our Asia host, Ed Russell, interview Singapore’s Shanti Pereira after she defended her 200 metres title in Nagoya, becoming the first woman to win it twice. A historic sporting victory for Singapore but, on the business side, it has not been a good Games for the organisers. For readers unfamiliar with the event, the Asian Games feature 45 countries and regions competing across 43 sports. This year was the 20th edition and the third time Japan has hosted it, after Tokyo in 1958 and Hiroshima in 1994.
The Games finish on Sunday, and Reuters reports that the organisers, Aichi Prefecture in central Japan, are facing a bill of ¥370 billion, which is about US$2.4 billion, to stage an event they had initially forecast would cost ¥100 billion.
After being awarded the Games in 2016, Governor Hideaki Omura blames global events since that decision for raising the costs of materials. The cost savings included no athletes’ village; instead, teams were housed in container huts, hotels, and on the cruise ship, the Costa Serena. Despite that, they still failed to supply 17,000 beds. Thailand called it musical chairs, South Korea gave the organisers a failing grade, and the fans stayed away too.
AFP reports that eight sports sold under 60 per cent of their tickets, and that fewer than 8,000 turned up to the 30,000-seater athletics stadium for the men’s 100 metres final. “We are not satisfied,” said Satoshi Murate, the organising committee's secretary-general. It is a pity that moments like Pereira’s did not get the full stadium they deserved.
The Aichi Prefecture will be paying the bill for years, one suspects. Its strategy to cover the cost of the Games relied on more people visiting the region afterwards and, in turn, attracting further investment. But PR damage from reports of poor accommodation and transport could make that very difficult. Two weeks ago we wrote that Nairobi had won the 2029 World Athletics Championships on emotion as much as on budget. Nagoya is the other side of that coin: a rich host that tried to run a multi-sport Games on the cheap and, as a result, drew international criticism.
Aussie Rules: Record Grand Final Ratings, And Tennis Australia Exports Its Events Business
It’s international acclaim that Melbourne and the State of Victoria are getting after another week that showcased what a vibrant sporting location the city is. The AFL Grand Final is its bread and butter, but the results were still impressive. A dramatic match that finished with a seven-point victory for the Brisbane Lions, and a three-peat of premierships, was watched by 100,023 people inside the MCG, the biggest crowd for a Grand Final between two non-Victorian clubs, and also by an average television audience of 4.52 million, according to Channel Seven. That makes it the most-watched Grand Final ever and Australia’s most-watched programme of the year, with a total reach of 6.5 million. The streaming numbers are impressive as well: 1.42 million on 7plus, a 44 per cent increase and the pre-match entertainment, headlined by Kylie Minogue, drew 1.83 million, up 20 per cent, with the post-match presentation retaining 3.96 million, which was up by 18 per cent.
Yet another set of impressive results for Channel Seven, in the second year of a deal that runs to 2031. For the fans who paid A$6,000 for flights, it was a financial hit, but at least they got to witness a sporting classic. Also this week, another Melbourne-based business gained a new line of work.
Front Office Sports reported that The PGA Tour is handing the ticketing, hospitality and sponsorship for the 2028 Presidents Cup at Kingston Heath, Melbourne, to Tennis Australia. TA, as it’s known, is bringing its big-event experience to golf, and if the last three weeks are any indication, it won't be short on customers.
Saudi Arabia: Golf Saudi Swaps Five Women’s Events For One In London
Finally, more golf cancellation news is coming out of Saudi Arabia. This time, Golf Saudi said on Monday that it will scrap the PIF Global Series at the end of this season. The five-event circuit that forms part of the Ladies European Tour (LET) has been played in Riyadh, Las Vegas, London, Seoul and Shenzhen and has seen winners such as Nelly Korda, Charley Hull and Lexi Thompson.
The 2026 series offered a total of US$15 million in prize money, which, if you exclude the two majors is more than half of the LET’s prize money for the year. Most of the prize money on the regular Ladies European Tour is less than US$500,000.
The PIF Global Series will be replaced with a single tournament called The Championship and it will be played in the United Kingdom, with a prize pot of US$4 million. Golfweek reports that the event will be co-sanctioned by the LPGA and the Ladies European Tour and is being scheduled for mid to late July. However, neither the date nor the course has been confirmed. The Championship will replace the Women’s Scottish Open on the LPGA schedule. Golf Saudi said it would sponsor the LET’s season points race and include an end-of-season bonus. It did not say how much the bonus would be, but dropping from five events to one is a big hit for the players.
Three weeks ago we wrote that the kingdom had stopped paying for sport, and LIV filed for bankruptcy within days. Now women’s golf is the next on the list to be cut, and that could hurt the LET, which was building its calendar around Saudi money. LPGA players will benefit from another multi-million-dollar event on their schedule, but LET players lose the chance to earn that money over five weeks instead of one. A bad week at The Championship, and the money and points earned towards retaining their tour card could be tight. On the other hand, a good week, could be transformational.
Women’s golf isn’t alone in facing its financial challenges. On Wednesday, the WTA promised equal prize money at every combined 1000 event from 2027. That’s good news, you’d think, but the announcement coincided with a report in The Telegraph saying the organisation could run out of cash by autumn 2027 after its Riyadh Finals deal ended early. More on that next week.
