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≡ STORIES OF 2025 ≡
Happy New Year from The Sports Examiner! We’ve run down the top stories of 2024, topped by a brilliant Paris 2024 Olympic Games, so what should we look for in 2025? Here’s a look ahead at our top 10, starting with nos. 10-6:
No. 10: Lyles running wild?
There’s track & field and then there’s American sprinter Noah Lyles, who has created a separate level of interest with his speed – Olympic 100 m champ, World 100-200 m champ – and a level of showmanship that has produced a legion of fans, and some vocal detractors.
All the better for him, and at 27, he’s in his prime with a sport on the verge of a major rise … or a series of devastating failures. But Lyles, who won the 200 m bronze in Paris while suffering from the Covid-19 virus, isn’t even talking about Tokyo and the 2025 World Athletics Championships.
He’s talking about racing Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill in a one-on-one showdown, possibly in a streaming project like the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight on Netflix. In early December, Lyles teased a possible “undercard” with hurdles star Grant Holloway facing another football star like Seattle’s DK Metcalf and 2019 World Champion Christian Coleman against fastest-40-at the Combine receiver Xavier Worthy (Kansas City Chiefs).
In a 19 December podcast, YouTube star MrBeast (James Donaldson), who instigated the one-off race between Lyles and IShowSpeed (Darren Watkins Jr.) on 6 November, suggested doing more short takes, like a one-on-one race between Lyles and the world’s fastest woman.
Donaldson had no idea who that was – track fans will shout back Olympic champ Julien Alfred (LCA) or Worlds winner Sha’Carri Richardson of the U.S. – but said it would be a huge viral winner, with millions of views. Lyles was not as eager, knowing that he would win such a race easily, but Donaldson said it would attract a lot of attention as a short-form video.
This is the world Lyles is living in, far away from the usual build-up to a World Athletics Championships in Japan in September. But he can live in both and brings attention to the sport.
His reality, the introduction of Grand Slam Track, the Tokyo Worlds, the World Road Running Championships in San Diego at the end of September, make this an interesting and possibly pivotal year for track & field in 2025. It is possible that the sport could look and feel very different a year from now … better or worse.
Whatever the situation, Lyles will be in the middle of it.
No. 9: The disintegration of collegiate sports
The new year of 2025 may be remembered as the year collegiate sports were reborn, or marched toward a painful death.
The settlement in House vs. NCAA is scheduled to be approved, or cast aside, in April. If approved, it will create a $2.75 billion liability for the NCAA and its member schools for compensation owed to Division I college athletes over the prior 10-year period, and, beginning with the 2025-26 academic year, require that 22% of the average revenues of Power Five conference athletic programs be used for revenue sharing; this is expected to create an added cost of about $20.5 million per school per year.
Moreover, it will lift scholarship limits on all sports and replace them with hard limits on roster size, with all team members allowed to be on scholarship. The immediate impact will be to eliminate walk-on spots in many sports in many schools.
The settlement is also likely to create an enormous imbalance between football – whose players will see perhaps 90 cents of every dollar spent on athlete revenue sharing – and all other sports, and raises Title IX questions that are sure to create another lawsuit.
And there is the question of how athletic departments deal with a sudden added burden of $20.5 million per year, paid almost exclusively to football and basketball players. What happens to all the other sports?
The NCAA rules require that to compete in Division I, a school must field at least 16 sports for Football Bowl Subdivision status, or 14 sports – with at least six for women – for the rest of Division I. Look for that requirement to be challenged, and if reduced or eliminated, for schools to start eliminating sports quickly.
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee in painfully aware of the issues and the impact on major Olympic sports such as swimming and diving, track & field, wrestling and many more. Within the collegiate sports community, the alarm bells are already ringing loudly and clearly.
Sam Seemes, the head of the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) told coaches at their December convention:
“Let me be blunt: Our sports are under siege. Not in some distant future, but right now. The threats are real and immediate:
“– Shrinking opportunities for student-athletes
“– Vanishing budgets
“– Disappearing scholarships
“– Reduced coaching positions
“– Complete program elimination
“– Replacement by sports perceived as more valuable
“If you think I’m being an alarmist, wake up.”
It is entirely possible that hundreds of programs across multiple sports across the country may be dead or dying at the end of 2025, unless an organizational solution if found. There are ideas out there to do that.
No. 8: FIFA decides to go its own way
There wasn’t one decision, but four which point to FIFA taking his own path to the future, away from tradition, and without concern for who might care. It’s an interesting path and one very much worth observing:
● FIFA greatly expanded its previously unheralded Club World Cup from seven teams to 32 for 2025, put the tournament in the U.S., and drew a furious response from the FIFPRO players union, the European Leagues association and others, including a lawsuit at the European Union’s Court of Commerce. The filing challenges the international match calendar and the added burden on players. FIFA denies any issue and continues to prepare for the tournament in June.
● On 11 December, FIFA held an online Congress and selected – by acclimation via applause – a six-nation World Cup for 2030 and Saudi Arabia to solely host the 2034 World Cup, with eight stadiums to be built. Human rights organizations were appalled, but FIFA President Gianni Infantino (SUI) hailed the selection, after working through a process which collapsed FIFA’s normal continental rotation to claim both Europe and South America were World Cup hosts for 2030.
● The Club World Cup drew only modest interest from national broadcasters, so FIFA made a deal reported at $1 billion with British-based streaming service DAZN. There may be sub-licenses to other broadcasters, but this was a unique solution that takes the tournament to a smaller audience that it hoped for.
● On 20 December, FIFA doubled down on its streaming strategy, selling the broadcast rights for the Women’s World Cup in Brazil in 2027, and in 2031 – unassigned, but which could be in the U.S. – to the streaming giant Netflix, which has now moved strongly into live sports.
The wisdom of these decisions won’t be known for some time, but Infantino has now put his strong support behind two World Cups in the Middle East, with Qatar in 2022 and Saudi in 2034. And FIFA has decided it no longer needs to try and offer two of its prize tournaments to the larger possible audiences, but will take a better financial offer to collect more money that it can distribute to its member federations, who will happily receive larger checks.
Is streaming the future of televised sports, with FIFA in the lead, or simply a bridge to direct-to-consumer sales that take all the middlemen out of the picture completely. FIFA does not have its own production company … but the International Olympic Committee does.
Interesting.
No. 7: All eyes on the next Olympics: Milan Cortina 2026
There was plenty of angst about Paris in 2024, especially about security and costs. Both came up aces, with the French security forces keeping the Games – and Paris – safe, and the two organizations spending money within limits. The government building subsidy, Solideo, built the Olympic Village and an arena within budget, and the organizing committee announced a surplus of at least €28.6 million in its operations. (€1 = $1.04 U.S.)
Now the attention turns to the next Games, the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, in February 2026.
The Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026 – the organizing committee – has had plenty of challenges, including replacing its chief executive, with Andrea Varnier taking over in November 2022. The domestic sponsorship program has advanced quickly, and the organizing effort is also moving along, with multiple test events being held this winter.
Now the attention is on another government building project, a controversial new facility in Cortina for bobsled, luge and skeleton, replacing the historic Eugenio Monti track used for the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina. The track project had multiple false starts and the plan was to relocate the competition to Austria or Switzerland.
But the Italian government wanted the events to be held in Italy, slimmed down the project and finally found a builder in Parma-based Impresa Pizzarotti & C., which agreed to an €81.6 million fee and began the work in February.
The track is slated to begin certification procedures next March, and is said to be on schedule.
Nevertheless, it was announced in December that the organizers continue in discussions with the folks in Lake Placid, New York, to have the famed Mt. van Hoevenberg track as a back-up, just in case.
The newest worry came last week with three crashes during the FIS Alpine World Cup racing in Bormio, on the brutal Stelvio track, considered one of the most challenging in the world. French star Cyprien Sarrazin had to have surgery to drain blood near the brain, and the Milan Cortina organizers had to issue a statement that safety procedures for the 2026 Games will be beefed up.
There will be more drama, for sure.
No. 6: What about Russia?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 and has continued without end. While the shock of the attack has worn off, there has been no let-up and resentment against Russia continues in many places.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach (GER) led the imposition of “protective measures” which kept Russian and Belarusian athletes out of international competition. But he also led a move to allow limited participation for Russian and Belarusian “neutrals” in December 2023 that led to an independent IOC review committee and small squads of 15 Russians and 17 Belarusians at Paris 2024. It was the smallest Russian “team” at an Olympic Games in 108 years.
Now, the questions are over Milan Cortina 2026. The IOC’s request for teams to be banned continues and still applies to curling and ice hockey. Biathlon, bobsled and skeleton, luge and skiing have continued to keep Russians and Belarusians out, but the International Skating Union has allowed limited participation in Olympic qualifying events only, and the International Ski Mountaineering Federation has approved five Russians as “neutrals.”
Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev said last week:
“The most difficult situation is in winter sports. Those who qualify will definitely be supported by the Ministry of Sports and the Russian Olympic Committee, but there will be few of us for now. This is due to the fact that selections will begin soon, but not all federations have ‘opened.’ There is also a problem in biathlon, among skiers.”
But he sees a “fully armed” team competing in Los Angeles in 2028. How Russia gets there will depend on who is elected as the next IOC President in March. Among the seven candidates, positive comments have been made by officials about veteran member Juan Antonio Samaranch (ESP), cycling chief David Lappartient (FRA) and gymnastics head Morinari Watanabe (JPN).
But the one candidate who Russia does not want elected in Britain’s Sebastian Coe, the head of World Athletics, which continues to maintain a complete ban on Russia. It’s one more intrigue for the 144th IOC Session.
Rich Perelman
Editor
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