Sports Ticker #153 - North of England Olympics bid and Alpine's Gucci F1 sponsorship deal

In a fortnight that saw, Burnley succeed in a landmark case against Everton arising from the latter’s breach of Premier League financial regulations, Pep Guardiola manage his final Manchester City FC game, England’s Red Roses win their fifth consecutive Women’s Six Nations Grand Slam victory and Sunderland AFC qualify for Europe for the first time since 1973, we bring you news of the potential 2040 North of England Olympic Games bid and the fashion sponsorships making waves in the worlds of F1 and tennis.

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Olympics 2040? Sounds Champion! UK government eyes first hurdle in North of England games bid
The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games may not be the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity many English fans once thought following the announcement that the UK government has commissioned an initial strategic assessment to host the quadrennial event in 2040, this time in the North of England. Uniquely for an Olympic Games, the proposals are for a multi-city affair, likely centred in Manchester. The event would bolster an already exciting roster of upcoming tournaments to be held in the UK over the next decade, including the Euros 2028, the European Athletics Championships 2026 and the Women’s T20 Cricket World Cup 2026, with further bids in for the World Athletics Championships 2029 and Women’s FIFA World Cup 2035. Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, commented, “we saw what London 2012 can do for the country and we believe that it’s time to bring the Olympics home to the North of England and show the world what we can do.”

From Catwalk to Centre Court: tennis serves up luxury fashion
Luxury fashion and tennis are becoming a powerful doubles partnership. As the sport’s global audience grows, brands are racing to secure a place courtside in front of millions of fans worldwide. The momentum comes as tennis enjoys record-breaking broadcast audiences, rising Grand Slam attendances and growing social media engagement. Brands such as Gucci have signed leading tennis stars, including World No 1 Aryna Sabalenka. However, Grand Slam rules can make it difficult for pure luxury brands to gain on-court visibility, as manufacturers are typically expected to have a significant sportswear or equipment business. As a result, collaborations with established sports brands have proved key. Miu Miu’s collaboration with New Balance, worn by Coco Gauff, showed how these collections can make their way onto the court while meeting audience demand. Increasingly, the tennis court is not just a stage for competition – it is becoming an extension of the runway.

Little Pain, Little Gain: Enhanced Games struggles to deliver on superhuman promises
The Enhanced Games (previously covered in Sports Ticker Issues 130, 136 and 142) set out to redefine the boundaries of human athletic accomplishment by permitting competitors to use performance enhancing drugs as part of a new medically supervised competition format. After much anticipation, the inaugural event took place in Las Vegas in May, with 42 athletes competing across swimming, sprinting and weightlifting. However, despite early assurances that the tournament would “push the boundaries of human performance”, only one world record was broken across the 22 events contested. Adding further question marks to the tournament’s unique value proposition, the United States’ Fred Kerley and Barbados’ Tristan Evelyn won the men’s and women’s 100m sprint events clean, despite racing against enhanced competition. CEO Maximilian Martin declared the tournament had “changed the world” but ultimately acknowledged that organisers had anticipated more records. Whether the Games will deliver on its weighty promises in the future remains to be seen; for now, it seems the controversial competition has got off to a false start.

Rackets to Riches: Is it break-point for padel-mania investors?
Padel has quickly become one of the UK’s most popular sports. In the past 12 months, there were more than 1 million players in Britain, dramatically higher than the 15,000 prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. The rising demand has now pushed average court hire prices to around £35 per hour nationally and £51 in London. This so-called padel ‘gold rush’ continues to attract strong investment, with the number of courts more than doubling in 2025 alone, only really being limited by the number of suitable locations available. However, the rapid rate of development has resulted in the quality of some courts being questioned. Consequently, there are doubts over how sustainable the padel boom is. Sweden also experienced rapid post-Covid growth in the sport, but oversupply has since led to a number of facilities shutting down. It remains to be seen whether the UK padel market will prove more durable, avoiding the drop shot many rapid growth industries fall victim to.

Fashion-Forward, Tech-Minded: Silicon Valley and haute couture join the F1 grid with landmark partnerships
After a two-decade pit stop, Intel returns to F1, becoming the computer partner for McLaren in a multi-year partnership on all fronts: trackside, factory-side and in-simulation. Intel’s semi-conductor engineering will allow McLaren to make live race-day analytics from huge data sets.  The virtual livery will roll out full coverage in 2027 for the McLaren F1 Sim Racing Team. Elsewhere, Gucci has become the first luxury fashion house to be title sponsor of an F1 team. Set to start racing from 2027, the collaboration will see Alpine rebrand to the ‘Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team’ with cars sporting the red and green colour scheme synonymous with the Gucci brand. The CEO of Alpine’s outgoing sponsor, Kering, highlighted F1’s rising popularity with younger and female audiences, underscoring the potential wider impact of the new outfit. Both partnerships reflect broader trends of Luxury Houses and Tech giants on the grid, following LVMH’s 10-year F1 agreement, and Oracle’s Red Bull Racing partnership.

Extra time...
… and finally, the origins of the Gloucestershire cheese rolling competition may be lost to time, but it’s highly unlikely that, whoever the original competitors were, ever envisaged the race reaching the scale it has today. The annual event, in which participants hurl themselves down a steep bank after a runaway wheel of cheese (previously covered in Sports Ticker Issue #129), has become a global affair and was this year broadcast by the BBC for the first time - also clocking up millions of views online. Participants are international, with none of this year’s winners in the four main downhill events (three men’s and one women’s) hailing from the British Isles, instead coming from Germany, the Netherlands, the US and France. It will be 24-year-old YouTuber, Tom Kopke, and his almost 500,000 subscribers who will be celebrating the most, as he edged local hero (and all-time holder of the most titles) Chris Anderson, to victory in the main men’s downhill race.