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Two teenagers were charged with resisting arrest and “gun-related” offenses in connection with a shooting that left one person dead and nearly two dozen others injured during a Super Bowl victory celebration in Kansas City, Mo., the authorities said on Friday. Additional charges are expected to be filed, according to a spokeswoman for the Office of the Juvenile Officer in Jackson County, Mo. The teenagers, who have not been publicly identified, remained in custody on Friday. The authorities have said that the shooting stemmed from a dispute among several people, and erupted on Wednesday afternoon outside the city’s Union Station, where thousands of Kansas City football fans were gathered for a rally. Twenty-two people were injured, and at least half of them were younger than 16, officials have said.

Organizations: Kansas City Locations: Kansas City, Mo, Jackson County, city’s

The victims of the shooting at a celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs on Wednesday included some of the team’s youngest fans. Eleven children, ages 6 to 15 years, were treated for injuries at Children’s Mercy, a hospital in Kansas City, Mo., said Stephanie Meyer, a senior vice president and chief nursing officer at the hospital. Nine of the children had gunshot wounds, she said, while the others had “incidental injuries.” None were in critical condition, and all were expected to recover. “The one word I would use to describe what we saw, and how they felt when they came to us,” she said of the children, “was fear.”

Persons: Stephanie Meyer, ”, “ Organizations: Kansas City Chiefs Locations: Kansas City, Mo

The move came after the Arena Group, which publishes the magazine under a complicated management structure, had its license to operate the publication revoked. It was unclear whether Sports Illustrated would continue publishing, or whether its owner, Authentic Brands Group, would strike a new agreement with the Arena Group or find a new company to operate it. For decades, Sports Illustrated was a weekly bible for sports fans and a financial engine for the Time Inc. empire. Like many publications, the magazine had struggled to shift to the digital media world from print publishing. In 2019, the media conglomerate Meredith sold Sports Illustrated to Authentic Brands Group, which is primarily a licensing company that acquires the rights to celebrity brands, for $110 million.

Persons: Meredith Organizations: Arena Group, Authentic Brands, Sports, Time Inc

Three years ago, journalists at Sports Illustrated were worried that the venerable magazine’s new owners and operators were drastically lowering its standards. On Monday, the science and technology publication Futurism reported that Sports Illustrated had published product reviews under fake author names with fake author biographies. “If true, these practices violate everything we believe in about journalism,” the union representing Sports Illustrated journalists said in a statement after the report was published. “We deplore being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers.”The Arena Group, which publishes Sports Illustrated under a complicated management structure, blamed a vendor, AdVon Commerce, for the situation. Sports Illustrated licenses product reviews from AdVon, and AdVon assured the Arena Group that “all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans,” said Rachael Fink, an Arena Group spokeswoman.

Persons: AdVon, ”, Rachael Fink, “ Organizations: Sports Illustrated, Sports, Group, AdVon Commerce, Arena Group

But the action that will have longer-term ramifications for the league, and the media and entertainment landscape, is happening off the court. The companies holding the rights to show N.B.A. Discovery, the parent company of TNT — are collectively paying the league $24 billion over nine years for that privilege. Interest rates are high, Wall Street is demanding profitability over growth, and streaming has reconfigured the entertainment industry. The result of the N.B.A.’s negotiations will say a lot about the future of broadcast networks, the cable bundle, streaming services and the sports media ambitions of technology companies.

Persons: LeBron James, Nikola Jokic Organizations: Basketball, Disney, ESPN, ABC, Warner Bros, TNT

All of a sudden, after a single summer, the pink jersey is everywhere. Tor Southard was better placed than most, but even he was caught unaware. As Adidas’s senior director for soccer in North America, he had been receiving emails from colleagues for nearly a year asking if the company’s biggest star, Lionel Messi, would be joining Inter Miami, also a client of Adidas. As far as he knew, it was just a rumor. Like the rest of the planet, Southard learned it was true only on June 7, the day Messi announced his intentions in a rare interview with two Spanish news outlets.

Persons: Tor Southard, Adidas’s, Lionel Messi, Messi Organizations: Inter Miami, Adidas Locations: Buenos Aires, Bangkok, England, Southeast Asia, North America

☆ Kansas Newspaper Is Talk of Town, and Not Just for Getting Raided
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-19 | by ( Kevin Draper | More About Kevin Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One person said The Marion County Record covered two recent deaths insensitively. Another said a handful of articles focused needlessly on a simple paperwork error that led to tax credits getting rejected. A third thought an opinion column harped too harshly on the poor quality of children’s letters to Santa Claus. The authorities seized computers and phones, in what they said was an investigation into identity theft and computer crimes. Reporters and television cameras have descended upon the town to cover the raids, which were roundly condemned by news organizations and free press advocates.

Persons: Santa, Eric Meyer Organizations: Marion County Record, Marion County Locations: Marion, Santa Claus, Flint Hills, Kansas

The Marion County Record, a newspaper in Kansas that the police raided last week, is getting its equipment back from local law enforcement, the county’s top prosecutor said on Wednesday. Joel Ensey, the Marion County attorney, said in a statement that there was insufficient evidence to justify the search of The Marion County Record and seizure of its journalists’ equipment. “As a result, I have submitted a proposed order asking the court to release the evidence seized,” he said. “I have asked local law enforcement to return the material seized to the owners of the property.”The police and county sheriff’s deputies raided the newspaper’s office, the home of its owner and editor and the home of a city councilwoman on Friday — collecting computers, cellphones and other materials. It is extremely rare for law enforcement authorities in the United States to search and seize the tools to produce journalism.

Persons: Joel Ensey, ”, “ Organizations: Marion County Locations: Marion, Kansas, Marion County, United States

ESPN has been Disney’s financial engine for nearly 30 years, powering the company through recessions, box office wipeouts and the pandemic. With its dual revenue stream — fees from cable subscribers and advertising — the sports juggernaut continues to earn billions of dollars for Disney. In the first six months of the 2023 fiscal year, Disney’s cable networks division, which is anchored by ESPN and its spinoff channels, generated $14 billion in revenue and $3 billion in profit. Disney is now exploring a once-unthinkable sale of a stake in ESPN. Disney has held talks with the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball about taking a minority stake.

Persons: Century Fox, ESPN’s, Robert A, ” Organizations: ESPN, Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Century, CNBC, National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball

Infuriated after being blindsided by the PGA Tour’s pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, a band of leading golfers has won a series of concessions from the beleaguered circuit’s commissioner — including the elevation of Tiger Woods to the tour’s board — in a star-driven rebuke of the tour. The tour announced the changes on Tuesday, one day after dozens of top players wrote to Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, and insisted on significant overhauls. The demands detailed in the Monday letter amounted to a dramatic effort to reclaim power over a circuit that got its modern start after a player rebellion in the late 1960s. The addition of Woods to the board, one of several changes agreed to by Monahan with a signed acknowledgment, would allow the players to outnumber six to five the independent board members, who come from the worlds of business and law. In addition, the players want to change the board’s rules to avoid a repeat of the negotiations with the Saudis, in which a handful of independent board members acted without the backing of players on the board.

Persons: Tiger Woods, Jay Monahan, Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler, Monahan Organizations: PGA Locations: Saudi

☆ Jonas Vingegaard Wins Tour de France Again After Vanquishing His Rival
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-23 | by ( Kevin Draper | More About Kevin Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When Tadej Pogacar slipped behind Jonas Vingegaard on the Col de la Loze mountain pass through the Alps on Wednesday, eight kilometers and a world away from the top of the hot, punishing climb, it was only briefly unclear why. Pogacar’s own voice, over his team’s radio and broadcast on television during the Tour de France’s 17th stage, provided an immediate explanation for the rare sight of him being left behind like a mere mortal. “I’m dead.”It was an astonishing bit of television, a moment that will be replayed on every Tour broadcast for decades. Most of Pogacar’s teammates did not wait for him. Pogacar, the 24-year-old from Slovenia who usually rides with a smile on his face, perpetually unbothered, tufts of hair peeking out of his helmet, was gone.

Persons: Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, “ I’m, ”, “, Pogacar’s Locations: la, Slovenia

ESPN has held talks with some of the most powerful leagues in professional sports, including the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball, about taking a minority stake in its business. Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, said in a CNBC interview last week that the company was “looking for strategic partners” that could help ESPN with either distribution or content. “But we want to stay in the sports business,” said Mr. Iger, whose contract with Disney was recently extended through 2026. Selling a stake in ESPN could give Disney a cash infusion as it faces pricey renewals with sports leagues including the N.B.A., which is sure to demand a premium for the rights to show its games in the coming years. Hearst, the owner of magazines like Cosmopolitan and information services like Fitch Group, owns a minority stake in ESPN.

Persons: Robert A, ”, Iger, Hearst Organizations: ESPN, National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, Walt Disney Company, Disney, CNBC, Cosmopolitan, Fitch Group

The PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, facing pressure from the Justice Department about their ambitions for a new company to shape global golf, have in recent days abandoned a crucial provision of their tentative deal: a promise not to recruit each other’s players. Three people familiar with the change, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations, signaled that the decision was an early casualty of an antitrust review by Justice Department regulators, who are expected to decide in the coming months whether to try to block the transaction. The tour moved to notify its board of the decision only on Thursday, after The New York Times asked the tour to comment on its reporting. The framework agreement between the tour and the wealth fund included few binding provisions. But one of them was a nonsolicitation clause, which said the tour and wealth fund-backed LIV Golf league would not “enter into any contract, agreement or understanding with” any “players who are members of the other’s tour or organization.”

Persons: LIV, ” Organizations: Tour, Saudi, Justice Department, The New York Times, LIV Golf

The PGA Tour sought the ouster of Greg Norman, the two-time British Open champion who became the commissioner of the insurgent LIV Golf league, as a condition of its alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, according to records that a Senate subcommittee released on Tuesday. The tour and the wealth fund did not ultimately agree to the proposal — crafted as a so-called side letter to a larger framework agreement — and, for now, Norman remains atop LIV. But the deliberations reflect an enmity forged over decades of hostilities between the tour and Norman, one of the most talented players in professional golf history who often chafed at the sport’s economic structure. And they underscore the tensions that could linger if the deal closes. The glimpse into the negotiations between the tour and the wealth fund came as the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations began its first hearing into the arrangement, which calls for the business ventures of the tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour to be brought into a new, for-profit company.

Persons: Greg Norman, LIV, Norman Organizations: LIV Golf, LIV, Investigations Locations: Saudi

Price and Dunne may also be asked about the weekend resignation of Randall Stephenson from the tour’s board after more than a decade. The sport’s leaders have often handled their business in Washington behind closed doors, relying on a fount of good will and gentility. The tour faced a significant threat in the 1990s, when the Federal Trade Commission examined antitrust issues in golf before its inquiry fizzled amid a pressure campaign from Capitol Hill. But baseball has drawn much of the attention from Congress, like when senators called a 1958 hearing on antitrust exemptions. (“Stengelese Is Baffling to Senators,” read a subsequent headline in The New York Times, which reported that Yankees Manager Casey Stengel had lawmakers “confused but laughing.”)

Persons: Price, Dunne, Randall Stephenson, Stephenson, Jamal Khashoggi, ”, Travis Tygart, Arnold Palmer, Dwight D, Eisenhower, Jack Nicklaus, Biden, Casey Stengel, “ Organizations: AT, Saudi, Washington Post, U.S, Doping Agency, Federal Trade Commission, Capitol, Lawmakers, football’s, ”, New York Times, Yankees Locations: Washington, Capitol Hill

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