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This Can't be Serious

This Can't be Serious

February 22, 2023

Morning! There’s something about midweek. Big Champions League games, even bigger newsletters. The Sports Road.

Here's what we got for ya today:

The Funniest Stadium in Sport
A MASSIVE FIGHT
La Liga’s new Netflix Deal
Luka Doncic and Chess?

Most valuable public market sports teams

Let's get into it!

Don’t Like it? Toughsheet.

Bolton’s New Stadium Name Will Have You in Stitches

Bolton Wanderers, a name all English football fans recognise.

Being a mainstay in the Premier League during the early 2000’s and even venturing into Europe, recent years have seen things take a turn for the worse.

Facing administration and dropping multiple leagues in the last decade, it felt like things couldn't get worse for Bolton fans. Well, that is until they renamed their stadium this week.

What is it you ask? Toughsheet Stadium. Yep, a name that – in many ways – best describes the club's recent history.

While seemingly pretty absurd, this deal actually represents pretty good business for Bolton. In fact, this is the largest sponsorship deal in the club’s history!

“We’re happy to have a bit of fun with it… Obviously the brand name is a bit tongue-in-cheek, a bit schoolboy humour. But I can’t wait to see them try and make each other say it on Sky Sports, it’ll be a great laugh!”

Doug Mercer

A long cry from the golden days of Jay-Jay Okocha and the UEFA Cup, but it’s good to see they’re still having fun 😂😂

Bolton fans: Please do not name our ground 'The Toughsheet Community Stadium'. We'll be a laughing stock.
Bolton:
— Paddy Power (@paddypower)
11:28 AM • Feb 20, 2023

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It's Fight Week

It’ll never get old, will it? Jake Paul being Boxing's biggest draw and the face of the Sport 😂😂

Next weekend see’s one of the biggest fights of the year - Jake Paul vs. Tommy Fury. So, how did we get here?

With both fighters having a huge social following, it wasn’t easy…

This isn’t the first time that these two have been scheduled to fight. Originally planning for the bout for late 2021, Fury pulled out due to injury. In many ways, this acted as a blessing in disguise for the ‘Problem Child’, who rescheduled to fight former UFC Champion, Tyron Woodley. A reminder as to how that went:

This win allowed for the rescheduling of another huge bout with Fury that, you guessed it, fell through 🙄This time, Fury couldn’t because of travel issues. Let’s just say, all of these cancellations just fuelled the fighters’ disdain for one another…

“You’re fumbling the f*****g bag again! F*****g idiot!

Jake Paul on Tommy Fury’s cancellations

Say what you want about either of them, but you cannot deny that this is bound to be great entertainment!

La Liga x Netflix

Football fans, it’s time to get excited.

Covering the 2023/24 season, Netflix have announced it will create a docu-series following La Liga, Spain’s top division. Allegedly inspired by ‘Drive to Survive’, this comes following the release of the F1 show’s second season.

In an effort to engage fans within what goes on at the highest level of European football, the show is bound to include:

A format similar to pre-existing Sport docu-series
Personalised player stories
Exclusive ‘behind the scenes’ content
A dramatised run through of the league’s events

President of La Liga, Javier Tebas' desire to increase the league’s reach is well documented. Wanting to even the playing field with divisions such as the Premier League, this could act as a turning point in the league’s global viewership.

”For La Liga, to be the star of Netflix’s first sports series in Spain is a unique opportunity to take our football beyond the fans, to share with the world the excitement of the sport we love, and the chance for all our fans to see LaLiga from a totally different angle.”

Óscar Mayo, Executive Director of LaLiga.

Luka Doncic x AI x Chess

Wait, what?

Yep, that was our reaction too. How on earth could these three things be related?

Once stating, “I play [chess] online… I win, mostly”, Luka Doncic is an avid chess player. In a partnership created with chess.com, fans will now be able to play against him… kind of.

Play against the Luk.AI bot!
— Chess.com (@chesscom)
9:38 PM • Feb 17, 2023

This is how it works:

Well, you may have heard of Luk.AI. If not – to put it simply – it’s the NBA great’s AI alter-ego. I wish I had one of those…

Modelled off of Luka Doncic, Luk.AI is a self learning AI system
The more games the AI plays, the stronger he grows

This comes soon after Chess.com experienced a boom in their users at the start of 2023. In fact, so many people were playing that the servers found it difficult to keep up! While on the final day of 2022, there was 7 million active players, ten days later it was at 10 million 🤯🤯