Chiefs

Travis Kelce has become the latest athlete to buy into a professional sports team, purchasing a minority stake in the Cleveland Guardians, the MLB franchise he rooted for growing up in Cleveland Heights, a vibrant suburb 15 minutes from downtown.

Ballplayers buying into professional sports franchises has become almost routine. And why not? They are wealthy, love sports and often want an ownership stake of a team in a city full of fans who love them back.

Kelce is the latest to do so. The only question is, what took him so long?

“I have so much love for this city,” Kelce told ESPN. “I say it all the time: I’m just a kid from the Heights living the dream. I credit every good thing in my life to Cleveland and being raised here with the values and the people and the work ethic.

“Cleveland Heights is such a diverse and dynamic place. Every friend, neighbor, teacher and teammate — they all made me the man I am today.”

And that man is very wealthy. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end and burgeoning business titan has earned $111 million playing in the NFL. He and his brother Jason have a $100-million deal with Amazon Wondery for their popular New Heights podcast.

Kelce, 36, also makes an estimated $35 million a year from endorsement deals with Nike, Pfizer, State Farm and other major brands.

Oh, and let’s not forget that his fiancee, Taylor Swift, is the wealthiest female musician in the world with an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion.

Although Swift has never publicly mentioned owning a sports franchise, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell did comment on the possibility at a Super Bowl news conference two years ago.

Tom Brady had been approved as part owner of the Raiders, boosting season-ticket sales, leading to this question posed to Goodell.

“With that, has anyone approached Taylor Swift about being a minority partner in the Chiefs?”

Goodell grinned and replied, “I really don’t know the answer to that one. If she’s interested, she has the ability to do it, let’s put it that way.”

The list of athletes who own a piece of sports franchises is long. Begin with Magic Johnson and Billie Jean King, part of the group that owns the Dodgers and Sparks. Kelce’s Chiefs passing partner Patrick Mahomes has been a minority owner of the Kansas City Royals since 2020.

Tennis superstar sisters Venus and Serena Williams became the first black women to hold a stake in an NFL team when they became minority owners of the Miami Dolphins in 2009.

Giannis Antetokounmpo expressed his love for Milwaukee by purchasing a stake in the Brewers baseball team. The Lakers are rumored to possibly trade for the Milwaukee Bucks superstar this offseason. Would that make Antetokounmpo a candidate to take the Angels off the hands of Arte Moreno, who at games has been blistered by a large group of shirtless fans chanting “sell the team?”

Because he is an investor in the Fenway Sports Group, Lakers star LeBron James owns a piece of the Boston Red Sox, Liverpool FC, the Pittsburgh Penguins and RFK Racing. The 41-year-old veteran of 23 NBA seasons makes no secret that he someday wants to own an NBA team.

“I got so much to give to the game. I know what it takes to win at this level. I know talent,” James said in 2021. “I also know how to run a business as well. And so, that is my goal. My goal is to own an NBA franchise.”

James is the first active NBA player to achieve billionaire status, and his estimated net worth of $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion puts him in Swift territory. He might not need to preface his ownership stake with the word minority.

Kelce, meanwhile, is happy for now to own just a piece of the Guardians, whose value has risen from $1 billion four years ago to $1.7 billion today.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have a front-row seat to good ownership in my career, and I know the best teams prioritize culture,” Kelce said. “Everyone is there to play their role, and right now, I’m here to observe and learn and really to support the team and the city when and where I can.”

At this year’s festival to unveil our inaugural Cannes issue, I had to opportunity to sit down with Sony Pictures Classics co-founders and co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard and EVP of Acquisitions, Production and Business Affairs Dylan Leiner on the Main Stage at the Marché du Film to discuss the company’s festival strategy, bidding wars, artificial intelligence and more. Watch the full conversation and read edited excerpts below.

How much does the festival reception of a movie, the reviews coming out of a festival, the buzz around it, shape decisions that you’re making? Or is it just confirming what your gut already knows?

Leiner: I want to tell one story that speaks to that, which was at the first Berlin Film Festival we attended after COVID. I remember, in the same day, I ran into three international distributors who all asked if we had seen “The Teacher’s Lounge.” And I didn’t even know what the film was. It wasn’t on our radar, it wasn’t in competition. So we quickly saw “Teacher’s Lounge” and we acquired the film [which went on to be nominated for the 2024 international feature Oscar]. And that was one of the great values of an in-person festival, the ability very quickly to communicate with distributors, with tastemakers, with critics from around the world and get that kind of information. Gut, personal taste… It plays into it a lot, but then we need reassurance. And being at a festival and being in this fishbowl environment is really helpful for that.

For a lot of people, myself included, the mystique of a festival is often around the bidding war narratives: Who’s going to pick up what and what are they going to pay? I’m curious for your take on the first big acquisition of this year’s Cannes, A24 buying “Club Kid” for a reported $17 million.

Bernard: Throughout the years, there were companies [that would] maybe overpay, or they were going to bid to get this movie no matter what, because they were the headline in all the newspapers covering this festival. So in terms of a company that’s branding — which, A24 is one of the best in branding — I think that that had to do with a little bit of the cash that went up. … There’s a branding aspect in a lot of festivals for a movie that’s a hot movie that the press has decided to seize on.

Barker: Here’s a key to how we have survived. It’s different from the way you talk about it. When we acquire a movie, whether anyone else has offers, we try to block it out. And we have trained ourselves to not let that noise bother us. What is it worth to us? What do we think it’s going to do? Dylan runs these incredible models of what it’ll do on the low end, what it will do on the high end. And then you decide where you want to be.

Bernard: Or we think we can make it work.

Barker: But at no point do we sit around and worry about who else has a higher offer for the movie. Because I have to say, in very few instances, on the movies we buy, are we the higher offer. We just do the best we can, and if we lose it, we lose it.

Bernard: [French film producer] Serge Silberman, a sage of the past, he always said, “You never lose money on a movie you didn’t buy.”

That brings up a question that I had about “Nuremberg,” which was a real success. What you’re saying is, it performed in alignment with your expectations. Were there any lessons that you took away from that in terms of future projects that might come along?

Leiner: Yes, it performed in accordance with our expectations. What’s interesting about that film, we acquired it here last year. Nobody else was really interested in the movie. … So our challenge basically was to figure out how to convince the filmmaking team that, because it was a very expensive film, that we were the right company to acquire the film on the terms that we could afford and that we could make it work. And it was a very intense series of phone conversations, in-person meetings.

Bernard: We felt like we were auditioning to get married to somebody. We were never going to be able to pay to make their money back. It was a $40-million movie, and they were really sort of out there without anybody really looking at it. And we said, “Listen, sell it to us. We think it’s going to be a great success. We’ll make your movie way more valuable over the test of time.”

Barker: There are two types of movies that are being made and distributed. One are the big tentpole studio movies. It’s about winning the weekend theatrically. These are the theatrical-driven movies. And it’s all about making that huge budget back very quickly. But the other kind of film, which is why we are in business, is the evergreen. Every one of our films, we open it with the best marketing push we can. Yes, we try to get the highest box office. But what we know will happen, even if the box office ends up being less, we believe in these films as long-term players. And these films have really long tails. You look at movies like “Run Lola Run” or “Call Me By Your Name” or even “Living” … They have generated revenues to the filmmakers and to us that’s way beyond what the box office would have portended when it opened.

I would be curious, what areas of the filmmaking process or the film distribution process do you think AI is appropriate for use, that you’ve experimented with it, that you’re excited about its prospects? And where are your red lines, if you have any?

Barker: One of the people on our staff — we really love our young staff. One of them was writing a screenplay with AI, and told me they got certain rules on AI. And I’m listening to all these rules. You can’t have your main character die in a first scene. You can’t have your romantic female lead be totally unlikable, people aren’t going to go. I’m listening to this, and I said, “Have you ever seen ‘Sunset Boulevard?’” And she goes, “No, what is that?” I said, “Go watch that movie.” She came back and she was like, “Holy cow.” I said, “Billy Wilder sat down and made that up based on what he observed.” AI is not going to be able to do that.

Kansas City Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice was taken into custody Tuesday and ordered to serve 30 days in jail after violating the terms of his probation stemming from a 2024 vehicle crash that left multiple people injured.

A spokesperson for the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office said in an email to The Times that Rice had tested positive for THC, the primary psychoactive chemical in marijuana. The fourth-year player out of Southern Methodist will remain in the Dallas County jail until June 16.

Based on that timeline, Rice will miss the Chiefs’ voluntary team workouts May 26-28 and June 1-3 and mandatory minicamp June 9-11.

“We are aware of the reports and have been in touch with the league office,” a Chiefs spokesman told the Associated Press, declining further comment. An NFL spokesperson told The Times that the league is “aware of the report” and also declined further comment.

Also on Tuesday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Rice underwent surgery on his right knee last week to remove loose debris that was causing inflammation. Rice is expected to be ready for training camp this summer, according to Schefter.

The Chiefs did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment regarding Rice’s reported surgery.

Rice was sentenced to 30 days in jail last July after pleading guilty to third-degree felony charges of collision involving serious bodily injury and racing on a highway causing bodily injury. He was, however, granted flexibility as to when to serve his jail time and had not served it yet.

After his recent probation violation, the district attorney’s office spokesperson said, Rice was ordered to serve that jail time immediately.

On March 30, 2024, according to prosecutors, Rice was driving a Lamborghini Urus SUV at 119 mph when made “multiple aggressive maneuvers around traffic” and struck other vehicles, then fled the scene on foot without checking on anyone in the other vehicles.

He was suspended for the first six weeks of the 2025 season for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.

In 28 games with the Chiefs, Rice has 156 receptions for 1,797 yards and 14 touchdowns. He is entering the final year of his rookie contract.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Finance ministers from the Group of Seven met in Paris to address rising global financial instability triggered by a bond market selloff and concerns over inflation linked to the ongoing conflict involving Iran.

The meeting comes at a time when global bond markets from Tokyo to New York are under pressure, as investors anticipate that higher energy prices could force central banks to maintain or increase interest rates.

Officials are also preparing for a broader discussion on structural global imbalances and coordination ahead of an upcoming G7 leaders summit.

Bond Market Pressure and Inflation Concerns

Bond yields have risen sharply across major economies as investors reassess inflation risks. Markets are increasingly focused on whether rising energy costs will translate into sustained price pressures that limit the ability of central banks to ease policy.

French officials have described the current situation as a correction rather than a crisis, though they acknowledge growing sensitivity around sovereign debt levels and fiscal sustainability.

The volatility has raised concerns particularly in highly debt sensitive economies such as Japan, where bond market movements are closely watched for spillover effects.

Diverging Views Within the G7

Despite the shared concerns, divisions remain among G7 members over how to respond to global economic instability.

European officials have emphasized the need for coordinated, temporary, and targeted responses to market shocks, while acknowledging that consensus with the United States may be difficult.

Some members argue that global economic imbalances are becoming structurally entrenched, with consumption and investment patterns increasingly misaligned across major economies.

Global Imbalances and Structural Concerns

A central focus of the discussions is the growing imbalance in global economic activity. European officials argue that long term trends show excessive consumption in some economies, under consumption in others, and insufficient investment in parts of Europe.

These structural disparities are seen as contributing to persistent trade tensions, capital flow imbalances, and financial market instability.

Officials warn that without coordinated policy responses, these imbalances could eventually lead to more severe market corrections.

Critical Minerals and Supply Chain Strategy

Another key agenda item is the global competition over critical minerals and rare earth supply chains, which are essential for electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and defense technologies.

G7 members are exploring ways to reduce dependence on dominant suppliers, particularly China, through coordinated investment, joint procurement strategies, and diversification of supply chains.

Proposals under discussion include pooled purchasing mechanisms, market monitoring systems, and industrial policy coordination to strengthen supply security.

Analysis

The G7 meeting highlights a convergence of financial instability and geopolitical fragmentation. Rising bond yields and inflation fears are no longer isolated market issues but are now directly linked to geopolitical disruptions in energy supply and global trade routes.

At the same time, disagreements within the G7 reflect deeper structural tensions in the global economy, particularly around debt levels, consumption patterns, and industrial policy priorities.

Efforts to coordinate on critical minerals signal a shift toward more strategic economic alignment among advanced economies, where supply chain security is becoming as important as price stability.

Overall, the meeting underscores a global transition toward a more fragmented and politically driven financial system, where economic coordination is increasingly shaped by geopolitical risk rather than purely market based forces.

With information from Reuters.

Published on
04/05/2026 – 14:17 GMT+2

The EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič is scheduled to meet his US counterpart Jamieson Greer on Tuesday amid rising tensions between the bloc and the US following President Donald Trump’s announcement of a potential 25% tariff on EU automobiles.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

The discussions, scheduled ahead of a G7 trade ministers’ meeting in Paris, were planned before President Trump’s latest tariff threat, Euronews has learned.

But they now give both sides an opportunity to ease tensions after Trump signalled measures that would breach the EU-US trade deal agreed last summer in Turnberry, Scotland, between Trump and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which caps US tariffs on EU goods at 15%.

On Monday, the Commission sought to project a sense of calm.

“It’s not the first time we have seen threats,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said, adding: “We remain very calm, focused on enforcing the joint statement in the interests of our companies, of our citizens.”

Trump’s threat came after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticised the US approach to the war in Iran, and after Washington announced the withdrawal of 5,000 US troops from Germany, further straining transatlantic relations.

German MEP Bernd Lange (S&D), chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, told Euronews on Monday that Trump’s threats were aimed specifically at German car manufacturers.

“All options remain open”

The US president also accused the EU of moving too slowly to implement the agreement.

“Since day one we are implementing the Joint Statement [the EU-US deal] and we are fully committed to delivering on our shared commitments,” Regnier said, adding that the EU was seeking predictability in the EU-US trade relation.

The Turnberry deal is currently being negotiated between EU governments and lawmakers before it can enter into force on the EU side. Co-legislators must still agree on the modalities for cutting EU tariffs on US goods to zero, as outlined in the agreement.

MEPs have nonetheless introduced safeguards to ensure the EU is not the only party adhering to its commitments and to protect the bloc from future US threats.

The Commission reiterated Monday that if the US takes measures that are “inconsistent” with the trade deal, all “options” remain open.

Last year, during the trade dispute that followed Trump’s return to power, the EU executive prepared a package targeting €95 billion worth of US products, though the measures were later suspended.

At the time, several EU countries also urged the use of the bloc’s anti-coercion instrument, which enables the EU to respond to economic pressure from third countries with a wide range of trade defence tools, including restrictions on licences and intellectual property rights.

Ulster have received a boost with the news that Tom O’Toole, Nick Timoney and Jude Postlethwaite will be available after injury for Saturday’s European Challenge Cup semi-final against Exeter Chiefs at Affidea Stadium (17:30 BST).

Timoney returns after recovering from a hip injury, while O’Toole and Postlethwaite are at head coach Richie Murphy’s disposal after overcoming hand problems.

A squad update issued by Ulster Rugby on Monday confirmed that the trio have “all reintegrated fully into team training and are available for selection”.

Meanwhile, decisions on whether Angus Bell (foot), James Hume (neck) and Bryn Ward (shoulder) will be fit enough for selection for the encounter with the English Premiership side will be made later in the week.

All three have resumed elements of team training.

Callum Reid and Ben Carson will be unavailable for the last-four game as a result of foot and calf injuries respectively.

Both players sustained their injuries during Saturday’s 41-14 United Rugby Championship (URC) defeat by Munster in Limerick.

Eric O’Sullivan suffered a back injury during the match and will have his fitness monitored during the week.

Ulster are aiming to secure their first silverware for 20 years and the winner of their semi-final will face the winner of Sunday’s second semi-final between Montpellier and the Dragons in the final in Bilbao on 22 May.