Sway

If you want to watch every Dodgers game in 2026, you’ll likely need access to all of these outlets: SportsNet LA, Fox, ESPN, NBC, Peacock and Apple TV.

That is not, shall we say, fan-friendly.

Baseball’s holy grail is this: One place to watch your team, and every team, wherever you are. One price. No blackouts. No need to decide whether to pay up for a subscription to an outlet you may never watch after the game ends.

Rob Manfred, baseball’s commissioner, does not need to persuade fans about this. He does need to persuade the owners of all 30 teams about this.

Since Manfred would like to have this “All the Teams, All The Time” outlet up and running in 2029, he needs to start lining up votes among the owners. Manfred has talked about this goal for years, and I asked him if he can say this is really going to happen.

“I think that there is a lot of acceptance within the industry that, given what’s happened within the media environment, we need to be more national,” Manfred told me before the Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies met Monday at Citizens Bank Park.

“The idea of centralizing, and getting more games available on national platforms, is really appealing to people. Now, we’ve got some cards to play, still. But I remain optimistic that it can happen.”

So does Stan Kasten, the president of the Dodgers.

“We are supportive of the notion of all fans anywhere being able to watch any game, and doing away with blackouts,” Kasten said. “That takes a lot of steps, and every team has a different situation.

“We have a long way to go, but the goal is an admirable one, one I think all fans will benefit from, and that is what is most important.”

This all sounds lovely so far. But the Dodgers are not about to unconditionally surrender what fans outside Los Angeles consider their greatest competitive advantage: money, and lots of it.

The Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers are on course to meet in the National League Championship Series. The Brewers make about $35 million in local television revenue this year, according to Sports Business Journal.

The Dodgers make about 10 times that much in rights fees this year from Charter Communications, the parent company of Spectrum — and that annual rights fee will top $500 million by the end of the Charter contract in 2038. And there’s more: the Dodgers also own SportsNet LA.

If the 30 teams pooled their broadcast rights, Manfred believes they could generate interest not only from traditional outlets but from streamers such as Apple, Peacock, Paramount and Netflix. League officials believe the exclusivity of one package would generate more collective revenue than the combination of 30 individual team deals.

In theory, then, the Brewers would get significantly more than $35 million per year if the teams split the pot evenly. The Dodgers would get less, and probably much less. So would Manfred just lean on the Dodgers to go along for the good of the game?

“I don’t think you can make a change like this based on people saying this is for the good of the game,” Manfred said. “I think you make a change like this by people realizing who the buyers are, what they want to buy, and by packaging up a set of changes that make it kind of closer to an economic wash.”

Meaning cash-neutral for teams like the Dodgers — and the New York teams, Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs — still reeling in big bucks amid the collapse of regional sports networks outside large markets?

“Yeah, and there are a whole lot of ways to get there,” Manfred said.

He did not lay out his menu of options, but the first one is clear. Collective bargaining negotiations are scheduled to start next year, with the growing likelihood of a lockout after the 2026 season.

If owners can push through a salary cap — a cap that the players’ union insists will remain — then small-market owners could be guaranteed players would receive a guaranteed but limited percentage of league revenue. That cost certainty, coupled with the potential of increased revenue from a 30-team broadcast package, probably would win over small-market owners.

And that could be critical, because those owners currently make a fair amount of money from revenue sharing, under which teams are assessed a percentage of such money as ticket sales, concession sales and local media revenue. That money is pooled and shared equally for now, but Manfred could offer the Dodgers and other financial behemoths a chance to keep more of — or all of — that money for themselves.

The league also could offer to buy out SportsNet LA and other such channels, meaning more money for the Dodgers. And, although the Dodgers under current ownership do not appear interested in a salary cap, a cap would decrease player spending and thus increase team profits.

A wild card: With Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki and Hyeseong Kim on their roster, the Dodgers could ask for greater revenue from international broadcast rights, which are now shared equally among teams.

Those are a lot of balls for Manfred to juggle. Kasten adamantly declined to say what might work for the Dodgers.

“You’re delving into areas that are way too premature for me to discuss, other than for me to tell you we agree with the goal,” he said. “The goal is a good one, and we hope baseball can get there.”

Reflecting back on Van Bronckhorst’s demise, a large part of the support wanted him gone too, just not with the same ferocity Martin is experiencing.

How many might welcome him back now, or wish to go back to a time when European finals seemed achievable?

The Dutchman’s credentials clearly are valued by English Premier League-winning Liverpool boss Arne Slot, no less, who appointed him as assistant manager at Anfield this summer after a short-lived tenure at Besiktas.

High points under him, though, were balanced by uninspiring domestic displays and a failure to retain the long-awaited Scottish title that Steven Gerrard delivered.

A bruising Champions League campaign added to their woes, but, in truth, Rangers were ill-equipped to compete on that stage at that time and the financial boost was most welcome.

Former Heart of Midlothian and Dundee United head coach Robbie Neilson suggested on the Scottish Football Podcast: “Things start to spiral and we’re getting to that point now where the negativity towards the manager is definitely having an effect on the players – there’s no doubt about that.

“The only way to turn that is to win football matches. I don’t know if they’ve got the squad to win six, seven, eight in a row, but that’s the only way they’ll turn it.

“It looks like Russell Martin has taken as much pressure as he can on himself to try and get it away from the players.

“But I think at the moment it’s coming back on the players as well now because it’s got to quite an extreme stage.”

What Martin and the board are contending with are previously unseen levels of negativity, though. There’s an all-consuming crescendo of ill will stretching far and wide across the support.

Until now, those in charge have held firm, although the growing sentiment over the past weeks is that even an extended run of favourable results will not influence a support seemingly not for turning.

Might McCoist’s point add weight to the idea that sticking with Martin may bear longer-term fruits, despite the lack of evidence to support that right now?

We’ll soon find out.

United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are set to meet in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday in a bid to try and end Russia’s three-year assault on Ukraine.

In the run-up to the meeting, Trump said that he believes Putin is ready to agree to a ceasefire. But his suggestion that Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could “divvy things up” has alarmed observers in Kyiv.

For their part, remarks from top Russian officials suggest that Moscow has tried to water down discussions about the war by linking them with other bilateral issues, particularly restoring economic ties with the US.

On Thursday, Putin sat down with top officials at the Kremlin to discuss the Alaska meeting. He said that he believed the US was making “sincere efforts to stop the fighting, end the crisis and reach agreements of interest to all parties involved in this conflict”.

Earlier on Thursday, Yuri Ushakov, one of Putin’s top foreign policy aides, told reporters about Russia’s preparations for the talks. He said it was “obvious to everyone that the central topic will be the settlement of the Ukraine crisis”.

“An exchange of views is expected on the further development of bilateral cooperation, including in the trade and economic sphere,” he said, pointing out that: “I would like to note that this cooperation has a huge and, unfortunately, untapped potential.”

Ushakov also announced that in addition to Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s delegation in Alaska would also include the country’s finance minister, Anton Siluanov, and Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy on foreign investment and economic cooperation.

The inclusion of Siluanov and Dmitriev is another sign that the Kremlin hoped to discuss economic matters at the summit.

What does Russia-US trade look like?

In 2021, before Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, total trade between Russia and the US amounted to $36.1bn. This included $6.4bn in US exports to Russia, and $29.7bn in US imports from Russia – amounting to a US trade deficit of $23.3bn.

For context, Russia was America’s 30th largest trade partner in 2021. Since then, after numerous rounds of American sanctions, trade between Russia and the US has fallen roughly 90 percent.

Incidentally, Russia’s overall trade balance – leaving the US – declined significantly following its decision to invade Ukraine. From 2022 to 2023, its international balance of payments fell by a whopping 70 percent, to just $86.3bn.

But back in 2021, Russia’s trade surplus with the US was concentrated almost exclusively in commodities. Oil, minerals and base metals like iron and steel made up roughly 75 percent of Russia’s exports. Meanwhile, US exports to Russia were concentrated in manufactured goods.

Were Russian exports to the US vital?

The short answer is no.

By the time Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the US – whose energy sector was transformed by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in the early 2000s – was already the world’s largest oil producer, at 11.9 million barrels of oil per day.

One area where Russia did hold limited significance was in certain types of energy products. Russia supplied certain grades of crude oil – notably Urals – as well as refined products like vacuum gas oil (VGO), residual fuel oil and naphtha.

Russian VGO was especially important for making gasoline and diesel products in US refineries, which lacked enough domestic feedstock with the optimal chemical and physical properties.

Elsewhere, the US continues to import limited quantities of uranium hexafluoride, a chemical important in uranium processing, from Russia. Some US utility companies still have supply contracts with Russia, which accounted for about one-third of America’s enriched uranium needs when war broke out.

As with energy products, however, American firms exposed to Russian uranium supplies have readjusted their supply chains in response to sanctions. What’s more, US companies like X-energy and Orano have invested heavily in domestic production in recent years.

Does Russia have any other leverage?

In the wake of sanctions after February 2022, most Russian commodity shipments were rerouted from Western countries to China at discounted prices, including for energy products and uranium.

Indeed, trade between China and Russia has grown in parallel with sanctions on Russia. A common border, shared geopolitical perspectives and joint opposition to the US have deepened bilateral relations.

Russia-China trade saw annual growth of nearly 30 percent in both 2022 and 2023, when it hit $240.1bn, according to the Centre for European Policy Analysis. In 2024, Russia climbed to 7th place among China’s trading partners, up from 13th place in 2020.

During that time, China has supplied Russia with more high-end products – like advanced electronics and industrial machinery – while Moscow has solidified its position as a top supplier of oil and gas to Beijing.

What’s more, the two countries conduct regular naval exercises and strategic bomber patrols together. The US has consistently expressed concerns over joint military drills and views the China-Russia alignment as a threat to its global leadership role.

Putin will be aware of these dynamics heading into Friday’s meeting.

What else could Putin offer Trump?

In March, Putin’s investment envoy – Kirill Dmitriev – claimed that Russia and the US had started talks on rare earth metals projects in Russia, and that some American companies had already expressed an interest in them.

“Rare earth metals are an important area for cooperation, and, of course, we have begun discussions on various rare earth metals and (other) projects in Russia,” Dmitriev told the Izvestia newspaper.

China’s almost total global control over the production of critical minerals – used in everything from defence equipment to consumer electronics – has focused Washington’s attention on developing its own supplies.

The US Geological Survey estimates Russia’s reserves of rare earth metals at 3.8 million tonnes, but Moscow has far higher estimates.

According to the Natural Resources Ministry, Russia has reserves of 15 rare earth metals totalling 28.7 million tonnes, as of January 2023.

But even accounting for the margin of error hanging over Russia’s potential rare earth supplies, it would still only account for a tiny fraction of global stockpiles.

As such, the US has been pursuing minerals-for-security deals with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ukraine in recent months, in an effort to wrestle control of the global supply chain away from China.

It may try and do the same with Russia.

What does Russia want from these meetings?

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Western countries have imposed 21,692 sanctions on Russia, mostly against individuals.

Key sanctions on Moscow include import bans on Russian oil, a price cap on Russian fuel, and the freezing of Russian central bank assets held in European financial institutions.

But on July 14, Trump threatened to impose so-called secondary sanctions, that if carried out, would mark a notable shift.

Since then, he has targeted India – the second biggest buyer of Russian oil – by doubling a 25 percent tariff on its goods to 50 percent, as a penalty for that trade with Moscow. So far, Trump has not imposed similar secondary tariffs on China, the largest consumer of Russian oil.

But he has suggested that Beijing could face such tariffs in the future, as the US tries to pressure countries to stop buying Russian crude, and thereby corner Putin into accepting a ceasefire.

Members of Trump’s administration have also indicated that if the Trump-Putin talks in Alaska don’t go well, the tariffs on India could be increased further.

Meanwhile, lawmakers from both US political parties are pushing for a bill – the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 – that would also target countries buying Russian oil and gas.

The bill would give Trump the authority to impose 500 percent tariffs on any country that helps Russia. US senators are reportedly waiting on Trump’s OK to move the bill forward.

In Alaska, Putin is expected to demand that Western sanctions on Russia be eased in exchange for Moscow agreeing to any peace deal.