The WNBA is denying a report that Adam Silver influenced the suspension of Alyssa Thomas following an on-court incident with Caitlin Clark.

In a statement to Front Office Sports, a WNBA spokesperson said the report that NBA commissioner Adam Silver pushed WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert to suspend Alyssa Thomas is “absolutely false.” 

On Wednesday morning, Sports Business Journal reported that Silver “persuaded” Engelbert to suspend Thomas for an incident on June 24 in which the Mercury star struck Clark’s throat. Thomas was not thrown out of the game.

A day later, the league handed Thomas a Flagrant 2—which comes with a $1,000 fine—and one-game suspension for what it deemed to be a “non-basketball act.”

The level of influence the NBA has on the WNBA’s decision making is a longstanding question. The NBA holds a 42% equity stake in the WNBA, while multiple NBA owners have separate ownership stakes in the WNBA. The NBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Silver was asked about the future of Engelbert as WNBA commissioner on Tuesday night during a press conference at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. He did not give a definitive answer, but was complimentary about Engelbert’s performance.

“I’m very pleased with where the WNBA is. We’ve made tremendous progress under her leadership over the last several years … Cathy continues doing a strong job building that league. And we’ll have ongoing discussions about what the future looks like.” Silver said.

In March, Silver said there have been “no discussions yet” about Engelbert’s future. A month later, Engelbert aggressively deflected when asked about her future ahead of the 2026 WNBA season.

“I do crack up how everybody’s focused on me, and you should be focused on the hundreds of amazing women, and thousands of women who run this league outside of myself,” Engelbert said.

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SOUTHPORT, England — The Open Championship is not getting caught up in the ongoing prize money arms race in golf, and will continue to offer the lowest purse among the four majors by a wide margin.

This week’s tournament at Royal Birkdale Golf Club will pay out $17.75 million in prize money, up less than 5% from the $17 million purse at the 2025 Open Championship.

Sunday’s winner will take home the Claret Jug and receive $3.2 million—$100,000 more than the $3.1 million Scottie Scheffler won at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland.

The $750,000 year-over-year increase in the total Open Championship purse comes after the other three majors this year raised their purses by at least $1 million.

• The Masters: $22.5 million (up from $21 million)
• U.S. Open: $22.5 million (up from $21.5 million)
• PGA Championship: $20.5 million (up from $19 million)
• Open Championship: $17.75 million (up from $17 million)

Mark Darbon, CEO of the R&A, which runs The Open, previously expressed some concern about the fast growth of prize money in professional golf since the launch of LIV Golf in 2022.

LIV this year has paid out $32.3 million in prize money at each event. The PGA Tour’s eight signature events have $20 million purses, and its flagship event, the Players Championship, paid out $25 million.

The PGA Championship, operated by the PGA of America (a separate organization from the PGA Tour), in May became the third major to cross the $20 million mark in prize money. However, it appears the Open won’t be joining that club any time soon.

The U.S. Open, run by the USGA, in June matched the Masters at $22.5 million after Augusta National in April briefly surpassed the U.S. Open to claim the richest major championship title all by itself.

Pay Day

The top 70 players and ties after two rounds of the Open will make the 36-hole cut; solo 70th place would pay out $40,700. 

Players who miss the cut still get a payout. The leading 10 golfers in that group will receive $12,900, the next 20 $10,750, and the remainder $9,100.

The 10 amateur golfers in the field at Royal Birkdale will not be allowed to accept prize money.

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PHILADELPHIA — The young upstart beat the veteran hometown hero in MLB’s Home Run Derby.

Cardinals outfielder Jordan Walker upset Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber in the league’s home run contest before a raucous crowd at Citizens Bank Park, prevailing by a 12-11 score in the final. Walker completed a closing rally with six straight home runs on his final six swings to overtake Schwarber. 

The 24-year-old Walker, a fourth-year player in the midst of a breakout season for the resurgent Cardinals, will gain a $1 million prize for winning the Home Run Derby—the largest part of the league’s $2.5 million prize pool for the event. Those winnings for Walker more than eclipse his entire 2026 salary of $799,400. 

He is also the first Cardinal to win the Home Run Derby, despite a storied franchise history that includes former stars such as Mark McGwire and Albert Pujols.

Schwarber will get the $500,000 runner-up prize. 

Bryce Harper, the other Home Run Derby competitor from the All-Star Game host club Phillies, did not advance beyond the first round. 

Harper and five other Home Run Derby competitors—the Rays’ Junior Caminero, the Red Sox’ Willson Contreras, Royals’ Jac Caglianone, White Sox’ Munetaka Murakami, and Yankees’ Ben Rice—earned $150,000 each. Caminero also had the longest home run of the night, at 491 feet, to garner an additional $100,000. 

Despite a move to an untimed competition format for the first time since 2014, this year’s Home Run Derby still moved with crispness and was complete before 10:40 p.m. ET. Instead of going by batter outs, as had been the case before the use of a timer, this year’s structure went by the number of swings.

Cheering on Schwarber’s run to the finals, the Philadelphia fans, meanwhile, are giving an even more definitively local feel to an All-Star Game missing MLB’s two biggest stars and many top pitchers. 

New-Look Broadcast

The Home Run Derby was shown exclusively on Netflix for the first time, with the streaming giant picking up the rights previously held by ESPN. 

Similar to the migration of sports content to streaming that has sparked governmental outcry elsewhere, Netflix carrying the derby prompted a predictable run of complaints from fans. 

“I miss when the hardest part of watching sports was finding the remote,” read one typical fan complaint on social media. “Now I need a flowchart, six streaming services, QR codes, two-factor authentication, and blood samples just to watch guys hit the long balls us chicks dig so much.”

MLB’s strategy with placing the Home Run Derby on Netflix, though, was getting in front of a younger group of fans, and a larger collection of people as well. Netflix has a domestic reach of about 90 million homes, and has more than 325 million subscribers globally, and both measures are still growing. ESPN’s linear channel, by comparison, is in roughly 60 million U.S. households—down by 40% from a peak seen 15 years ago. 

That strategy largely paid off for Netflix earlier this year for a season-opening MLB broadcast, despite some production issues for that Yankees-Giants contest. 

The Home Run Derby production itself alternated between two different crews of talent. That collection of personalities was highlighted in part by MLB legends Barry Bonds and Pujols, MLB’s Nos. 1 and 4 all-time home run hitters.

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PHILADELPHIA — MLB’s All-Star Game activities in the City of Brotherly Love are in full flight, with Monday’s Home Run Derby featuring a new broadcaster and a star-filled lineup, and Tuesday’s Midsummer Classic set to happen despite the mounting player absences.

But could this be the last All-Star Game for the foreseeable future? 

The league is approaching its midseason showcase in a particularly delicate position. On one hand, the game has arguably never been stronger, and key business metrics support that notion. Attendance is up again this season, entering the break with a 1.5% increase in the per-game average to 29,169, and is in line to end with a fourth straight annual boost—something that hasn’t happened since 2004–07. National TV audiences also are growing, with a new set of short-term rights deals paying significant dividends.

Most recently, NBC Sports’ Sunday Night Baseball coverage of a Yankees–Red Sox averaged 4 million viewers, the most for MLB in that window on any network in 15 years. 

All of those gains, in part, continue to benefit from the impactful introduction of the pitch clock in 2023 and the automated ball-strike (ABS) system this year. A strategy to place more games in national broadcast windows, modeled somewhat on other major sports leagues, is similarly driving wider fan awareness and appeal. 

On the other hand, MLB and the MLB Players Association are in the early stages of what has already been a rocky labor negotiation—with an ownership lockout widely expected when the current collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1. Management is proposing a wide range of massive changes to the sport and how it operates, including a hard salary cap and floor, new limitations on how and when amateur players become professionals, and heavy restrictions on free-agent contracts.

“The perception among our fans is really strong that we have a lack of competitiveness,” said league commissioner Rob Manfred. 

Not surprisingly, players have staunchly opposed all of that, and instead are attempting to increase their access to free agency and salary arbitration. 

So MLB is staging this All-Star Game amid a particularly thorny problem: the game continues to grow in stature and popularity, but team owners are also seeking an overhaul of the economic model in order to promote better competitive balance. 

Those labor issues are expected to be front and center when Manfred and MLBPA interim executive director Bruce Meyer meet separately with the Baseball Writers Association of America on Tuesday morning. 

Wait ’Til Next Year?

The Cubs and Chicago’s Wrigley Field are set to host the 2027 All-Star Game. Ever since that announcement nearly a year ago, though, there have been plenty of questions about whether that event will happen.  An extended labor stoppage would eliminate part or all of the 2027 season—possibly wiping out the All-Star Game. 

While both sides are well aware of all the gains in fan interest that will be forfeited in such an absence from play, the current ideologies of the team owners and players could hardly be further apart. 

“I think, honestly, the league has done us a favor because their proposals are, in fact, so obviously and extremely bad for players at all levels that it’s actually been a benefit for our unity,” said MLBPA interim executive director Bruce Meyer. “Anybody’s who’s banking on Major League Baseball players cracking: it’s never happened. It’s not going to happen.”

MLB has not missed games due to labor issues since the bruising 1994–95 round of bargaining that led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

“Of course [I worry about a work stoppage]. We want to make an agreement,” Manfred said last month. ‘We’re open to whatever ideas people have, but we need a realistic framework that addresses the fans’ concerns about competitive balance and you just can’t ignore that financial penalties have not gotten it done for us.”

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SOUTHPORT, England — The final major championship of the men’s golf season arrives as several major questions surround the future of the PGA Tour and rival LIV Golf.

Royal Birkdale Golf Club is hosting the 154th edition of the Open Championship, which begins Thursday, marking the 11th time the sport’s oldest tournament has been played at the course. Jordan Spieth won his third major and first and only Claret Jug the last time The Open was at Royal Birkdale, in 2017.

Victor Perez became the 15th LIV player to qualify for The Open on Sunday thanks to his T9 finish at the Genesis Scottish Open—a co-sanctioned event on both the PGA Tour and DP World Tour—which allowed seven LIV players to tee up alongside PGA Tour players in a rare non-major setting.

But this week at Birkdale will mark the final time this year that both LIV’s and the PGA Tour’s top stars will face off against each other. Meanwhile, exactly what the pro golf landscape will look like in 2027 is still up in the air.

LIV’s Unsettled Future

After The Open, LIV next week is set to return from its unintended 47-day summer break, which was a result of the league cancelling its June event in New Orleans. 

LIV has four events remaining on its 2026 schedule, and it continues to search for new investors with the Saudi PIF ending its funding after this season. 

Bryson DeChambeau’s LIV contract expires at the end of the season, but the league’s most popular star has indicated he wants to help LIV survive at all costs. DeChambeau has missed the cut in all the majors so far this year; he had previously never missed more than two major cuts in a single season. Despite his struggles, DeChambeau remains the most recent LIV player to win a major—at the 2024 U.S. Open.

Jon Rahm has multiple years remaining on his LIV contract, but has not been as publicly committed to helping LIV survive as DeChambeau. 

LIV previously announced some dates for its 2027 events, but the league’s schedule for next year is far from set until new funding is secured. 

Last week, LIV notified employees it would be filing a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice, which is a legal requirement in the U.S. that requires businesses with over 100 employees to give at least a 60-day notice of potential mass layoffs.

PGA Tour’s New Era Not Fully Set

The PGA Tour will play six more events after the year’s final major—three regular-season tournaments and three FedEx Cup Playoff events.

The full 2027 PGA Tour schedule is expected to be officially unveiled in late August at the Tour Championship, although many tournament dates have already been confirmed by individual event organizers.

But it will be the 2028 PGA Tour season that brings major change as a new two-series model is set to be implemented in just over 18 months. 

While high-level details of that new structure were announced by PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp last month, many final details have not yet been determined and will still be discussed and negotiated among members and stakeholders throughout this year.

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PHILADELPHIA — MLB’s Home Run Derby will feature a particularly lucrative opportunity for four of its eight participants, while also offering a big dose of hometown heroes and veteran star power. 

The league’s retooled home run contest set for Monday night at Citizens Bank Park, a key part of a new-look run of All-Star Game events, will again feature a $2.5 million prize pool. The payouts, set in the current labor deal between MLB and the MLB Players Association, include:

• $1 million for the winner
• $500,000 for the runner-up 
• $150,000 for each of the other six competitors
• $100,000 for the longest home run

That $1 million top prize is more than the entire 2026 MLB salary for half of the Home Run Derby field: the Royals’ Jac Caglianone ($784,000), the Rays’ Junior Caminero ($794,800), the Cardinals’ Jordan Walker ($799,400), and the Yankees’ Ben Rice ($845,800). These younger MLB players are not yet eligible for salary arbitration or free agency. 

The expanded Home Run Derby prize pool, first introduced in 2019 and a fixture since then, has been an important tool to boost the event’s allure for players, and has certainly aided in bringing in younger talent.

Pete Alonso, now with the Orioles but the 2019 and 2021 winner while still with the Mets, famously said he used Home Run Derby prize money to help pay for his wedding, while also donating 10% to two charitable organizations aiding military veterans. 

Caminero won $500,000 last year in this event, placing second behind winner Cal Raleigh of the Mariners. 

Veteran Presence, Host-Market Pairing

The financial reward for winning the Home Run Derby is less singularly impactful for the other half of the 2026 field: the White Sox’ Munetaka Murakami ($17 million), the Red Sox’ Willson Contreras ($18 million), and the Phillies’ Bryce Harper ($26.1 million) and Kyle Schwarber ($30 million). 

With the MLB All-Star Game events no longer featuring megastars Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, both battling injuries, the presence of Schwarber and Harper is becoming even more important. The duo represents the first pair of teammates to be in a Home Run Derby while their home market is hosting since the Marlins’ Giancarlo Stanton and Justin Bour in Miami in 2017, and just the third overall. 

Schwarber and Harper famously battled in the final of the 2018 Home Run Derby in Washington, D.C., when Harper was a member of the Nationals and Schwarber was with the Cubs. Harper won that matchup, 19–18.

“Having a rematch of ‘18 would be pretty cool to see, too,” Schwarber said. “I think it would be fun for everyone, not just Philly, but the game and for the people watching.”

This year’s Home Run Derby, meanwhile, will feature a return to an untimed formatfor the first time since 2014, though it will be based on total swings instead of outs.

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