Prize money at last year's Wimbledon was 50m, exactly double the amount offered in 2014. In that 10-year period, prize money for first-round losers increased from 27,000 to 60,000.

But players have frequently pointed to the vast revenues generated by the Grand Slams, and feel they deserve a significantly larger return.

In the year up to July 2023, the All England Club (AELTC) had a turnover of 380m. But once the costs of running the Championships were deducted, the operating profit was just under 54m.

Nearly 49m of that went to the LTA, as the AELTC has agreed to pay the governing body 90% of its annual surplus until 2053.

Costs include prize money, employing more than 8,000 seasonal staff, preparing and developing the site and supporting other grass court events.

Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen said increased prize money would be particularly welcomed by lower-ranked players, who can struggle to make ends meet at other times of the year.

"I think that's going to benefit all the players, not only the top players, especially those that work hard during the year and need to get paid from the Grand Slams and have to survive," added the Chinese world number eight.

"We try to do what we can, and then let's see what the gods bring to us. But at least we're trying."

In the time Pollard has played abroad he has helped South Africa win two World Cups.

He was with Montpellier when the Springboks won the title in 2019 by beating England in the final, then was called up during the 2023 tournament - after first proving his fitness with Tigers - to help them retain their crown.

Pollard kicked his nation to victory in the decider against New Zealand, scoring every point in their 12-11 win.

But despite his success at international level, he has gone without a trophy with Tigers so far.

He moved to Leicester after their Premiership title success of 2022, and after reaching the Premiership semi-finals in his first season in the East Midlands they finished eighth last term.

But with two months of the season and his Tigers career left, Leicester are well placed to challenge for league and European silverware.

On Saturday they face Glasgow Warriors in the last 16 of the European Champions Cup.

"I've had the most amazing time abroad. I fell in love with Leicester and it's been an unbelievable experience and I'll miss it one day, for sure," Pollard added, when asked about how he might look back at his time with Tigers.

"But there's still quite a lot to do, isn't there? There's a few big games to play."

Northampton: Ramm; Freeman, Odendaal, Dingwall (capt), Hendy; Smith, Mitchell; Iyogun, Langdon, Davison, Mayanavanua, Coles, Kemeny, Pollock, Augustus.

Replacements: Walker, West, Green, Lockett, Scott-Young, Pearson, James, Hutchinson.

Clermont Auvergne: Newsome; Delguy, Simone, Moala, Raka; Belleau, Bezy; Akhaladze, Massa, Ojovan, Simmons, Ceyte, Sowakula, Tixeront, Lee (capt).

Replacements: Fainga'a, Falgoux, Ala'alatoa, Hemery, Fischer, Bousquet, Urdapilleta, Fouyssac.

Referee: Andrew Brace (Ireland)

Last year the RFU's Tier 2 Board ran an open tender process to the whole game for any club, college or university to join the Championship - the level below the Premiership - for the 2025-26 season if they could meet the league's minimum operating standards and growth strategy.

Worcester were admitted on a majority decision, but the Tier 2 Board said Wasps and London Irish were not in a position at the end of last year to meet the minimum criteria.

Approval means Worcester will be admitted alongside the winners of the National League 1 division, currently being led by Richmond.

Richmond were the first professional club in England after the game went open in 1995 but when they went bust in 1999, they were relegated to the bottom of the league pyramid and have worked their way up since.

Warriors owner Holland said: "Had we opted to restart at the bottom of the rugby pyramid, as others have before us, the obligation to settle rugby creditors would have been removed.

"After careful consideration we chose to make the application to the new league under the name Worcester Warriors, a club founded in 1871, to preserve its history and legacy.

"As a result, even though we applied as a new non-league entrant, we are required to settle rugby creditors as defined by the RFU Regulation 5. We acknowledge and fully own this process and the responsibility that comes with it.

"We have taken full responsibility for addressing these inherited obligations."

Businessman Holland also owns the intellectual property for Wasps where he was a non-executive director. Should they return to the league structure he would have to relinquish ownership of one club.

It is understood the Warriors, who plan to have a new logo and resurfaced artificial pitch, have been putting people and processes in place in order to be ready for the start of next season in the Championship.

Thursday's announcement comes one week after RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney survived a vote of no confidence at a special general meeting.

The meeting was called in part by vociferous Championship clubs who have been unhappy at funding cuts from the game's organising body in England.

In a statement, Simon Gillham, Tier 2 Board chairman, said there was "still a great deal still to achieve".

He added: "The vision for this league is really ambitious and so much work and collaboration has taken place over nearly two years to establish a path towards a vibrant and self-sustaining competition.

"Today marks a significant step forward with Worcester Warriors returning to professional rugby under new ownership in a heartland for our sport, with the club's new owners having provided a financial security guarantee, held by the RFU, as well as committing to paying off debts left by the previous owners to rugby creditors."

Plans for the Championship's full competition structure are still to be announced.

With no relegation from the Championship into National League 1 this season, it means only two teams, instead of the usual three, will be relegated from National 1.

Arsenal defender Gabriel Magalhães will requires surgery on his hamstring injury and will miss the rest of the season as a result, the Premier League club confirmed on Thursday.

Gabriel, 27, was replaced by Jakub Kiwior in the 16th minute of Arsenal's 2-1 win over Fulham on Tuesday with head coach Mikel Arteta admitting he was "worried" about the Brazil international.

"Gabi will undergo a surgical repair procedure to his hamstring in the coming days, and immediately begin his recovery and rehabilitation programme, with the aim to be ready for the start of next season," Arsenal said in a statement.

"Everyone at the club will be fully focused on supporting Gabi to ensure he is back to full fitness as soon as possible."

The centre-back's injury is the latest in a long list of issues suffered by some of Arsenal's key players. Their absences have played a part in scuppering the north London club's hopes of challenging Liverpool for the Premier League title.

Forwards Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus are also missing for the rest of a campaign -- which has also seen Saka, Martin Ødegaard, Ben White and Gabriel Martinelli absent for long periods through injury.

Arsenal face Everton at Goodison Park on Saturday before hosting Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League quarterfinal on April 8.

Spain's sports ministry (CSD) have ruled that Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor can continue to play for Barcelona until the end of the season.

The CSD handed Olmo and Víctor temporary registrations in January while they assessed Barça's appeal against LaLiga and the Spanish Football Federation's (RFEF) decision to revoke the duo's registrations.

LaLiga said not only did Barça miss a Dec. 31 deadline to prove they were compliant with financial regulations, but that they have "never had" the capacity to register Olmo and Víctor within their league-imposed spending limit.

The CSD, however, consider that the players have a "right to work" and have therefore adjudicated that Barça can continue to field them until the end of the campaign.

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Monday at the NFL's annual league meeting began with the season review session, open to every club and league staffer in attendance, along with their guests. Commissioner Roger Goodell sat in the front row of a ballroom at Palm Beach's opulent Breakers hotel while NFL Network's Steve Wyche interviewed a panel of four Florida grade-schoolers, whose teacher was being honored after going viral for using NFL-inspired lessons in her curriculum.

Wyche asked the kids: What would you suggest to the NFL to make football more fun?

Eleven-year-old Chase, wearing a Ja'Marr Chase jersey to honor the Bengals star receiver and his own name, yelled into the microphone: "More tush pushes!"

The crowd erupted in laughter and cheers, and the Eagles contingent waved to the group. This push sneak-loving fifth grader was not a Philadelphia plant, but he made a strong point in dispelling any notion that this play isn't an entertaining television product.

Despite appearing in just 0.28% of total plays last season, the tush push took up more time in conversation in Tuesday's voting session than the rules proposal that altered the kickoff, a rules change that will affect 28 times more plays than push sneaks. The will they or won't they? surrounding the potential tush push prohibition was the biggest news of the annual league meeting. And it was so pressing that the proposal was the subject of the first question faced by Goodell at his meeting-ending news conference.

The conversation around Green Bay's proposal to institute a 10-yard penalty for immediately pushing the player who takes the snap was so back-and-forth that the proposal ultimately didn't make it to a formal vote and was tabled. Even the word "immediately" within the phrase "immediately at the snap" was a subject of debate.

"It's a layered conversation," said one NFL team source, whose club voted for Green Bay's proposal but also acknowledged that it didn't like that the rule had competitive implications that attacked one team's success -- Philadelphia's.

"If it's a competitive conversation, the Eagles just coach it better than the rest of us," Panthers head coach Dave Canales said. "So I don't want to take away a competitive advantage from the team that figured out how to have the quarterback sneak [be] so effective."

Two sources in Tuesday's voting session said clubs were split, with exactly 16 in favor of Green Bay's proposal, and that the Packers will rewrite the proposal to be broader and prohibit all pushing of the runner ahead of the next league meeting on May 20-21 in Minneapolis, in an effort to entice eight more clubs to vote for it to pass. The May proposal will likely look much different than the original, and it won't be as targeted to Philadelphia and Buffalo -- the only two teams that ran a push sneak more than five times last season.

"We spent so much time on this single play," said a source who was in the room for the sessions. "How many times did the pushing even make a difference last year? Once or twice, and the teams were less successful than they were on traditional sneaks. It was less about competitive edge than it was about health stuff. Why was this specific thing the most interesting?"

The battle over the tush push proposal underscored the importance of the way a rule is presented to earn a three-quarters NFL majority -- and what can happen when the motives behind a proposal are viewed with suspicion.

Player safety became what several sources called the prevailing argument for banning the play, and three sources with three different clubs told ESPN ahead of the vote the lack of injury data became the reason they didn't plan to support the proposal.

One general manager told ESPN Monday that the proposal "feels like sour grapes" because the Packers lost twice to the Eagles in 2024 and the Eagles had become so successful at the play. "They're hiding behind player safety," he said.

And so the debate, and the work, continues.

"Usually, when there's proposals written up, you have people who don't like how they're written," Bills head coach and competition committee member Sean McDermott said. "Every last proposal I've been around. So the hard thing is, hey, why don't you just sit down and write the proposals if you have a better idea? So let's be solution-oriented. "

ESPN PREVIOUSLY REPORTED that during the football operations session with head coaches and general managers, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman, assistant general manager Jon Ferrari and two coaches on the competition committee, McDermott and the Rams' Sean McVay -- both in favor of getting rid of the push sneak -- were seen having a passionate conversation in a side hallway outside of the session.

"Sean [McDermott] and I have talked about this a little bit, just on the competition committee," McVay said. "Some of the pushback is about health and safety risks, and Howie made a great point about the fact that, hey, there's other plays, well, why is that any different than normal sneak, some of the short yardage and goal-line situations? I said, it's a very valid point, and then I did acknowledge the fact that I didn't like the optics [of the play], even though I know I sound like a hater, wanting it out, because you guys [the Eagles] do it better than anybody else. And they were telling me that I was a hater for that."

"You've got two or three passionate guys, coaches that, and in this case, Howie the GM, that are sharing their thoughts," McDermott said. "All three of us are about doing what's best for the game."

Meanwhile, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni was working in concert with Roseman and Ferrari, saying he had been having conversations with "a couple people."

One of those people, Sirianni's former defensive coordinator and current Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon, said, "Nick knows where I stand." Former Eagles offensive coordinator and Saints head coach Kellen Moore, whose push sneak call in Super Bowl LIX might make him the last coach to call the play, said, "I got Nick['s back]. ... Other teams have tried it and haven't had as much success. Jalen [Hurts], the offensive line of Philly, they've been committed to it. And so it's an investment thing."

Colts head coach Shane Steichen, another former Sirianni coordinator, made his loyalty clear: "I'm not in favor of taking it out," he said. "It's been around for a long time, to be completely honest. Because when you're on the half-yard line, backed up and you got to run a QB sneak, people are usually back there pushing. [The Eagles] just brought it to the field of play a couple years ago."

Despite Philadelphia's advocacy in Palm Beach, half of the league was in favor of eliminating the play from the game.

Outgoing Packers president Mark Murphy presented the proposal Tuesday morning, and he told reporters afterward his No. 1 reason was player safety.

The league's chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Sills, made presentations to league staff, the competition committee and coaches and owners on the injury risk of the play at the scouting combine and the league meeting.

"It's all about health and safety," one NFL owner told ESPN. "[Dr. Sills said], 'It's not if but when a catastrophic injury occurs.'"

"If that's the argument, the whole sport is a matter of 'if not when,'" one source in the sessions said. "That rubbed some people the right way, and some people the wrong way. When [Sills] said it at the combine meetings, I don't think it was intended to serve as the water carrier for Green Bay's proposal."

"Sills can speak for himself, but the angle of it and the nature and the makeup of the play really does lend itself [to injury]," Murphy told reporters. "The centers and the people right in the middle of it, you've got that much force on both sides. It is just a question; I think he is right."

Multiple sources told ESPN that Sills presented hypothetical injury data to clubs during sessions this week, based on projected modeling. The NFL declined to comment on Sills' presentation through a league spokesperson.

"Most of [the injury data] is subjective," said Moore, who called the play 39 times last season in Philadelphia. "I feel very comfortable with the league keeping it."

One club executive said he didn't like the play and doesn't think it should be in the game because it's not a football play, but he also didn't agree with the injury risk as the reason to ban it. He argued all pushing of ball carriers in the game should be banned, as it was in a previous iteration of the rulebook.

A source with direct knowledge of the competition committee's thinking said before the voting session Tuesday that clubs had to take the injury conversation seriously. "You can't disregard it," the source said.

"Nobody wants to vote no on it, and then God forbid, something happens."

IN ORDER TO make it to the league meeting agenda, the NFL competition committee discussed the tush push proposal and held an informal vote at its meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after the combine. Three sources familiar with the competition committee's proceedings said there was support for the proposal within the committee, though not unanimous. (Unanimous competition committee approval isn't required to advance club proposals, but the competition committee will advise clubs not to go forward with proposals that it believes have no legs.) Of the tush push proposal, Murphy confirmed the committee "was pretty strongly in favor of it."

When asked about the proposal ahead of Tuesday's vote, Packers coach Matt LaFleur said he wasn't involved in writing it and cited the reason for the proposal as aesthetics first, and then player safety.

"I don't think it's a great football play," he said. "It's more of a rugby play. And then some of the injury concerns we just want to get out in front of that and be a little bit more proactive than reactive."

In a Q&A for the Packers website published in February, Murphy did not mention injury risk as a reason to eliminate the tush push. Like LaFleur, the former NFL defensive back cited aesthetics.

"There is no skill involved and it is almost an automatic first down on plays of a yard or less," Murphy wrote. He advocated for reverting to the previous version of the rule that prohibited aiding the runner. That rule changed to allow pushing ball carriers in 2005, with then-NFL vice president of officiating Mike Pereira citing difficulty in officiating it as a reason for the switch.

"This would bring back the traditional QB sneak," Murphy wrote. "That worked pretty well for Bart Starr and the Packers in the Ice Bowl."

Another source with direct knowledge of the competition committee's thinking said, ahead of the vote, the proposal as it was written was too specific to a single scenario and team, and it should expand to include any pushing, comparing it to how pushing has not been allowed on field goal blocks since 2013. "A push is a push," the source said. "If it's illegal somewhere, it'll be illegal everywhere."

On Monday, Cowboys executive vice president and competition committee member Stephen Jones also spoke about a motivation to align the rulebook and make all wording about pushing consistent.

That sentiment is why competition committee chairman Rich McKay said the Packers offered to adapt their proposal to be similar to the rulebook language from before the league changed the rule to allow pushing. "Green Bay asked, 'Could we go back and talk about reintroducing the 2004 language, study it, understand it and talk about it again when we get to May?'"

As it happens, the Packers used a version of the push sneak in 2024, utilizing 6-foot-5, 259-pound tight end Tucker Kraft as the ball carrier instead of a quarterback. The play had a 100% conversion rate.

"We changed it with Tucker running it, but we were 5-for-5, so it's not really about one team being successful," Murphy said Tuesday.

LaFleur told reporters Tuesday morning he hadn't been lobbying for support for the proposal, and "whatever happens, happens."

Sirianni spoke about the lack of injury data with the push sneak ahead of the voting session Tuesday morning and made what appeared to be a reference to Murphy's criticism of the play from the Packers' website.

"I know what the data says," Sirianni said ahead of the vote Tuesday. "I know how we coach it. We don't coach a push play any different than we coach a quarterback sneak play. The injury data says what it says and we coach it the exact same whether it's somebody pushing or it's somebody not pushing. I think somebody said something about Bart Starr running the play a long time ago. So that play has been in for a very long time, there's probably enough data on that play to get information."

In Tuesday's session, six sources in the room told ESPN that Bears chairman George McCaskey stood up in favor of the proposal and spoke about the risk, saying that a serious injury was going to happen, and when it did, they would all look back on this vote and remember it.

McCaskey took the floor before Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, who waited his turn to speak. The sources in the room said Lurie defended the play, arguing that it is uncommon, offensive trends come and go, there's no injury data and it's not fair to penalize one team. Then Bills owner Terry Pegula stood up to support the proposal and responded to Lurie's points with a line that some of the sources in the room interpreted as a joke, that Lurie's future Hall of Famer center Jason Kelce retired because of wear and tear from the tush push.

"I believe Jason Kelce has made public comments about, he's glad he's not involved in the play anymore because he felt it was pretty dangerous," Murphy told reporters after the voting session, apparently referencing an interview on the "Steam Room" podcast where Kelce said the play "sucks for a center" and is "grueling."

A source in the voting session said Goodell didn't share his opinion with clubs during the 30- to 40-minute conversation about the tush push proposal. But Murphy said the league was aware of the proposal's details.

"We [including Packers GM Brian Gutekunst and LaFleur] were all involved," Murphy said. "And Matt had to present it to the coaches, but we also worked with the league office."

When asked directly if the league office requested that Green Bay draft the proposal, Murphy said: "I mean, we're always in touch with the league."

In Goodell's April 1 news conference, he said he supports the Packers' plan to broaden the proposal and remove pushing and pulling from the game.

"That makes a lot of sense in many ways because that expands it beyond that single play," Goodell said. "There are a lot of plays where you see people pushing or pulling somebody that are not in the tush push formation that I think do have an increased risk of injury. So I think the committee will look at that and come back in May with some proposals."

ESPN NFL reporters Seth Wickersham, Rob Demovsky and Kevin Seifert contributed to this story

BACK IN 2017, coming off a frustrating season in which his young Minnesota Timberwolves set a modern NBA record by blowing 22 double-digit leads, then-Wolves coach and team president Tom Thibodeau was crystal clear in diagnosing the issue.

"I went through [film of] those games, and it kept coming back to toughness," Thibodeau said during that year's media day. "A lot of what we were doing wasn't tough enough. And this summer we wanted to change that."

One of the quickest ways to increase the team's toughness, Thibodeau suggested, was to infuse more of it into the roster. So despite a slew of teams leaning into the league's load-management strategy to help keep their stars fresh for the postseason, the Wolves did the opposite. They cornered the market on a particular type of player.

"Last year, we had three of the 17 guys in the league who played in all 82 games. And we just added two more, Jamal [Crawford] and Jeff Teague, who played in all 82. So now we have five of the 17," Thibodeau said, clearly proud of what the signings represented. "That's important."

Those pickups didn't even include the additions of Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson, rugged players who had appeared in all 82 games under Thibodeau once previously during their time with the Chicago Bulls.

Eight years later, with the Knicks, Thibodeau's strategy remains. So has the debate that has followed the 67-year-old throughout his career.

Looking at this season, no team has played its bench less frequently or gotten less scoring production from its bench than the Knicks. And it's been almost 40 years, dating back to the 1986-87 Boston Celtics, since a team that led the NBA in starters' minutes reached the NBA Finals, according to ESPN Research.

The two-time Coach of the Year's worldview concerning how heavily he relies on his best players is a polarizing subject for Knicks fans, even as Thibodeau, who on Tuesday tied Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley for fourth on the team's all-time wins list, has helped shepherd the franchise's most sustained run of success in a quarter century.

Thibodeau, whose 58% win percentage is the highest in NBA history among coaches to never reach the Finals, said he believes championship-caliber clubs need to establish a resolve and "mental discipline" throughout the season. But his demanding, win-at-all-costs mentality raises a key question that could determine his team's ceiling and his future with the organization:

Will the heavy-minutes mindset burn out the Knicks for when they need an extra gear the most?

"I think everybody," Thibodeau said last week, "has to run their own race."

ANY OTHER TEAM, and the comments wouldn't have prompted a second thought.

But in New York -- where, for years, the starters have played far more minutes than any other teams, and where the club's best players have been dinged up come playoff time -- the reflections from Mikal Bridges, who leads the NBA in minutes and hasn't missed a game in his seven-year career, were bound to cause a firestorm.

"Sometimes [it's] not fun on the body," Bridges told reporters in Portland last month. "We've got a good enough team where our bench guys can come in and we don't need to play 48, 47 [minutes]. We've got a lot of good guys on this team that can take away the minutes, which helps the defense, helps the offense, helps tired bodies being out there."

Ironically enough, the storyline simmered down by the end of that night when Bridges -- in his 41st minute -- hit a dramatic, buzzer-beating triple to knock off the Blazers in overtime. Still, it was noteworthy that a Knicks newcomer like Bridges would publicly voice the notion of potential overuse.

Even if other Knicks have avoided being as vocal as Bridges, there's plenty to illustrate the team is an outlier when it comes to how much time its top players spend on the court each game.

When Jalen Brunson badly sprained his ankle in overtime against the Lakers nearly a month ago, the Knicks rostered three of the four highest minute-getters in the NBA: Bridges at No. 1, Josh Hart at No. 2 and Brunson at No. 4. Even after Brunson's extended absence, the team's starting five have logged 885 minutes together, 255 more than the next closest team.

Should Bridges and Hart finish first and second in the league in total minutes played, it would be the third time in Thibodeau's coaching career -- 2016-17 and 2020-21 being the others -- that two of his players led the NBA in minutes. There have been just two other seasons in the league's 79-year history where one team had two players leading the NBA in minutes.

For his part, Thibodeau explained that he views it as necessary to play his wing players for longer minutes because many of the league's best players -- the Celtics' All-Star duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown is a potential second-round matchup -- handle the ball so often, and consistently pose the biggest scoring threat.

"We try to keep them matched up. If you look at the league, all those guys are playing 36, 37 minutes," he said. "[Bridges and Hart] are primary wing defenders. That's the way it works."

Some might point to the fact that the Knicks play at one of the NBA's slowest paces as evidence that the workload isn't as strenuous as the minute totals might suggest. But New York's starters might be exerting themselves much more than it appears.

Brunson, the team's floor general, has possessed the ball a league-high 8.7 minutes per game this season, and leads the NBA in clutch baskets with 47. Hart, New York's most physical player, dives on the floor constantly, and has recovered an NBA-high 80 loose balls this season.

In sliding over to defend ballhandlers, Bridges has been forced to run through 25 screens per game -- a Herculean task, and more than any player in the league's 12-year-old tracking era. Looking at the teams the Knicks could face in the first round of the playoffs, Bridges this season has run 37 miles more than Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton, 41 miles more than Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham and 66 miles more than Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard, according to NBA tracking data.

That's why games like December's 24-point victory against the Charlotte Hornets stand out.

The Knicks were dominating Charlotte, which was without 25-point-per-game guard LaMelo Ball and 20-point-per-game forward Miles Bridges. Capitalizing on those absences, New York jumped out to a big advantage and never led by fewer than 20 points over the final 25 minutes.