Just hours before hosting their season opener on Monday Night Football at Soldier Field, the Bears declared their days along the downtown Chicago lakefront as officially numbered. 

The team said Monday afternoon in an open letter it is now pursuing suburban Arlington Heights, Ill., for a new domed stadium. The Bears own 326 acres of land at the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse, but they had previously sought a downtown stadium, in part due to a tax dispute with officials in the suburban locale. 

Since then, though, the effort to build a $4.7 billion stadium near Soldier Field has run into significant obstacles from political leaders and community organizers. Negotiations surrounding the Arlington Heights tax issue, meanwhile, have improved considerably, though they are not yet finalized. As those situations developed, the racecourse location has become the sole focus for the Bears in recent weeks.

“We are partnering with political, labor, business, and community leaders across Illinois to develop a plan for property tax certainty and a fair contribution toward essential infrastructure that will benefit the entire community,” Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren wrote. “Arlington Heights is the only site within Cook County that meets that standard. It allows us to better serve our fan base and deliver a truly transformative and elevated gameday experience.

“Moving outside of the city of Chicago is not a decision we reached easily,” Warren continued. “This project does not represent us leaving, it represents us expanding.”

The stadium pursuit has been a key focus for Warren since he took the Bears job in April 2023. 

Reworked Economics 

Notably, Warren said the new location “requires zero money from the State of Illinois.” That is a significant departure from the downtown plan, which originally called for half the costs funded with public money but ran into heavy resistance, particularly from Gov. J.B. Pritzker. 

The Bears have not detailed the specifics of a revised stadium financing plan and related infrastructure, but it is now expected to be based heavily, if not entirely, on private funds. There has been no retreat, however, in the core vision for the project. The team’s goal is to build a domed stadium capable of hosting major events such as the Super Bowl, Final Four, and College Football Playoff—all competitions currently out of reach for the No. 3 U.S. media market.

To that end, Warren said the Bears aim to host a Super Bowl as soon as 2031, something that would likely require a groundbreaking no later than 2027, and ideally, next year. Getting to that, however, requires plans to be finalized in the next few months, and to that end, Warren wrote, “this is the year” to get that done. 

“This is the type of venue and destination that you all have deserved for years, and we are working every day to make progress,” Warren wrote. “This stadium will allow us to have the best home-field advantage in the National Football League. While we do not yet have all the answers, we are optimistic about working with the Village of Arlington Heights to obtain necessary approvals and begin building our new home.”

The Bears host the Vikings on ESPN and ABC in a game that concludes the league’s opening week of play. 

YouTube drew a global average audience of 17.3 million for its live coverage of the NFL’s game Friday in Brazil between the Chiefs and Chargers, a somewhat underwhelming number that failed to meet initial expectations of setting a league streaming record.

The figure, including an average-minute audience of 16.2 million in the U.S. and 1.1 million elsewhere, does represent a 14% improvement in domestic viewership from the 14.2 million in the U.S. who tuned in last year on Peacock for the league’s initial game in São Paulo between the Eagles and Packers. The NBCUniversal-owned Peacock, however, is a subscription-based service, while the game on Google’s YouTube was available for free to a worldwide audience. 

Further lifting hopes for the YouTube game was the presence of the Chiefs, the league’s top viewership draw. Kansas City and Los Angeles played a competitive contest, with the Chargers prevailing 27–21.

Despite all that, the Christmas 2024 doubleheader on Netflix that averaged more than 24 million viewers remains the NFL high-water mark for streaming. The Chiefs-Chargers game, however, did set a company record for the most concurrent viewers of a livestream on YouTube. 

The YouTube results, meanwhile, were not part of Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel audience measurement methodology and instead were the result of a custom process—a situation that rankled many other networks, including Fox and ESPN. The situation there largely was one of timing, as YouTube did not complete an extended auditing and integration process with Nielsen for first-party streaming data before the game. 

More Pushback

That lack of full inclusion into the Big Data + Panel also means the Brazil game was the first in the NFL’s 2025 regular season to have a publicly released audience number, beating the Thursday night kickoff game between the Cowboys and Eagles.

“Not the same approach as the rest of us, nor [Media Rating Council] accredited. Conclusion … their rating is not a fair comp,” tweeted ESPN SVP of research Flora Kelly on Friday. 

Kelly reiterated that sentiment in a supplemental comment on Monday.

“With no transparency into the methodology I have no idea what these numbers mean,” she tweeted. “That’s the problem with an approach like this and why clear and transparent methodology matters.”

Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill then questioned why YouTube did not complete that data integration process with Nielsen, something expected to take about eight weeks.

“This game was announced four months ago,” Mulvihill tweeted. “What would have been sufficient time?”

Front Office Sports queried Nielsen on the same issue last week, and has yet to receive a response.

Friday’s game reached more than 230 countries and territories, YouTube said. The pregame show, featuring a mix of NFL legends and YouTube creators, averaged 2.4 million viewers, while the postgame show garnered 5.9 million. 

The rare placement of an NFL game on a Friday night again took advantage of a loophole in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, aimed in part at protecting high school and college football. This maneuver will not be repeated next year, however, as the September 2026 calendar falls quite differently.

After President Donald Trump’s attendance at the US Open men’s final delayed the match’s start time by 48 minutes on Sunday, questions remain about how his presence will impact the next major sporting event he plans to attend: the Ryder Cup.

Trump is planning on attending the opening round of the biennial U.S. vs. Europe team golf competition Sept. 26 at Bethpage Black Golf Course in New York, he posted on his Truth Social account last month.

The PGA of America, which organizes the Ryder Cup when it’s played Stateside, was already expecting record crowds of up to 60,000 fans per day. Any extra security measures in place due to Trump’s attendance could further complicate the fan logistics of that opening day.

“While President Trump has indicated his interest in attending the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, specific details have not been confirmed,” the PGA of America said in a statement to Front Office Sports. “As we get closer to Ryder Cup week, we will communicate any relevant updates that may impact the Ryder Cup experience. Our priority remains delivering a seamless, secure, and first-class environment for all our guests.”

Trump, in his social media post, said he would be attending the Ryder Cup “at the invite of the PGA Tour,” but PGA of America CEO Derek Sprague later confirmed to The Athletic that his organization invited Trump. 

After the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, the PGA of America moved the 2022 PGA Championship out of Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey to Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa. Bedminster had previously hosted the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open, which Trump attended during his first term in office.

In 2026, the PGA Tour is returning to Trump National Doral for the first time since 2016, and LIV Golf will play at a Trump course for the fifth consecutive season. On Sunday at the U.S. Open in New York, Trump was spotted with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who is the chairman of LIV Golf and the governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

The Indiana Fever held championship expectations entering the season, but they had a nightmare season riddled with multiple season-ending injuries and a controversial midseason departure.

It’s at least going to end with another playoff appearance.

The Fever clinched their second consecutive postseason berth Sunday after defeating the Washington Mystics, It’s the first time since the 2015 and 2016 seasons that Indiana qualified for the postseason in back-to-back years.

Indiana also won its 23rd game, which guarantees a record above .500 for the first time since 2015. The team finished at exactly .500 last season (20–20), when there were four fewer regular-season games.

The achievement comes just days after the team and Caitlin Clark announced she would miss the remainder of the season and any potential playoff series due to injury. Clark played just 13 games this season, battling multiple injuries. Clark’s latest injury was her right groin, and it has kept her out since mid-July, right before the All-Star break.

The Fever were projected to be title contenders with Clark entering her sophomore campaign following a historic rookie season in which she was fourth in MVP voting. The team brought in a new coaching staff led by 2023 Coach of the Year Stephanie White and veteran help from the likes of DeWanna Bonner, Natasha Howard, Sydney Colson, and Sophie Cunningham.

Only one of those four names will be in the playoff rotation. 

Bonner played just nine games for the Fever. Front Office Sports reported in June that the fit was “off” from the beginning between the Fever and the 38-year-old. Colson and Cunningham each suffered season-ending injuries in August. Even Aari McDonald, a midseason addition driven by injuries and the departure of Bonner, sustained a broken right foot in August that ended her season.

Indiana managed to float in the midfield all season long and ultimately still managed to improve on its 2024 record behind strong seasons from Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston. 

Despite Clark’s absence, the team has still been the biggest draw of the season, averaging 16,250 fans per game across both home and road contests, the most in the league by about 2,500, according to data from Across the Timeline. However, the majority of those games were sold out before the season when fans assumed Clark would be present.

Indiana fans have also maintained support for the team, averaging more than 16,500 fans per game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. While it’s a slight dip from last year’s average (17,035), it’s a far cry from the pre-Clark era average of around 4,000 in 2023. 

The Fever are still one of the WNBA’s biggest TV teams even without Clark, as many of their games have still drawn more than 1 million viewers in her absence. However, there are still double-digit dips in viewership compared to when Clark is in action, and the playoff should be a barometer for Clark’s impact.

The two Fever playoff games last season combined to average about 2.15 million viewers.