The US Open continues to set the standard for payouts in professional tennis.

The Grand Slam tournament announced Wednesday that it is raising the total player compensation to a record $90 million in 2025, a 20% increase from $75 million last year. The compensation consists of $85 million in prize money and $5 million in additional support to “reduce out-of-pocket expenses,” which includes hotel accommodations and a $1,000 travel stipend.

Purses Near $300 Million

The 2025 US Open’s $85 million prize money is significantly more than the other three majors, all of which also broke the record for their respective tournaments:

• US Open: $85 million
• Wimbledon: $72.7 million (£53.5 million)
• French Open: $63.7 million (€56.35 million)
• Australian Open: $60 million (A$96.5 million)

Steep Singles Prize Bump

The men’s and women’s singles champions will take home $5 million, a 39% increase from last year and the largest championship prize in professional tennis. 

The first prize trumps the nearly $4.9 million Jannik Sinner won at the ATP Finals and $4.8 million Coco Gauff won at the WTA Finals last year. However, the total prize pool for each of those events last year was $15.3 million. The prize money for the 2025 ATP and WTA Finals has not been announced.

The singles prize increase at the 2025 US Open means that the runners-up will take home $2.5 million—more than the $2.2 million prize Sinner and Madison Keys took home for winning the 2025 Australian Open.

Indiana Fever standout Sophie Cunningham has always been one of the most outspoken players in the WNBA, but her newfound fame as the enforcer of Caitlin Clark has given her a much bigger spotlight. It led to a massive boost in followers (1.6 million on TikTok, 1.2 million on Instagram) and landed her a podcast, which she launched last week. 

The mix of Cunningham’s unfiltered thoughts and massive following, however, has led to two separate fines from the WNBA over the last few weeks.

Cunningham revealed Tuesday on the second episode of her podcast Show Me Something that she received a $1,500 fine from the WNBA for criticizing referees. The fine was due to comments she made on the premiere episode of her podcast, which launched last Wednesday.

“If I was a ref, I know I would mess up all the time. I’m not saying that your job is easy—but when it is a simple call right in front of your face multiple times, what are you doing?” Cunningham said. She also said some WNBA referees are “inconsistent” with their calls.

The Fever guard revealed on July 23 that she received a $500 fine for a TikTok she posted a week earlier that also took a shot at WNBA referees. In the post, Cunningham was lip-syncing to a portion of the song “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter with the lyrics “Stupid or is it slow? Maybe it’s useless?” with text on the screen that read “@ some refs.”

In the first podcast episode, Cunningham said the WNBA fines “are a joke” and even predicted she was going to get fined again.

“You fining me $500 is not going to do shit. … And then I’ll get fined for that, and then I’ll get fined for this, and the fines will continue,” the six-year pro said. 

WNBA’s Referee Problem

While Cunningham has been one of the most consistent public critics of WNBA referees, she’s far from the only detractor. Some examples include Chicago Sky star Angel Reese, who said last month that league officiating has to be fixed.

Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve criticized referees after the 2024 WNBA Finals, saying the championship was “stolen” from her team.

At the WNBA All-Star Game in June, commissioner Cathy Engelbert addressed a question on the league’s referees at a press conference, saying they “hear the concerns.”

After a stunning drop in the 2025 NFL Draft, Shedeur Sanders will start for the Browns in their opening preseason game Friday night.

Sanders, the former Colorado quarterback and son of Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, was one of the biggest names coming into the draft. But amid swirling rumors that teams didn’t want to deal with the presence of his superstar father, Sanders fell to the fifth round. The Browns chose Sanders at pick No. 144, notably their second quarterback taken behind Dillon Gabriel.

The slide even caught the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump, who posted on his Truth Social platform ahead of the draft’s second round: “What is wrong with NFL owners, are they STUPID?…He should be ‘picked’ IMMEDIATELY by a team that wants to WIN.” Sanders also received a prank call that resulted in a $250,000 fine for the Falcons and $100,000 fine for their defensive coordinator, whose son called the quarterback.

The Browns already have a crowded quarterback room. Joe Flacco, 40, has been the team’s main slinger in practice. Gabriel and Kenny Pickett are other options, but they are both out with hamstring injuries. This week, Cleveland added Tyler “Snoop” Huntley. (Deshaun Watson, who signed a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million deal with the Browns in 2022, has a torn Achilles tendon and is expected to miss most of the season, if not all.)

Teams often use their starters sparingly during the preseason to allow players fighting for a spot on the 53-man roster a chance to make their case (and to avoid exposing starters to potential injuries). NFL teams typically keep two, sometimes three, quarterbacks at most, meaning a low-stakes preseason game could be consequential in Sanders’s making the final roster.

Cleveland head coach Kevin Stefanski confirmed Wednesday that Sanders will get the start, and that he and Huntley will be the only quarterbacks to see the field. The Browns play the Panthers in Charlotte.

Despite his fall, Sanders still had the third-best-selling incoming rookie jersey in the days after the draft. The Colorado bookstore is selling the jersey of Travis Hunter, taken No. 2 overall by the Jaguars, and said Sanders’s jersey is supposed to arrive soon.

Sanders has said he doesn’t want his father attending Browns camp after he visited his brother Shilo for his first practice in Tampa Bay.

“I don’t want him coming to see me right now because I want to get to where I want to go, then for him to see me,” the young quarterback said earlier this week. “I don’t want him to come and see me get a couple reps, and he is cheering like a good dad. Like, nah, you can’t be proud of me right now. I got to get to where I’m going, and I know it’s a lot I got to do to get there.”

A former Miami Heat security guard appeared in federal court Tuesday, accused of stealing hundreds of pieces of game-worn memorabilia and selling them for about $2 million.

Marcos Thomas Perez used his special access to a Heat equipment room to steal game-worn jerseys and other memorabilia and sell them online across state lines, federal prosecutors say. Perez is accused of stealing more than 400 game-worn jerseys, about 100 of which he sold for roughly $2 million. (The other 300 items were found when law enforcement searched his house, and the Heat confirmed the stolen items.) 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida stated that Perez often undervalued the items, noting that he sold a jersey worn by LeBron James in the NBA Finals for about $100,000, which was later sold at Sotheby’s for $3.7 million.

Perez spent 25 years with the Miami Police Department and worked as a security guard for the Heat from 2016 to 2021, as well as for the NBA from 2022 to 2025. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Miami branch of the FBI are working on the case together, with help from Miami PD.

Prosecutors charged Perez with one count of transporting and transferring stolen goods in interstate commerce. He faces up to 10 years in prison with a maximum fine of $250,000.

Federal authorities said the equipment room was full of special gear that the team “intended to display in a future Miami Heat museum.” The Heat haven’t announced any plans for a dedicated team museum. James has his own museum, LeBron James’s Home Court, that opened in 2023 in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. James won two NBA championships in Miami (2012 and 2013) while playing for the Heat from 2010 to 2014.

A spokesperson for the Heat declined to comment on the investigation and did not answer questions about the museum.