Brown University announced Tuesday that it will once again require students to submit standardized-test scores as part of their applications. The news follows similar announcements from Dartmouth College and Yale University last month.
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Tiger Woods of the United States and Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland walk to the 11th fairway during a practice round prior to the 2023 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club on April 03, 2023 in Augusta, Georgia.
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Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s indoor golf league, TGL, has postponed its inaugural season by a year until the start of 2025, the organization said Monday.
The decision comes after the roof of the new arena slated to host TGL matches collapsed last week. The league said the power system used during construction of the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida failed, causing a dome structure to deflate.
The accident did not cause injuries or damage the league’s golf simulators and other technology, TGL said. But TGL delayed the season, which was expected to start in January, after speaking to key partners.
“This decision came after reviewing short-term solutions, potential construction timelines, player schedules, and the primetime sports television calendar,” the league said in a statement. “We are confident that the extension will only improve our delivery.”
TGL, which counts the PGA Tour as a partner, was founded by McIlroy, Woods and former NBC executive Mike McCarthy. The trio wants to create a primetime indoor golf league to attract new fans to the sport at as the emergence of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf, and then its proposed merger with the PGA Tour, left golf at a crossroads.
Woods was optimistic about the league’s future despite the delayed launch.
“Although the events of last week will force us to make adjustments to our timelines, I’m fully confident that this concept will be brought to life by our great committed players,” Woods said in a statement Monday.
TGL has drawn some of the best golfers in the world as part of its lineup. It’s unclear how the new timeline could affect player participation.
The league has also attracted a number of high-profile team owners and investors including hedge funder Steve Cohen, Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, Fenway Sports Group, tech founder Alexis Ohanian and tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams. Other investors in the league include basketball great Stephen Curry, race car driver Lewis Hamilton, women’s soccer player Alex Morgan, singer Justin Timberlake and pro football’s Tony Romo and Josh Allen.
TGL signed a multi-year media rights deal with ESPN in October to broadcast its events.
ESPN said it fully supports the decision to postpone the 2024 season.
“We have believed in them and their vision from the beginning, and that has not changed. The additional time to plan, test and rehearse will only make it better, said Rosalyn Durant, executive vice president, programming and acquisitions at ESPN.
Just a few years ago, pickleball was barely known to most people. Today, it’s America’s fastest growing sport.
With courts popping up in cities and parks across the country, celebrities and pro athletes buying up pro teams, and more than 36 million people giving it a shot last year, it’s hard to escape the pickleball buzz.
One of the sport’s biggest boosters is Steve Kuhn, a former hedge fund manager who founded Major League Pickleball. He spoke this week at CNBC’s Game Plan conference about the sport’s rapid rise and some of their biggest challenges on the horizon.
“I think there was a time when pickleball was considered a sport that was not really a sport. There was almost like a hushed, embarrassed tone, when talking about it,” said Kuhn, who is known to wear red, white and blue cap saying “Pickleball will save America.”
“But today, when Kevin Durant, Lebron James and Tom Brady say it’s cool, I think that changes everybody’s opinion,” he said.
The billionaire, who lives in Austin, has gotten the pro league off the ground by growing the business with sponsorships, media deals and expansion teams.
Major League Pickleball teams today are going for as much as $10 million. Just a year ago, teams were being scooped up for as little as $100,000. Professional Pickleball can be seen on almost every major television network and many streamers.
With the rapid growth of the sport has come new challenges, such as making the game more accessible, easier to learn, and creating consistent rules and scoring.
Kuhn said he believes rally scoring, which allows players to score regardless of who is serving, would be beneficial to the sport.
“We’re begging the sport to follow our lead on that. We think that would make it easier for more people to learn and have fun, especially kids,” he said.
Not everyone’s a fan of pickleball, though. As the sport has exploded, complaints have grown, too. In towns across America, neighbors are griping about the noise from the ball hitting the paddle. With the growing demand, many towns are converting their tennis courts into pickleball courts, angering the tennis players.
“We need to create dedicated pickleball courts, where we’re not going to bother anybody. It’s our responsibility to do that,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn said he’s also passionate about getting more kids and diverse communities to participate. He will be heading to Washington in the next few months to talk with members in the House, Senate and White House about getting more government funding for the sport, he said.
Kuhn said school gyms can build pickleball courts at an incredibly low cost and it’s a great way to get kids moving again.
While he’s happy with the sport and excited about where it’s going, there is just one thing about pickleball Kuhn isn’t quite sold on: its name, which was came from pickle boat races in Bainbridge Island, Washington.
“I still don’t love the name,” Kuhn said. “But it doesn’t matter anymore.”
While game developers seem to hate the idea of Web3 coming into games, players who compete in gaming tournaments for a living are more open to trying out blockchain gaming.
Professional Dota 2 player Erik Engel for Gaimin Gladiators, more commonly known by his gamer tag “Tofu,” expressed his thoughts on Web3 and how it can help gamers in a statement sent to Cointelegraph.
Engel, who has won over $400,000from various major tournaments in the Dota 2 competitive gaming scene, said it’s refreshing to see companies make “more out of games than just games.” He explained:
“The idea of blockchain gaming is still a new and expanding topic for most of us, and it’s something I want to explore more in the future. If it’ll improve gaming and make it even more rewarding, then that’s definitely something to look out for in times ahead.”
In addition, Engel believes that Web3 has features that “genuinely feel beneficial to the player” and expressed that he’s excited to see what companies come up with in the future.
Rocket League professional gamer Max Ng, known by his gamer tag “Maxeew,” also echoed Engel’s sentiments. According to Ng, he really liked the idea of games being developed differently. He said:
“The idea behind adding new technology and features is something that pretty much any game can benefit from, especially when it is something that can reward the users’ time and expenditure on the game itself.”
Ng said that while he’s already looked into blockchain-based games, he has never tried them personally. However, the gamer said that he’ll start to get into it once the busy competitive gaming season ends.
Meanwhile, Joseph Turner, the co-founder of Gaimin Gladiators — the organization to which Engel and Ng belong — said that the initial advent of Web3 games built within the decentralized finance space “spooked many major publishers.”
In 2021, Valve Corporation — the developers of popular video game titles like Dota 2 and Half-Life — removed blockchain-based games from its gaming marketplace, Steam. The company updated its guidelines to disallow games that issue cryptocurrencies or nonfungible tokens.
Turner described Valve as an “extremely traditional” gaming company and said the firm would not be diving into Web3 like other companies did. Despite this, Turner believes that the tide will change. “Although I understand why Valve made the statements they did, I feel their position will change rapidly over time,” he said.
Apart from integrating Web3 with games, the gaming organization executive encouraged blockchain projects to be involved in the professional gaming scene. “I strongly believe that the Web3 world should directly engage the competitive gaming industry,” Turner added.
Related: Gamers are more interested in earning Bitcoin than NFTs: Survey
Walter Lee, partner growth and GameFi leader at BNB Chain — which started penetrating the competitive gaming landscape through a partnership with Gaimin Gladiators — said that Web3 and blockchain technology could empower traditional gaming ecosystems.
From the tokenization of in-game assets to other use cases, such as an on-chain verifiable random number generation mechanism, Lee believes that “the potential is huge.“ In addition, the executive also believes that because of the speed of the growth of Web3 gaming, it will one day simply be called gaming.
The executive also highlighted that Web3 offers many opportunities for professional gamers as well. He explained:
“There is a surge of many interesting upcoming games from various new studios. Some of these titles may potentially gain massive popularity and generate new exciting esports leagues for the industry.”
Lee believes that gamers can also build their brand and revenue streams in Web3: “Players will be able to sustain and build in the industry with lesser reliance on an esports firm; this balances the demand between esports firms and players,” he said.
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