BULLS OF THE WEEK

It has been a great month or so to be a baseball fan in Chicago, with the National League Cubs (21-6) and American League White Sox (19-10) playing at a combined clip of .717 with 40 wins in 56 starts going into the weekend. This week, the Cubbies tied the old 1905 New York Giants for the second-largest run differential (plus-96) after 27 games in Major League Baseball history (the 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates had the largest gap at plus-103).

Yet for the second consecutive week, the biggest winners in the business of sport are Leicester City FC, who on Monday clinched the first Premier League soccer title in their 132-year history. Leicester City made good as 5,000-to-1 underdogs on the strength of a remarkable run of 77 points in 36 matches going into today’s match at home against Everton. It’s a remarkable story of resourceful ownership, inspired coaching and strong scouting that has added new meaning to the term King Power, the name of the Bangkokbased retail travel and duty free empire held by club owner and Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha that is also front and centre on the LCFC jersey kits and on the marquee at King Power Stadium in Leicester.

LCFC’s timing is impeccable: Winning the Premiership will mean more than US$216 million in prize money in the first year of the league’s new US$7.2-billion domestic television rights deal. It’s that new TV deal that will transform the economics of the Premiership to the point where new-found parity could produce more champions from outside the Big Four of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool.