Venues

• Professional sports organizations will be allowed to host spectators at outdoor venues in Texas operating at 25 percent of their normal capacity beginning May 31 under a revised order from Gov. Greg Abbott (R). The PGA Tour, which is the only major sports organization to take the required step of submitting a plan to the Texas Department of State Health Services so far, said its “focus right now” is holding the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Golf Club in Fort Worth from June 11-14 without fans in attendance.

Hockey

• NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced that if and when medically cleared, the league will resume the 2019-20 season by moving straight into the playoffs with a 24-team format to be held in two cities that will serve as hubs for the Eastern and Western conferences, making it the first major team sport in North America to announce definitive plans for a return. Under the guidelines, official training camp will begin no earlier than July 1 and the league will crown a Stanley Cup champion by early fall after holding all playoff games in two of the following cities: Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas; Edmonton; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Minneapolis/St. Paul, Pittsburgh; Toronto and Vancouver.

Golf

• Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning’s victory over Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady in “The Match: Champions for Charity” attracted an average audience of 5.8 million total viewers across several AT&T Inc.-owned channels, the best combined mark ever for a golf broadcast on cable. The compelling made-for-TV event, which featured live audio from the four competitors, also raised $20 million for COVID-19 relief.

Basketball

• A survey of NBA general managers conducted by the league about a potential return-to-play scenario found that about half of teams voted to end the 2019-2020 regular season and go directly into postseason, sources said, and just over half voted to reseed the top 16 teams without regard for conference affiliation. Seventy-five percent of teams also voted in favor of a play-in tournament between “bubble” teams to determine which clubs claim the final seeds, while 25 percent voted in favor of a World Cup-style group stage.

Baseball

• The MLB players’ union is likely to reject the league’s proposal to further slash players’ pay in order to begin the 2020 season, according to people familiar with its deliberations, and will instead counter with a plan that calls for more regular-season games to be played this year. It is unclear when the union will respond to MLB’s plan, which had called for a sliding scale of additional cuts to player salaries that would primarily affect the highest earners during a shortened, 82-game season to be played without fans in attendance.

Football

• NFL owners voted to test a modified instant replay system during the upcoming preseason that will allow the replay assistant to consult with the referee about some clock issues and calls, such as questions of whether a pass was complete or incomplete, or whether a ball carrier reached a goal line or first-down marker or was down by contact. The league also shelved plans to vote on two more aggressive proposals that would overhaul the instant replay process and another that would have provided teams with a fourth-and-15 alternative to the onside kick.

Soccer

• The English Premier League announced plans to return to play on June 17 after a three-month break due to the coronavirus pandemic, a course of action that still requires government approval. The agreement among EPL stakeholders to resume the season comes after weeks of uncertainty stemming from disagreement about protocols, including objections from smaller teams to games being held at neutral sites.

• The NWSL announced plans to kick off its 2020 season on June 27 in the form of a one-month tournament sans fans in Utah. Final rosters for the so-called NWSL Challenge Cup are due June 21 as questions over how many of the league’s stars will participate abound.

• MLS commissioner Don Garber threatened employees with disciplinary action, including termination of their jobs and fines of up to $1 million, for providing sensitive league information to the media, writing in a memo that leaks to the press have been “impacting our negotiations with players, commercial partners and local authorities” regarding the league’s return to play. Garber said the league has been working with an outside investigative firm to pinpoint the sources of leaks.

College sports

• The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and its media partners announced they would delay the selection of game times and network assignments past the typical June 1 deadline amid uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The organizers did not set a new deadline, only saying that “these kickoff times and network designations will be announced at a later date as we all continue to prepare for the college football season.”

Research

• A new survey from Morning Consult revealed that 47 percent of self-identified sports fans believe artificial crowd noise would make the experience of watching live sports being played at an empty stadium on television less enjoyable. By contrast, just 16 percent of fans said they believe the addition of canned cheering would make the telecasts more enjoyable.

• The results of a May 19-21 Morning Consult poll showed that 41 percent of self-identified sports fans favor a timely return to play, compared with 38 percent who prefer waiting until it’s safe to host crowds on site. That represents a major shift from an April 3-5 survey, in which 70 percent of fans said they would prefer leagues wait until fans can attend to resume competition and just 16 percent said they would favor events resume in empty stadiums right away.

• Saturday: NTT IndyCar Series resumes at Texas Motor Speedway.

• Saturday: UFC 250 in Las Vegas.

• June 11: PGA Tour resumes play with Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas.

• June 11: Spanish soccer league La Liga resumes play.

• June 17: English Premier League’s proposed return to play.

• June 20: Rescheduled Belmont Stakes.

• June 20: Italian soccer league Serie A resumes play. 

• June 23: LPGA Tour resumes play with Marathon Classic at Highland Meadows Golf Club in Sylvania, Ohio.

• June 27: NWSL Challenge Cup begins in Herriman, Utah.

1) Behind The Sponsorship Scramble
E.J. Schultz and Jessica Wohl, Ad Age

2) Garber claims MLS hired firm to investigate leaks, citing The Athletic’s reports
The Athletic

3) The Match: Champions for Charity delivers record TV rating
Todd Kelly, Golfweek

4) Yankees playing hardball on ticket refunds amid coronavirus, fans say
Dean Balsamini, New York Post

5) Changes to marketing policies could help NFL teams recoup revenue
Ben Fischer and Terry Lefton, Sports Business Journal

6) As Top Leagues Move Closer to Return, Fans Are Increasingly Open to Crowd-Less Sporting Events
Alex Silverman, Morning Consult

7) The N.B.A. May Return Too Soon
Marc Stein, The New York Times

8) Trevor Bauer jab at agent Scott Boras reveals union rift
Ken Davidoff, New York Post

9) National Hockey League Edges Toward Restart With Detailed Plans
Andrew Knoll, The New York Times

10) Naomi Osaka is the Highest-Paid Female Athlete Ever, Topping Serena Williams
Kurt Badenhausen, Forbes