Spying on its opponents has potentially cost English soccer club Southampton a place in the Premier League and around $270 million.The team from England’s southcoast was expelled Tuesday from the second-tier Championship playoff final after admitting to the unauthorized filming of other clubs’ practice sessions.The playoff final is labelled the world’s richest one-off soccer match because a windfall of at least 200 million pounds ($270 million) in future Premier League earnings is on offer for the winning team.It isn’t the first example of espionage in the world of sports as teams look to gain an advantage over their rivals.Here are some others:
New England Patriots sanctioned twiceThe Patriots didn’t learn their lesson.In 2007, the Patriots were caught using video to record the New York Jets’ signals during an NFL game. Coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, and the Patriots were fined $250,000 and docked a first-round draft pick.Twelve years after that episode — widely known as Spygate — the team acknowledged that a video crew filmed the Cincinnati Bengals sideline during a game against Cleveland Browns, a week before the Bengals hosted the Patriots.The Patriots were fined $1.1 million and had a third-round pick in the 2021 draft taken away.
