Podcasts

Premiership rugby champions Saracens deny they breached salary cap regulations after recent allegations, while Manchester City are in the UEFA spotlight over Financial Fair Play. On the latest This is Moneyball podcast, assistant editor Lee Boyce and co-host Georgie Frost take a look at salary caps and whether they work in sport – with many top US sporting leagues having them. Christopher Stoner QC is our guest this week, as he helps navigate through the maze – and also helps take a look at what the FFP is, and whether it is working. Sir David Crausby, MP for Bolton North East joins us to tell us what is going on at the Trotters, with the future of the historic club in limbo – have the new potential owners been vetted enough? Elsewhere, we talk about the weekend of bad football 'fan' behaviour at grounds in England and Scotland, with Jack Grealish being punched in the Aston Villa vs Birmingham game – can more be done to protect players? The United States women's soccer team files a gender discrimination lawsuit and a bunch of 'cyber nerds' attempt to take over a Staffordshire football club – and fail.

27 years after the founding of the Premier League, it would be difficult for anyone to argue that it is anything other than a great success story. It’s the poster boy for a global, open, free-trading Britain. The beautiful game and the English league is an incredibly successful export business. But players’ enormous salaries, and transfer fees of hundreds of millions of pounds are variously described as obscene, ludicrous and even unsustainable. Each year the eyewatering amount of money spent in the business is not merely sustained, it zooms upwards year after year. In 1981 fewer than ten first division English footballers earned more than £175,000 a year. Now, the average player commands 15 times that. But there are many that long for the post-war era of English football - the so-called halcyon days of the game - when footballers were skint and players might have only received £10 as a signing-on fee from a transfer worth £35,000 to the club. Are they justified in missing the romanticism of the game? Or is this a bygone era best forgotten about in the age of hyperglobalisation? Joining the IEA's Digital Manager Darren Grimes to discuss is Mark Littlewood, Director General of the IEA.

Ian Forrest of The Share Centre looks at recent news from Cineworld (boosted by the acquisition of Regal in the United States, Standard Life Aberdeen and Wm Morrison, still facing tough competition in the supermarket sector. He looks ahead to numbers from Kingfisher and Ocado, which might reveal the effect of the Andover fire and have more light to shed on the M&S deal.

Professor Tim Evans of Middlesex University looks at the state of the UK economy in the wake of the Spring Statement. He looks at taxes, tariffs and debt, pointing out that despite the perceptions of many, the UK is a high-tax economy. He explains why the Conservatives are reluctant to get rid of the deficit entirely. And, as a new book is published, he looks at Chernobyl and the way in which - it now appears - the Soviet Union minimised and covered up the extraordinary extent of the disaster.

James Cameron-Wilson looks at the box office phenomenon that is Captain Marvel, taking nearly £13m in its first weekend and disproving, as with Wonder Woman, the traditional Hollywood studio view that films with female leads do not succeed with the general public. With no other new film making the top ten (Everybody Knows with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz made only #13), James's DVD of the week was Sink The Bismarck, the 1960 film starring Kenneth More.

Steve Caplin salivates over a jet-powered flying motorbike as well as a 5-seat flying car with massive range and speed - if it works. Shark denticles could help us improve aerodynamics. Citymapper is offering discounted London travel passes. Ikea is to sell pollutant-resistant curtains. There's an exploding Kalashnikov drone, mice that can see in the dark and a camping torch which would make a Swiss Army Knife envious. And Steve explains why using his Swiss Army Knife meant he couldn't use is Swiss Army Knife for some time afterwards!

Listen here Philip Hammond's Spring Statement speech.

What can we learn from Philip Hammond's Spring Statement? In conversation with Simon Rose, Ed Bowsher examines the runes. The Statement concentrated on the OBR's latest predictions for the UK economy, all predicated on an orderly Brexit. Although saying that tax or spending plans would be kept for the Budget, now in the Autumn, the Chancellor did have announcements relating to housing, digital advertising, climate change and the police and knife crime. With the Statement coming in the midst of extraordinary Parliamentary upheaval over Brexit, Ed gives his views on the likely direction of Brexit and what all this might mean for markets.

Want to keep up with the latest earnings updates from the States? Well join Chris Hill and the Motley Fool Radio Show team here on Share Radio, direct from Washington DC, for news, views and analysis of the US stocks that matter. In this week's show: The government reports surprisingly low jobs growth; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lays out a new vision that doubles down on privacy; And Costco produces some bulky earnings. Analysts Andy Cross, Ron Gross, and Jason Moser discuss those stories and dig into the latest from Big Lots, Eventbrite, Okta, National Beverage, and Salesforce.com. Plus, Andy talks with Q2 CEO Matt Flake about the future of banking.

Put on your party hats, it's Isa season! After years in the doldrums could we have a proper Isa battle on our hands in 2019? Santander and Coventry Building Society have launched two best-buy easy-access tax-free deals, and that appears to have put some wind in the sails of This is Money assistant editor Lee Boyce. Editor Simon Lambert and host Georgie Frost – along with Lee – talk all things Isa´s: whether they are worth it, the options and importantly, are the new top rates a potential catalyst for more competition? Elsewhere, we take a look at new fintech firm Dozens, offering a five per cent return spotted after a recent London Transport advertising blitz. There is a victory for This is Money readers, as Virgin Money refunds credit card customers stung by charges after unwittingly setting minimum payments rather than paying the full balance when changing card. Simon runs the rule over a 95% interest-only mortgage launched by Newbury Building Society.