Data centre backlash meets sports data: what the newest filings and fines show

Sandra Laville wrote the Guardian report, which The Next Web picked up. It says Torridge district council in north Devon held private talks with developer Xlinks from March 2025 and sent a letter of support in April 2025, before any environmental study or public consultation. Xlinks plans a 1.5GW AI data campus and a 1.8GW battery site on about 344 hectares near Great Torrington, inside a Unesco biosphere reserve. The company puts the cost at up to £13.8bn.

Why does a planning fight in Devon matter to sport? The same infrastructure carries the data feeds that leagues and bookmakers sell.

Genius Sports chief executive Mark Locke told SportsPro on 17 September that the company analyses more than 240,000 sporting events a year. It turns computer-vision data points into a digital twin of each live event. Betting brings in 60 per cent of Genius revenue and media 40 per cent, he said, and he expects those shares to flip. Locke argues that falling rights fees push leagues to make money from fans directly, and that they will do it through technology partners rather than in-house engineering. That model needs compute and connectivity somewhere, usually in a large building with a power contract.

The enforcement record is getting concrete

On 24 September, Ars Technica reported that New Jersey ordered the operator of one of the East Coast's largest planned data centres to pay a $1.1 million fine. The company had installed and run gas generators in secret, in violation of the state's Air Pollution Control Act. The Guardian and Floodlight News investigated, using thermal drone footage that showed 45 of 62 generators running. None of them had the permits required for units of 37 kilowatts or higher, even though they ran at 1,982kW capacities.

DEP Commissioner Ed Potosnak called it the largest enforcement action ever taken against a data centre in New Jersey. Residents were less impressed. "What's $1.07 million?" Tiffany Leone-Vespa told The New York Times. "They should have done it for each generator they were running, illegally."

Also on 24 September, Ars Technica reported that Google's first Project Suncatcher test satellite is due to launch on 1 October aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. It carries four of Google's TPU accelerators with about one kilowatt of solar power, and the cooling system can only run in bursts of roughly 15 minutes.

Scale, and who gets to argue about it

In Australia, officials argue the backlash is an import. Victorian minister Steve Dimopoulos told the Guardian, in a piece published on 26 September, that "we are not the United States" and that planning, energy and water systems are more closely monitored. Belinda Dennett of Data Centres Australia said the country has 252 data centres with 1.4GW of capacity, against 5,400 and 53.7GW in the US. The Guardian noted that Australia has just under one data centre per 100,000 people, against 1.5 in the US.

CNBC reported on 26 September that postings for welders and pipefitters are up 164 per cent year over year. Nicole Bachaud of ZipRecruiter put the mean minimum salary for data centre jobs at nearly $208,000, up 125.1 per cent. Separately, CNBC reported that Chinese prefab builder Brightray sees US demand, even as Washington weighs bans on Chinese components. The sports data trade is watching the same supply chain.