Dodgers’ dollars paying off with baseball’s best team
BULLS OF THE WEEK
Setting aside the unfathomable Super Bowl XLI collapse of the Atlanta Falcons and notwithstanding the poor Major League Baseball season for the Braves, it’s been a good year to be a sports fan in the headquarters of CNN and hometown of the late Martin Luther King, Jr.
It certainly is this weekend when the hottest new playpen in North American professional sport — US$1.6-billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta — hosts its first Falcons pre-season game Saturday. Combined with the US$622-million Sun Trust Park, Mercedes-Benz Stadium gives Atlanta two new sports venues worth US$2.22 billion in construction costs in the space of five months.
Atlanta United FC, the city’s new Major League Soccer franchise that has been drawing more than 46,000 fans per game at the Georgia Dome, plays its first game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sept. 10.
It’s also been a good year to be a Toronto FC fan: After reaching the MLS Cup Final last December, the Reds are following up big time and rewarding the team’s season-ticket holders after almost a decade of futility. They are now undefeated in eight straight at BMO Field and sitting in first place in the Eastern Conference with 53 points on 26 matches, by far the best record in the league.
The winning product — fuelled by three of the best designated players in Major League Soccer in $7.115-million Sebastian Giovinco, $6.5-million Michael Bradley and $4.875-million Jozy Altidore (all U.S. dollars) — is packing the expanded BMO Field capacity of 27,000 on a regular basis. It’s a big payoff for Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which appears content to operate Toronto FC as the most expensive team in MLS, with a payroll of more than US$22.4 million in total compensation.
Yet there’s no team in sport more expensive nor more bullish right now than the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball, winners of their 90th game in 126 played heading into action Friday night.
It won’t mean much if the Dodgers do not make a big run and win the World Series, but it has to be a relief to Guggenheim Baseball Investments.
That ownership group, which bought the Dodgers out of bankruptcy protection for a record US$2 billion in 2014, has invested more in player payroll than any other sport franchise in the world (including retained, buried and DL salaries, a total of US$259.8 million in 2017).
Now all they need to do is get their telecasts distributed to the 70 per cent of their fan base that is currently blacked out from watching Dodgers games on Sportsnet LA.
BEARS OF THE WEEK
In another instalment of bad headlines from the intersection of politics and sports, no one had a more bearish week than ESPN, no matter how hard they tried to justify removing broadcaster Robert Lee from his assignment to do commentary at next weekend’s University of Virginia football game in Charlottesville, Va.
The move generated many times more controversy, outrage and attention of the wrong kind than the alternative: simply letting the Chinese-American football analyst do his job and see how many Americans really cared — or even noticed — that he shared the name of the Confederate general whose statue was so in the news.
It was the wrong call. Period. The Sport Market on TSN 1040 rates and debates the bulls and bears of sport business. Join Tom Mayenknecht Saturday from 7 to 11 a.m. for a behind-the-scenes look at the sport business stories that matter most to fans.