CANUCKS ROLLING, BUT GREY CUP RULES
CFL’s big game bucks trend south of border by drawing best television numbers in years
BULLS OF THE WEEK
It’s been a bullish week sportswise for the country’s largest media market, with the Toronto Argonauts winning the Grey Cup last Sunday. They stunned the heavily favoured Calgary Stampeders 27-24 in the snow at Ottawa’s TD Place — the best corporately named football stadium in North America.
Kudos, by the way, to the host Ottawa Redblacks, last year’s champions, who further cemented their bullish reputation as one of the three best-run franchises in the CFL by doing Lord Grey proud.
The Argos’ unexpected windfall came four days before Toronto FC won the Eastern Conference trophy and earned a ticket to its second consecutive Major League Soccer Cup final.
That game — to be hosted once again at BMO Field on Saturday, Dec. 9 — is a rematch of last year’s championship won in penalty kicks by Seattle Sounders FC. To round out the week, the Toronto Maple Leafs have won nine of 12 to earn a 17-9-1 record — the third-best in the NHL — going into a Hockey Night in Canada showdown Saturday afternoon against the host Vancouver Canucks.
Meanwhile, the retooling Canucks have to be happy with a 3-2-1 road trip to go with seven wins in their last 12 games and a surprisingly respectable 12-10-4 record.
They’re also celebrating the veteran Daniel Sedin — who joined his brother Henrik in crossing the career 1,000-point mark Thursday, becoming the first brother act in NHL history to do so — and the rookie Brock Boeser, who at 25 points is now tied in NHL scoring with Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.
Yet the Bull of the Week is clearly the Canadian institution that is the Grey Cup.
Entertainment-wise, it was an instant classic. Business-wise, it drove a combined average national audience of 4.3 million Canadians to TSN (4.1 million) and RDS (222,000) and peaked at six million viewers in the dying seconds of a remarkable finish. Those were the best TV numbers for the Grey Cup since 2013.
The result was also a big shot in the arm for the Argos, striving under new ownership to rebuild a season-ticket base decimated through promotional neglect since their last win in 2012.
If last Sunday’s result helps the Boatmen turn around their sagging attendance of the past few seasons, it’s a win for the entire CFL.
BEARS OF THE WEEK
Football, NFL-style, did not have as good news as the CFL did from the department of television ratings.
After an American Thanksgiving that was a turkey according to the Nielsen TV numbers — down 19 per cent for the holiday triple-header, with slides of 10 per cent on Fox, 19 per cent on NBC and a whopping 25 per cent on CBS — it wasn’t much better the rest of the way for Week 12.
The Fox and CBS Sunday afternoon games fell nine per cent and eight per cent, respectively, and ESPN’s Monday Night Football unravelled to the tune of a 33 per cent drop from 2016.
Only NBC Sunday Night Football showed an increase this week — an incremental three per cent — and even that needed an exciting finish between two marquee brands (the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers) to get there. The bearish TV ratings are getting as much attention as Carson Wentz and the 10-1 Philadelphia Eagles, and that’s uncomfortable territory for the NFL.
The Sport Market on TSN 1040 rates and debates the bulls and bears of sport business. Join Tom Mayenknecht Saturday from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. for a behind-the-scenes look at the sport business stories that matter most to fans. Follow Tom Mayenknecht at: Twitter.com/ TheSportMarket