MLS CUP WINNERS LEAD REVIVAL OF TORONTO AS CITY OF CHAMPIONS
Bulls of the year: Among the biggest winners in the business of sport in 2017 were the championship organizations in the major North American leagues:
NFL: The New England Patriots, in a Super Bowl comeback for the ages.
MLB: The rags-to-riches Houston Astros, winning the World Series less than two months after hurricane Harvey ravaged the fourth biggest city in the U.S.
NBA: Another Super Team win for the Golden State Warriors and their high-tech ownership group.
NHL: Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins going backto-back.
MLS: Toronto FC reaping the dividends of $15.7 million (all figures in U.S. dollars) in base salaries to its big three of Sebastien Giovinco, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore and winning its first MLS Cup and the first North American title for a Canadianbased franchise since 1993 when the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup and the Toronto Blue Jays captured their second of consecutive World Series trophies.
With the CFL Argonauts emerging as the surprise Grey Cup winners and then shifting into full ownership by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, it rounded out a very bullish year for the city of Toronto overall, with only the Jays underperforming in 2017.
Meanwhile, the impressive Vegas Golden Knights have won 25 of their first 36 games in existence, easily joining the ranks of the best expansion launches in not only NHL but North American history.
Yet even more bullish is the exponential rise of eSports and virtual reality in pro sport and those two phenomena in turn make the NBA itself our biggest sport business bull of the year.
The NBA is the clear leader in both, with the NBA 2K eSports league launching in 18 cities in 2018 and the league riding on two streams of VR television backed by the likes of Google, Samsung and Intel. Add it all up and the proof is in the pudding: The average franchise value in the NBA — $1.36 billion — is second only to the average of $2.3 billion in the NFL. The difference is the NBA is on a rimrattling upswing and the NFL appears to have stalled.
Bears of the year: It’s the perfect storm of negative headlines across multiple fronts — concussions and CTE, a rash of injuries to star players, the dark underbelly of franchise relocations, political protests, domestic violence and drawn-out legal battles, declining television ratings, questionable officiating and use of video replay and attendance — that makes the NFL the most bearish actor in the business of North American sport.
As a $14-billion industry, the NFL remains the clear front-runner in everything from revenues and franchise value to television audiences, video gaming and sports betting.
It is certainly not going anywhere soon. Yet the juggernaut is leaking oil for the first time in almost three decades.
Another bear of the year — the brutally amateurish launch of DAZN as official NFL Canada video streaming rights holder — was a metaphor for how the NFL’s Teflon shield has worn thin.
Yes, LaVar Ball has been nauseating, the NHL Flames tone deaf in their arena funding war with the mayor of Calgary and Russia embarrassed with its expulsion from the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, but no one has seen their stock fall this year as far as the NFL has.
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