PLUCKED FROM THE AIR
As one business analyst put it: ‘If you’d lined up 25 people, he’d have been No. 25.’ The man who’s just been tapped to run the country’s biggest sports conglomerate is a relatively obscure airline executive whose past contains controversy. Who is Michael
In the spring of 1986, three decades before he was hired as chief executive of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, Michael Friisdahl was flouting the wishes of the prime minister of Canada. He was strident, too, telling one reporter: “I’m no more for apartheid than you are — but if there’s a market for that product, it’s our obligation to market it.”
His product was tourism packages to South Africa, and as an owner of Nordic Tours Ltd., Friisdahl was reportedly one of the largest suppliers in Canada. He argued that companies should avoid becoming “politically motivated,” even as Brian Mulroney was emerging as a world-leading advocate of sanctions for South Africa, in the push to end apartheid.
South Africa had already been barred from competing at the Olympics, and Canada was trying to increase diplomatic pressure. Bernard Wood, who was Mulroney’s personal emissary, said there was “general grumpiness” from companies with affected interests in South Africa, but that “there weren’t very many who were prepared to be stridently opposed, either.”
The reluctance of some businesses “was absolutely appalling,” said Linda Freeman, a professor in the department of political science at Carleton University, who has written extensively on Canada’s foreign policy in South Africa. “It was one of those cases where there was an international consensus developing, that nothing could justify any support of any kind for a regime like the apartheid regime.”
MLSE, the Canadian sports giant, announced that the 53-year-old Friisdahl will take over as CEO in December, weeks after he emerged from relative obscurity to claim the job.
Following a career spent mostly in the travel industry, the Toronto-based executive will be leading a company holding an array of properties, from sports to real estate to television to restaurants and bars.
Richard Peddie, the longest-serving chief executive in MLSE history, led the company in several rounds of expansion.
Tim Leiweke, the short-lived successor, drew attention for a series of bold proclamations, with only some coming to fruition. It is not known what the board of directors liked most in Friisdahl, but several observers suggest he will not be the imperialist or the exhibitionist — he instead seems destined to be the fundamentalist.
Friisdahl would have been in his mid-20s when he made his early protests against Mulroney’s policies in the 1980s. The tourism sanctions, while largely voluntary, were still critically important, according to Wood, who said they conveyed the notion to white South Africans “they were not behaving as part of the West” with their racist policies.
“Tourism was obviously an industry that was important for the country,” Wood said. “But it was also something that was probably not a question of live-ordie survival. So that would have been quite high on the list of things that you wanted to send a message with, to discourage tourism.”
“The private sector just refused to take the point,” said Freeman.
Several requests to interview Friisdahl were declined, both through MLSE and through Air Canada, where he has spent the past three years leading Rouge, the airline’s discount carrier, as part of Air Canada’s Leisure Group. Representatives from the MLSE board, as well as Friisdahl’s brother, referred all interview requests to an MLSE spokesman.
In the end, Friisdahl submitted written responses, relayed through an MLSE spokesperson, to questions from the Star. He noted “many companies” kept doing business in South Africa during that period.
“Weighing a decision of the past, in the context of what we know today, is very difficult,” he said through the spokesperson.
“The travel industry was just one of many that tried to find the right balance between providing our services to the people who depended on us while being sensitive to the people affected by the problems in South Africa at that time.”
Friisdahl’s company reportedly earned up to $5,000 per trip to South Africa, and booked around 2,000 trips to the country in 1985 alone.
In an interview with the Globe and Mail in 1986, he defended his decision to continue operating in opposition to his government: “As long as South Africa continues to be safe for clients, and there is a market for South Africa in Canada, then we will continue to sell it.”
Business, then, was just business. And Friisdahl was proving to be adept, and selftaught, in his field.
‘One of the smartest guys’
Eric Altschul spent four years working with Friisdahl at Thomas Cook North America, in Toronto, and he did not mince words when asked to describe his former boss: “Michael is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked for.”
Friisdahl was a quick study, he said, and “is probably the best negotiator I’ve ever seen in action.”
In an interview with TSN the day his hiring was announced, Friisdahl said he moved to Canada from Denmark with his family when he was13 years old, and that he was a high school graduate who became an entrepreneur.
“I didn’t even know he didn’t go to university,” Altschul said.
Friisdahl was the company’s chief executive before he moved to Air Canada, three years ago. Altschul said Thomas Cook North America had employees spread across several floors of an office on Eglinton Ave., and that Friisdahl was “a very strong and good communicator.”
Altschul, now the chief executive of ABC Global Services, a travel firm based in Florida, said that while Friisdahl might appear quiet and mysterious to the general public, he was well-known in his business circles.
“He is not a recluse or a shy individual,” he said. “He’s always been out there and vocal and outspoken for the right things for the industry.”
Friisdahl landed closer to the spotlight two years ago, during the launch of Air Canada Rouge, the discount airline. As part of the company’s focus on customer service, it was announced flight attendants would be sent to the Disney Institute in Orlando, Fla., for advanced training — training they would, in part, have to fund on their own.
It was widely reported that flight attendants would be required to pay $49 a month over three years to cover part of that training. If they left the company before the end of that term, they would reportedly be responsible for the balance of the $1,764.
“I think Michael is very equipped to do the job,” said Canadian travel industry veteran Jonathan Carroll, chief executive of Travel Nation Canada. “He’s a good, seasoned businessman, plain and simple.”
Friisdahl has spent the majority of his career in the travel industry, but he has also taken at least one step outside his comfort zone. A little more than a decade ago, he was a co-owner of an Italian-themed restaurant in Rosedale, named Cucina.
It opened to at least one positive review, with a story in the Star noting how “folks rushed the place” in the spring of 1998. The review also suggested that service at the restaurant was “strained” because of its popularity. The restaurant did not last long. One former restaurant employee, who requested anonymity, described Friisdahl as “a bit of a food guy,” who did not have the same experience in the business as his partner. That did not mean he was at fault for the venture’s brief run, though, according to the former employee, who said, “it had to do with other dynamics taking place.”
In his written response to the Star, Friisdahl said he was involved “purely as an investor,” and that: “As an entrepreneur, you make many investments, both inside and outside your core industry, and in the case of Cucina, while it was initially very successful, over the long term it didn’t prove to be viable financially.”
A succession of restaurants have opened and failed at that location, at1055 Yonge St., between Bloor and St. Clair. In 2009, Toronto Life listed 10 restaurants that sank there — including Cucina — and suggested the address was “cursed.”
Patrons of Friisdahl’s new company have wondered the same for years about 40 Bay St.
How to achieve victory at MLSE Richard Peddie can chuckle about the death threats these days.
“Death threats are getting to be not uncommon now,” he said. “I mean, they’re handed out like candy.” He was at the helm of MLSE for more than a decade, inheriting a company that owned a hockey team (the Maple Leafs), a basketball team (the Raptors) and a new arena (the Air Canada Centre, at 40 Bay St.). Under his guidance, that company grew into a diversified sports powerhouse, with interests in digital television, real estate, professional soccer, minor league hockey and restaurants. Real Sports Bar & Grill launched in 2010, and was quickly anointed “North America’s Best Sports Bar” by ESPN Mobile.
That success did not always translate onto the field of play, and since fans cheer for the scores, and not for the fiscal results, the chief executive became the target of frus- tration. “My advice to him? Don’t sit up in the gondola,” Peddie said. “Because you’d be sitting there, talking to whoever — from John Ferguson to Ken Dryden to Brian Burke — and everyone thinks you’re telling them what to do.”
It is not clear what the MLSE board of directors has asked Friisdahl to accomplish as its chief executive, though it does seem evident it wanted a change of pace after a colourful run with his predecessor. Tim Leiweke made bold proclamations — he famously bragged of having drawn out a Stanley Cup parade route, which in Toronto has become akin to saying the name Voldemort aloud. (It should not be done.)
“I’m hearing that, once again, they really want to focus on the (sports) teams,” Peddie said.
“He’s going to have a steep learning curve with both the media and the fans, and with his employees, and learning how to work with his board.”
Requests to speak with the board’s directors — a board that includes three representatives each from BCE and Rogers Communications, the majority owners — were directed to an MLSE spokesperson, who declined access. It is not known why the board chose to hire Friisdahl, though there are theories.
One of the most common is that, unlike several rumoured candidates, Friisdahl did not have any direct contact with either Bell or Rogers, who are partners within MLSE, but sworn enemies everywhere else. Friisdahl might have been the safe choice.
“Leiweke, he didn’t get the organization,” said Chris Gibbs, assistant professor at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University.
“The statement that the board of directors and owners are making is, ‘we want somebody who can lead an organization — not somebody who can have a good idea from time to time.’”
But Richard Powers, associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, asked: “You take a look at this guy’s resumé and you say, ‘Is MLSE going to start an airline? Raptor Air?’
“If you’d lined up 25 people, he’d have been No. 25.”
Friisdahl is the first chief executive in MLSE history without a background in managing sports teams, or sports properties. Leiweke arrived steeped in connections to sports, and Peddie worked at the SkyDome (now Rogers Centre) as well as at NetStar Communications (TSN) before he landed at the company.
“He’s an operations guy,” Powers said of the successor. “I think he’s going to solidify the current operations, streamline them to the extent possible while providing the same level of service. Squeeze as much out of it as you can.”
What might that mean for existing employees? “If I was at MLSE,” Powers said, “I’d be concerned to see where he’s going to make his mark.”
Peddie, who last month released his second book — 21 Leadership Lessons: Successes, Failures, and Discoveries From a Life in Business and Sports — has described MLSE as the “most public private company in Canada.”
“He’s going to face scrutiny,” Peddie said, “like he’s never seen before.”
“My advice to him? Don’t sit up in the gondola. Because you’d be sitting there, talking to whoever . . . and everyone thinks you’re telling them what to do.”
RICHARD PEDDIE FORMER MLSE CHIEF EXECUTIVE (ABOVE)