Bulls & Bears
Tom Mayenknecht is host of The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and TSN Radio, where he regularly rates and debates the Bulls & Bears of the sports business. He’ll preview the major winners and losers of the past week every Friday in The Vancouver Sun.
BULL- OF- THE- WEEK: With an honourable mention to the great week enjoyed by rookie National Hockey League head coach Patrick Roy of the Colorado Avalanche ( first in their division, third in the Western Conference and fifth overall in the league), the fastest- rising stock in the business of sport in Canada belongs to George Stromboulopoulos. Strombo was introduced this week as the new face of Hockey Night in Canada. He’ll host Saturday and Sunday nights. It’s a bold move involving a brilliant, hip talent, one bound to resonate with younger males and females without alienating the existing hard core. The new host will help usher in a new era for the way hockey television is delivered and consumed across all platforms in Canada beginning this fall as per the 12- year, $ 5.2 billion NHL national rights deal won by Rogers Communications. Ironically, the news about Strombo was broken on Twitter by Bob McKenzie of TSN, the network shut out of the new national package.
BEAR- OF- THE- WEEK: The NHL will indeed return to Quebec City at some point in time. Absent an NHL team since 1995 when the Quebec Nordiques relocated to Denver to become the twotime Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, it’s one of the absolute best hockey markets in North America not currently served by an NHL franchise. Yet if media baron turned sovereigntist politician Pierre Karl Péladeau and the Parti Québécois win a majority in the Quebec provincial election on April 7, they have promised a referendum on secession from the rest of Canada. That means a potential period of political uncertainty for Quebec and that’s not good for economic stability. That in turn is not good for the launch of any new business, including a new NHL franchise in the provincial capital. Péladeau’s move could indeed delay the return of the NHL to Quebec City, which is ironic given his Quebecor has spearheaded that city’s arena project and owns naming and management rights there.