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.

BULLS- OF- THE- WEEK:

There’s some real buzz — and ticketselling fan appeal — around the new generation of general managers and hockey operations bosses in the National Hockey League, as represented this week by newcomers Trevor Linden and Brendan Shanahan. Both have made headlines across Canada and throughout the hockey world, with Linden becoming president of hockey operations for Canucks Sports & Entertainment on Wednesday and Shanahan finalizing a deal as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment going into the weekend. They’re both taking on those beefy roles without direct experience in franchise operations, with Linden going straight to the top of the Canucks’ hockey operations six years out of his hockey- playing career and Shanahan moving directly from his role as NHL VP and discipline chief at the league office. Their experience is largely a pair of matching two- decade playing careers, yet their leadership currency is the strong sense of activism they’ve brought to the game; Linden as a former president of the NHL Players’ Association and Shanahan as the inspiration behind the Hockey Summit that led to some key rule changes and innovations in the NHL product coming out of the 2004- 05 lockout. Former players managing teams is nothing new, but what is new is the bullish confidence being placed in icons like Linden and Shanahan to be the faces of franchises in major markets. Watch for more — it’s a new era in which owners ( and fans) are liking their suits to be recognized hockey brands, preferably player brands. BEAR- OF- THE- WEEK:

The CBC’s stock as a powerful, mainstream player in the business of sport already took a big hit last fall when the National Hockey League gave Rogers Communications exclusive control over its Canadian national TV and digital rights package in a whopping 12- year, $ 5.2- billion agreement. That deal shuts out Bell Media and TSN from the national rights. It keeps the NHL on the CBC for at least four years by placing what is essentially Rogers programming and revenue streams on the public broadcaster on Saturday nights. The CBC cash cow that is the NHL and Hockey Night in Canada marquee is no longer. That bottom line reality hit hard in the last 24 hours with CBC announcing cuts of $ 130 million to its annual budget and the loss of 657 jobs across the network. Notable is its plan to significantly downsize its sports department and its intention to withdraw from pro sports bidding. The CBC will limit its investment in sports rights to special events such as the Olympic Games. Here’s saying that even that may be a stretch beyond its current lock on the FIFA 2014 World Cup in Brazil and Rio de Janeiro 2016. CBC chief executive officer Hubert Lacroix made it clear that the CBC simply can’t compete against private broadcasters armed with the arsenal of specialty sports channels and multiple media platforms. The CBC’s dwindling capacity in pro sport only amps up the biggest war in sport business between telecom media companies such as Bell and Rogers.