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 sports business. He reviews the major winners and losers of the past week every Saturday in The Vancouver Sun.
BULL- OF- THE- WEEK
With honourable mentions to NBC Universal ( for a stranglehold on Olympic media rights through 2032), TSN ( for an aggressive expansion to five Canadian sports channels this fall) and the NFL ( for being the Draft Day television juggernaut that it is), no single person or organization saw their stock rise more this week than Oklahoma City Thunder basketball star Kevin Durant. Named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player for 2014 on Tuesday, Durant delivered one of the most emotional, gracious and meaningful acceptance speeches by a professional athlete in any sport from any generation. The fact that he’s from this generation made it such a refreshing blast of fresh air. Durant’s remarks, tone and emotion touched all of the right bases in a speech that received huge play on U. S. television and sports radio and went viral on YouTube. The arc of his speech acknowledged each and every one of his Thunder teammates and finished strong with a heartfelt tribute to his mother. When Durant closed by describing his mom as the real MVP, there was nary a dry eye in the house and on the Net. Durant not only made hundreds of thousands of new fans for himself, he added some much- needed sheen to the notion that professional athletes can inspire us ( and even sometimes remind us what is most important in life). In this case, the 25- year- old OKC forward did so as a great leader and an even greater son. By remembering who brought him to the dance and who helped make his success, fame and fortune possible, Durant showed what pro athlete role models could be at their very finest.
BEAR- OF- THE- WEEK
At the very other end of the spectrum of class and decorum this week was boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr. They sure don’t call him “Money” for nothing. On Saturday night, Mayweather unified the welterweight title with his 46th straight decision, outpointing Marcos Maidana in their 12- rounder at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. There’s nothing wrong with that. All the power to him for showing yet again that he’s one of the best fighters — and best self- promoters — of our time. The poor form came on Twitter 48 hours later when on Monday night, Mayweather boasted at @ FloydMayweather: “32M for 36 minutes. I’m waiting for the PPV numbers to come in so I can make another $ 38M on the back- end. Making it a grand total of $ 70M.” He went on to gleefully retweet several third- party posts calculating that he’d made more than $ 14,000 for every second that he fought in Saturday’s win over Maidana. The bad taste extended to a video he authorized that showed two women — Jessi Lee and Doralie Medina from his entourage — counting out $ 100,000 on his bed while he timed them on an expensive watch from an open case of 18 timepieces from his personal collection. It’s one thing to be successful and monetize it to the tune of nearly $ 500 million in career earnings like Mayweather has. It’s quite another to be a class act about it. In an era where too many professional athletes carry a sense of ridiculous entitlement and whose riches are unfathomable for 99 per cent of us, Money Mayweather was a real turnoff in showing the moneyhungry, arrogant side of the business of sport. Not easy to win $ 70 million and be considered a loser, but Mayweather accomplished that.