Bulls & Bears
Tom Mayenknecht hosts The Sport Market on TSN 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.
BULLS OF THE WEEK The Carolina Panthers boosted their undefeated tally to 13. They’re now three wins away from becoming the third NFL team in modern history to log a perfect regular season. The Golden State Warriors continued to be the talk of the NBA by bouncing back strong from the end of their own spectacular season-opening run of 24-0. It was a bullish week for Russia’s KHL as it scored the coup of landing a new franchise in the capital city of China, an intriguing global hockey business play, especially in the lead-up to the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games. The late Pat Quinn added to his golden legacy with entry into the IIHF Hockey Hall of Fame. And it was a good week for sports radio and television as pending free agent Steven Stamkos liked some tweets and caused tongues to wag in Toronto and other Original Six markets fancying themselves as possible destinations for the Tampa Bay Lightning star. Yet the biggest winner in the business of sport this week is tennis superstar Serena Williams, who was named Sportsperson of the Year by Sports Illustrated. The recognition reminded us about just how dominating she’s been the past year and how remarkable the career story of Serena and her sister Venus really is. Serena went 53-3 in 2015, winning her 19th, 20th and 21st Grand Slam singles titles and coming to within two matches of the historic calendar Grand Slam that Steffi Graf won in 1988. The 34-year-old has won 86 per cent of all singles matches she’s played in her 20-year career, earning more than $75 million in career prize money. For 2015, Serena Williams pocketed $10.6 million US in prize money and another $13 million in endorsements, second only to the biggest business machine in women’s sport, Maria Sharapova.
BEARS OF THE WEEK It hasn’t been a great week for the Canadian dollar, Jose Mourinho (or the revolving door of coaches that is Chelsea FC of the Barclays Premier League) or the Vancouver Canucks. Yet no one had a more disappointing week than Pete Rose, whose hopes of being officially welcomed back to Major League Baseball were dashed when it was revealed that commissioner Rob Manfred will not reverse Rose’s lifetime ban for gambling on baseball. It’s not a huge surprise that Rose will remain on the outside looking in, despite his participation at the All-Star Game in Cincinnati in July and his presence in the broadcast booth during the World Series in October. Those signs and the general approach of Manfred gave many reason to believe Rose may have been repatriated in the new commissioner’s first year in office. The bottom line is that Rose just hasn’t done enough to earn his ticket back into the game and the Hall of Fame. It’s a classic lesson in mistake management: It’s not so much what you do in a moment of poor judgment, it’s what you learn from it. And Rose waited too long to show he learned anything.