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
In sheer economic terms, there was no financial performance bigger than what was delivered last Saturday by Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The undefeated 38-year-old welterweight enriched his status as the highest-paid athlete in pro sport with north of $200 million for 36 minutes of Dancing with the Stars. Self-promoted by his own Mayweather Promotions, the fight itself will gross around $500 million, the biggest take in boxing history and up there with Super Bowl XLVIII ($500 million in revenues in 2014) as biggest all time. The long-awaited showdown between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao may have been high on financial performance, but it was sure short on artistic success as the fight itself was more of a dud than the “Fight of the Century.” The biggest winner on the biggest revenue day in sport business history was Periscope, which was used by thousands to watch pirated video streams of the fight. The post-fight buzz around Periscope was such that it has the potential to change boxing’s antiquated TV model and that would be a good thing for the sport. If you hadn’t heard about Twitter-owned Periscope going into the weekend, watch for it to become a big handle in the weeks and months to come. Another big winner was a relatively minor revenue player last weekend: Game 7 between the L.A. Clippers and San Antonio Spurs in the final game of the first round of the NBA Playoffs. It might have only generated $5 million in direct revenues (less than one per cent of what was easily a day of more than $570 million in event revenues in North America), but it had the Staples Center in L.A. and a captivated television audience buzzing as a game for the ages. In what could have easily been the Western Conference Final, the Clippers eliminated the defending champion Spurs in a way that helped make basketball fans and NBA broadcast rights holders forget an otherwise lame first round that featured three sweeps, two fivegame sets, two six-gamers and only the one seven-game classic.
BEARS OF THE WEEK
It was a bad week for integrity and ethics in the business of sport. Begin with Mayweather-Pacquiao and end with the bizarre 243-report that “more probably than not” fingers future Hall of Famer Tom Brady for his role in Deflategate. On the boxing card, it’s hard not to have been left with a sour taste in your mouth if you paid $95.44 for that PPV Saturday night ... and that was before finding out that Pacquiao fought with a shoulder injury that required surgery and a rehab layoff of almost a year. In the dictionary beside “Rip Off” is a photograph of the underwhelming fight, now a major blemish to the reputation of the popular Filipino congressman. The fight that was supposed to breathe new life into boxing has probably done more harm than good for a sport that is already reeling from a flawed TV strategy and fragmented governance.