Pending resolution to lockout keeps NFL from losing games

The four-month lockout of its players by the National Football League in 2011 will never go down in history as good times for the richest league in North American sport.
Yet the fact that a settlement is imminent after weeks of constructive, behind-the-scenes negotiations should shape the way we perceive the NFL, a $9 billion a year sport industry sector that has overtaken baseball as America’s pastime and is the single biggest sports marketing juggernaut on the continent.

It’s important because it appears that the NFL will once again avoid losing games to a work stoppage, something that cannot be said of the other three major North American leagues, especially over the past 24 years since football's last work stoppage in 1987.

The NBA is in its second lockout in 13 years and third in history, with the most recent one having cost pro basketball 32 regular season games in 1998-’99. The NHL has lost a season and a half in the past 17 years, including 2004-’05 when the full season and Stanley Cup playoffs were cancelled due to its second lockout in the span of a decade. Finally, Major League Baseball saw its World Series classic cancelled on account of the players strike of 1994, the last time two leagues were in concurrent work stoppages.

Yet the NFL appears to know better. Outside of 1987, in which it lost one game and played three others with replacement players , the NFL has a relatively unblemished record when it comes to losing games to labour crises and has never done so through a lockout. It is true it lost seven weeks on a player strike back in 1982, but that season was salvaged with a 16-team playoff tournament. In 1974, a players strike was resolved before training camps began.

In 2011, with television ratings and revenues at an all-time high, it was a risky proposition to chance the NFL's future growth, let alone its status as the biggest sport in North America.

Neither the NFL nor the NFLPA should feel proud of failing to get a deal done before the CBA expired in March. That represented a failure on both sides.

Yet kudos should go to both the owners and the players for understanding what kind of impact cancelled games could have had on the privileged position all parties involved hold in the fantasy world of professional sport. And it is exactly that - privileged.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket 

One-two punch of CFL and NHL free agency make Canada Day hot

Basketball fans can't jump in as much this year on account of the NBA lockout triggered last night, but nonetheless, Canada Day is carving itself a niche as a hot day on the Canadian sports calendar.The one-two punch of the kick-off to a new Canadian Football League season and the media and fan frenzy that is free agency in the National Hockey League make July 1st one of the most intriguing sports days each year, on and off the field of play.

It's been cranked up a few degrees in fan attention thanks to the increasingly explicit positioning of the CFL kick-off around Canada Day weekend. Made more formal over the past two years, it is part of CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon's smart campaign to promote the CFL on the strength of its Canadiana and heritage. A kick-off on Canada Day is as natural as maple syrup and it goes a long way towards driving home that "CFL as Canadian culture" message.

By definition, TSN becomes the fulcrum for a lion's share of the interest. It is the exclusive English-language home of the CFL on TSN and its hockey panel is the most-watched for coverage of day one of NHL free agency. It's certainly one of the biggest days of the year for the 27-year-old all-sports network and its French-language counterpart, RDS.

In fact, TSN and RDS are arguably front-and-centre on two of the biggest days in Canadian sport each year - the CFL's Canada Day Doubleheader on July 1st and the biggest single-day annual event in our landscape, the Grey Cup on the final Sunday in November (both the CFL's Grey Cup and the NFL's Super Bowl are in the 6 to 7 million range as the top annual events in terms of average national audience on Canadian television).

Only January 1st rivals July 1st as fixed-day destination television, although even that is not as "fixed": Witness the NHL's decision to move its NBC Winter Classic to July 2nd next year and let the NFL do its playoff thing on New Year's Day (assuming, of course, that saner heads prevail and the U.S. football season goes on without a lockout hitch).

For now, July 1st is truly Canada Day when it comes to sports, sports television and the sports web.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket 

Rory McIlroy: Transforming the Tours. Rebranding Golf.



Rory McIlroy
 (From CanadianGolfer.com)

"It's nice that people say that he could be this or he could be that or he could win 20 major championships, but at the end of the day I've won one." - 2011 US Open winner Rory McIlroy

That quote, modest as it was, spoke volumes as to not only how much Rory McIlroy has already changed the dynamic in men's professional golf -- both on his home European Tour and here in North America on the PGA Tour -- but how much capacity he and his fellow "New Kids on the Block" hold to re-brand the sport itself.

When a 22-year-old wins the US Open the way McIlroy did last weekend, the sports world takes notice. When a 22-year-old does it with the grace, eloquence and class shown by the Irishman, the sports world has every reason to celebrate.

McIlroy is a big story because of his record-breaking US Open win, an eight-shot rout that saw him go 16-under par at the Congressional. He's a bigger story because he did so to shake off the choker label that has followed him since he detonated and folded at the Masters in April. In my books, he's an even bigger story, however, on the strength of his approach to the media, his fellow players and, ultimately, the fans of the game of golf.

Dealing with the media is part of the territory that comes with being a professional athlete, coach or executive. Dealing with it well is unfortunately still the terrain of far too few personalities in professional sport. Even at the age of 22, McIlroy already appears to understand the axiom of excellence when it comes to media and public relations: That the way you speak to the media is ultimately the way you come across to the fans.

The best in the business realize that the sports media is the conduit of players, coaches, executives, franchises and leagues to their fans. That's true even in this Internet era of expanded controlled communications.

Rory McIlroy gets that. He is an exciting prospect for golf not only because of his obvious talent and dedication to his craft, he is a golden asset to the game of golf because of his poise at the microphone.

If he and the other New Kids -- names such as Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott, Jason Day, Martn Kaymar, Graeme McDowell, Charl Schwartzel and Luke Donald -- are as good with their publics as they are on the course, golf will do just fine thank you in the years after the era dominated by Tiger Woods.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket 

Vancouver's Olympic city brand takes a hit

Vancouver saw the worst of two worlds collide Wednesday night - the heart-breaking disappointment of Stanley Cup defeat and, worse, the stinging embarassment of public disorder gone wild.

On the ice, the NHL's Vancouver Canucks were shut out 4-0 by Tim Thomas and the Bruins, giving Boston its first Stanley Cup championship in 39 years and denying the Canucks franchise their first in 40 seasons and 41 years.

That in and of itself is disappointing to Canucks fans and the team's corporate, broadcast and merchandising partners, and the many other businesses who rise and fall with the NHL team, let alone the very brand equity of the franchise that had been building at an impressive rate this anniversary season.

Yet disappointment around the Canucks missing a golden opportunity to win the 2011 Stanley Cup paled in comparison to the disappointment – the utter embarrassment – the City of Vancouver suffered off the ice in the aftermath of Game 7.

In three hours of rioting, vandalism, looting and violence, Vancouver saw its global brand – one so elevated by the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games – badly diminished. The tremendous global goodwill and image generated by Vancouver 2010, almost all but gone. The local economic impact of two months of Stanley Cup playoff hockey – arguably north of $45 million – fully erased by the negative exposure the city received across Canada, throughout North America and around the world.

The few million dollars in damage and costs directly associated with Wednesday night are mere water drops when juxtaposed against the wave of damage done to the city’s reputation nationally, continentally and globally.

The ugly side of the public celebrations that made Vancouver such a fun place to be for a Stanley Cup spring have undoubtedly bruised the city’s civic pride.

Yet it is that same ugly side -- both the criminals who may have triggered the riots and the other disaffected, angry young people who elevated and sustained the disorder -- which cannot be allowed to shape the future of the city in particular and the region and province in general.

Many are concerned about the public plazas that seemed to anchor the post-game stupidity, but in my view the best defense against hooliganism is to continue building civic pride through public celebration, not reducing it out of fear.

Protecting the city’s capacity to stage big events and hold public celebrations began with those who rose on Thursday to help clean the streets of downtown Vancouver and it is something we should stand behind. The follow through to protect future public events -- Stanley Cup-related and others -- will require smart security measures, inspired public policies and leadership, and creative public-private partnerships, not to mention more of the spirit and community caring shown Thursday morning and into the weekend.

It will also require more of us to embrace sport as an essential element in the fabric of any community and in society at large...belief that the infrastructure of professional sport creates value for a community, ranging from the tangibles of jobs and economic impact to the intangibles of continental and global name recognition and, closer to home, civic pride.

First and foremost, civic pride contributes to our sense of identity. The privilege of gathering to celebrate and share as a community is worth protecting because it’s in large part how we are defined as a civil society. It’s how we feel at home in our community and it’s how most of us best express the pride we take in living in Vancouver and in being Canadian.

It would be senseless to compromise that civic pride and it would be wrongheaded not to continue to leverage the many positives that spin off of professional sport by making the most of hosting opportunities such as the Stanley Cup, the Grey Cup and other special events. 

Losing that would be the biggest cost of all.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket