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.

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NFL and The Who cross-promote CSI for CBS

Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend wrap their set at

the Bridgestone Super Bowl XLIV Halftime Show

Sunday at Sun Life Stadium in Miami. (Photo: Bethie Curley)

When the National Football League began considering who should perform at this year's Super Bowl XLIV in Miami, The Who was suggested as a natural fit given the league's recent predisposition towards iconic rock acts for its halftime show.

Most would agree they'd belong in the conversation with Paul McCartney (Super Bowl XXXIX at Jacksonville, Fla. in 2005), the Rolling Stones (Super Bowl XL at Detroit in 2006), Prince (Super Bowl XLI at Miami in 2007), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Super Bowl XLII at Glendale, Arizona in 2008) and The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen (Super Bowl XLIII at Tampa in 2009).

Along with Aerosmith (Super Bowl XXXV at Tampa in 2001) and U2 (in their moving 9/11 tribute during Super Bowl XXXVI at New Orleans in 2002), The Who is among the legendary bands of the 1970s and 1980s still rocking after all these years. That makes raspy lead vocals by Roger Daltrey and windmill guitar work by Pete Townshend resonate as a blast from the past with the boomer generation while still being relevant to the core Generation X NFL demographic and at least intriguing as historic rock'n'roll curiousities to the young adults in Generation Y and the young teens making up Generation Z.

Yet make no mistake: The Who earned the nod mainly because Super Bowl XLIV U.S. television rightsholder CBS loved the idea.

Giving The Who the high-profile gig made CBS Entertainment a happy camper because it would effectively cross-promote three of its most valuable television properties in one flick of the guitar pick: CSI and the Crime Scene Investigation trio. That's because The Who licensed their music to all three shows produced by Jerry Bruckheimer Television and CBS Paramount Television.

The original CSI (created in 2000 by Anthony E. Zuiker and still running strong Thursday nights at 9 p.m. PT on CBS in the U.S. and CTV in Canada) opens with about 40 seconds of Who are You?, the 1978 classic considered among the top-100 (#97) on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All-Time.

Its first spin-off CSI: Miami (launched in 2002 and running Mondays at 10 p.m. PT on CBS and CTV) begins with Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who's 1971 anthem that ranks #133 on the Rolling Stone Top 500. CSI: New York(which made its debut as the third in the trio of crime dramas and airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. PT on CBS and CTV) features Baba O'Reilly, another 1971 song (#340)by The Who.

We first raised The Who/CSI/CBS connection with Blake Price on The Blake Price Show on Vancouver sports radio TEAM 1040 on November 27th, the day after the NFL Network announced the selection of the 2010 halftime show headliners during a Thursday night showdown between the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys.

So when Townshend leaked the Super Bowl set list in an interview with Billboard two weeks before the February 7th game on CBS and CTV, it should have surprised no one that Baba O'Riley, Who Are You? and Won't Get Fooled Again were part of the plans for Miami.

The Who followed Townshend's Billboard promises to a tee. Before a capacity crowd of 74,059 at Sun Life Stadium and a record North American television audience of 114 million on CBS and CTV, they opened the Bridgestone Super Bowl XLIV Halftime Show with Pinball Wizard and did a short segment from the close of Tommy. Yet it was nothing but CSI theme music the rest of the way.

Baba O'Riley was first up among the CSI themes. Then came Who Are You? and the quick "See Me, Feel Me" from Tommy. The ending was perfectly-scripted. As the theme song for CSI: Miami, The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again was the natural finale as an ode to the host city.

The 12-minute set was solid, arguably strong enough to knock off Diana Ross and comfortably rank among the top-10 Super Bowl halftime shows of all time. Performed on a wildly-impressive stage that starred in its own right and provided a modern light show extravaganza, the set served the event and its television audience well.

More than anything, though, it stoked host broadcaster CBS and its Bruckheimer-produced CSI franchise -- not to mention CTV as the Canadian rightsholder to both the Super Bowl and CSI -- in a brilliant medley of cross-promotion and co-branding.

It's much more likely he'll be owning a National Hockey League franchise in Las Vegas sometime soon, but it almost makes you wonder how long before Pete Townshend's guitar windmill from Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV re-starts the rumour windmill about Bruckheimer getting himself involved in the return of the NFL to Los Angeles later this decade.

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Super Bowl makes Sun Life Stadium best-ever naming launch

Can anyone remember a more impressive launch for a new stadium naming rights deal than the debut of Sun Life Stadium two weeks ago?

To say the timing of the deal was fortuitous is an understatement. Canada's Sun Life Financial announced the reported 10-year, $40 million US naming rights agreement -- in which the first five years and the first $20 million US are guaranteed -- on January 19th, just 12 days before the NFL's 2010 Pro Bowl and less than three weeks before Super Bowl XLIV, which goes this Sunday at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Lakes, Fla.

In sheer North American television exposure alone, the one-two punch of the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl in Miami give the Sun Life corporate moniker the strongest media launch in stadium naming history. The Pro Bowl itself was a significant prime time coming out party for the Sun Life Stadium name, with ESPN scoring an average of 12.3 million viewers in the U.S. (38 per cent more than the afternoon audience for last year's NFL all-star game in Honolulu).

Sun Life Stadium basked in the glow of the largest Pro Bowl television audience in 10 years, despite being up against the 52nd Grammy Awards on CBS.

The television spotlight will increase at least tenfold this Sunday, when a U.S. audience of more than 100 million will tune in to CBS to watch NFL MVP Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts square off in Miami against Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints. As the world's second largest single-day annual sports event behind only the UEFA Champions League European club soccer final, the Super Bowl should draw a global television audience of more than 160 million in 230 countries to the action at Sun Life Stadium.

More than 80 per cent of that will come from the U.S., Mexico and Canada where the Super Bowl is king of North American sports properties.

Nonetheless, the Super Bowl television blitz this weekend will only underline how much of a bargain Sun Life struck in naming the 23-year-old stadium. With 30-second commercials on CBS sold out at an average of about $2.7 million US a pop, Sun Life will get more than its money's worth in one fell swoop.

Depending on the number of times Sun Life is mentioned and its new stadium graphics shown during the Super Bowl telecast and lead-in programming on CBS, ESPN and NFL Network, the case can be made that the Toronto-based insurance company will receive media value that is at least equal to the first five years of its naming rights deal. That does not include valuation of the billions of media impressions that Sun Life Stadium will receive this week in print and on the internet, along with radio.

Rarely does a stadium naming provide the kind of immediate return on investment that this one does for Sun Life. Never before could one argue that a long-term naming rights deal will almost pay for itself in the first month, let alone the first year.

The Super Bowl timing is only one example of how this deal is a winner for Sun Life. The low cost of the sponsorship is the headliner here. Sun Life paid about one-fifth the $20 million US per year that Citi Financial has invested in Citi Field ($400 million US over 20 years) for the new home of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball. It paid well less than the going rate for NFL stadiums, including the $7 million US per year that Bank of America did for the home of the Carolina Panthers.

For just more than half that, Sun Life locked up the home of the NFL's Miami Dolphins, the iconic Miami Hurricanes of college football and -- for at least another two seasons -- the Florida Marlins of MLB. The strong brand equity of the football teams playing at Sun Life Stadium is another positive, as is its annual role as host of the FedEx Orange Bowl in the BCS and the stadium's own history as the first of its kind in the NFL built entirely with private funds.

Another strength is the inclusion of a philanthropic component to the deal. Sun Life is donating $250,000 per year to the Miami Dolphins Foundation, a community investment play that gives the sponsorship deal more legs.

Yet perhaps the best part of this deal is the naming itself. Unlike awkward names such as Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Arizona, or unwieldy titles like the former Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland (now re-named McAfee Coliseum, home of baseball's Athletics), Sun Life is a smooth, two-syllable stadium title. Mostly though, it works because it's such a natural fit for sunny South Florida. It's actually appropriate for the market and that will go a long way with fans of the Dolphins and the Hurricanes and the NFL and college football.

Given the economics and the aesthetics, along with the 145-year history of the Toronto-based company, this one has the makings of a good long-term relationship (at least for the 10 years of this deal). That's good news for a venue that's had seven names -- Joe Robbie Stadium, Pro Player Park, Pro Player Stadium, Dolphins Stadium, Dolphin Stadium, Landshark Stadium and now Sun Life Stadium -- since 1987.

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