Bulls-of-the-Week
Alternate telecasts continue to rise, with the latest seeing TNT Sports and the NBA teaming up on an NBA2K25 alt-cast for the final rounds of the Emirates NBA Cup in-season tournament.
It’s been another gargantuan week for streaming in the business of sport, with DAZN offering up $1 billion US to be the exclusive rights-holder of the FIFA 2025 Club World Cup. DAZN will stream all 63 matches for free.
Yet it’s philanthropy that is the biggest winner this holiday season. From the national KidSport campaign dubbed as the Gift of Sport to Giving Tuesday and the year-end push on tax deductible donations, it’s the biggest month of the year for charitable causes. Among the most enduring and endearing is the myriad teddy bear tosses across all levels of hockey in North America, most notably in the Canadian Hockey League (WHL, OHL and QMJHL). All 22 clubs in the WHL, for example, will host a teddy bear toss, an annual favourite that will bring thousands of stuffies down to the ice when the home team scores. Those teddy bears will brighten up the holidays for kids from financially challenged families and prove that hockey and sport in general are powerful agents for giving and community service.
Bears-of-the-Week
Meanwhile, the Chicago Bears are literally the bears-of-the-week when it comes to the business of sport. They fired head coach Matt Eberflus after that embarrassing lack of clock management at the end of their Thanksgiving Day loss to the Detroit Lions 10 days ago. He’s in good company, however, especially in Chicago, the third-largest media market in North America. Chicago teams have fired eight coaches in 14 months, leaving Billy Donovan of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls as the longest-serving head coach in that market. Gone are Eberflus, David Ross of the Cubs of Major League Baseball, Pedro Grifol of the MLB White Sox, Frank Klobas of the Major League Soccer Fire and today Luke Richardson of the NHL Blackhawks, along with Teresa Weatherspoon of the Chicago Sky of the WNBA and Chris Petrucelli of the Red Stars of the NWSL. That leaves Donovan as the dean of Chicago coaches in only his fifth season with the NBA club. Don’t feel sorry for Eberflus though. The $18 million US left on his contract will pay him about $20,000 per day over the next two-plus years to not coach the Bears.
Yet the NHL is the biggest bear-of-the-week as it continues to make like an ostrich and keep its head firmly planted in the sand when it comes to the connection between concussions and CTE. In the largest-ever study of CTE in male hockey players, the odds of having the neurodegenerative disease were shown to increase by 34 per cent with each year played. High-profile leagues such as the NFL and WWE helped fund the research, but the NHL stays on the sidelines on the issue. One would hope the NHL Players Association’s creation of a CTE education committee will eventually bring the NHL into the 2020s as far as player safety, concussions and brain injuries are concerned. The Boston University CTE Center report suggests that every year the NHL doesn’t address the issue, the higher the odds will be of more players suffering from various forms of brain disease.
Tom Mayenknecht is the host of The Sport Market on Sportsnet 650 on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Vancouver-based sport business commentator and principal in Emblematica Brand Builders provides a behind-the-scenes look at the sport business stories that matter most to fans. Follow Mayenknecht at: x.com/TheSportMarket.