The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Is Business Ruining Sports?

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

As ticket prices soar and ads for sports betting increase, are business interests taking some of the magic out of sporting events? We welcome Cheri Bradish, David Macfarlane, and Morgan Campbell to explore. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello everybody in the Hammer and Beyond. We are coming your way. May 10th at the Music Hall in downtown Hamilton. We're recording a new episode of TVO Today Live and we'd love to see you there. We're talking to the amazing and multi-award winning Canadian musicians, Sarah Harmer, Cadence Weppen, and Tom Wilson,

about the power of music and musicians in our culture, and especially during tumultuous political times. Tickets are free, thanks to the Wilson Foundation. musicians in our culture and especially during tumultuous political times. Tickets are free thanks to the Wilson Foundation. Go to tvo.org slash tvotodaylive or search it directly on Eventbrite. So join us May 10th, 7 p.m. in Hamilton. When it comes to sports, there's something magical about watching a game with tens of thousands of other people.

There's an excitement in seeing your favorite team make the playoffs, and winning in overtime, it's the best, right? But does that magic get lost when you factor in just how much money is spent on what is ostensibly just a game? From the exorbitant cost of tickets to the number of ads for sports betting

to 20 bucks for a beer, is the business of ads for sports betting to 20 bucks for a beer is the business of sports ruining sports. Let's dig into that with Sherry Bradish, director of the Future of Sport Lab and associate professor of marketing management at Toronto Metropolitan University. David McFarland, writer and author of a forthcoming book called On Sports.

That sounds like a logical title. And Morgan Campbell is here. He's an author, journalist, and senior contributor at CBC Sports and it's great to have you three around our table here today. Let's start with, we're in baseball season, so David let's start with baseball. How was the experience of going to a Jays game today different from say back in the day? Well we can answer that question exactly because as it happens there's a film called Angels in the day? Well, we can answer that question exactly.

Because as it happens, there's a film called Angels in the Outfield that was made in the 40s, the first one. The original, not the Disney movie. And they used live baseball games in Cleveland and in Pittsburgh for cutaways of what a crowd was like at a baseball game. And I'll tell you, it is shocking to hear what 40,000,

50,000 people in a stadium in 1950 sounded like, because it was amazingly quiet at times, and at times amazingly loud. The crowd reacted on its own, without prompting from the Jumbotron, without all the let's make some noise, it was an entirely different experience. Gotcha.

Through sporting events today, Sherry focused too much on creating a spectacle for the audience. So my area is for marketing specifically. And so I have looked at historically over the last 100, 150 years how it's changed and the arc has changed and the influence of PT Barnum and having something at every corner of the arena and sport properties and teams have definitely leaned into providing engagement and entertainment for their fans. I think traditionalists push back. We saw a pushback with the Jays when they retro their facility and long-standing season ticket holders had to think about do they want to renew at this new price?

But there's an active engagement in terms of how do we continue to engage our fans, both in arena and out. And so it's resulted in the entertainment value. They really leaned into the entertainment factor. Do you like it, the new way? I'm so accustomed to it, and I'm accustomed to sport has become such a big business in all these latitudes. But I think we also know that in professional sport,

there's tier two and tier three sports, and teams like Savannah Bananas, who's disrupting the marketplace. And I think we're going to see there's a lot of disruption in sport, whether it be through golf or other properties, and I think those are providing other opportunities for sport fans to consume sport.

I'm gonna ask you about the Raptors because of all the local sports teams here, the professional sports teams, this is just my view. I could be wrong, I'm not, but I could be. It is the one sporting event which is the most dramatic assault on the senses for the entire time you are in the arena. Yes. And if you want to have a conversation with the guy who's

sitting two inches away from you, forget it. You're not going to be able to do it. Do you like that? With the Raptors specifically or with in basketball in general? Well, I mean, they're typical of the way it is nowadays, which is an assault on your senses when you go to a two-hour game. A couple of things we gotta think about.

One is that this is entertainment. It's always been entertainment. And unless you are a coach or some sort of exercise physiologist, someone that's strictly looking at how the players move and how they sort of prosecute the game, it's entertainment. And so now, I think the question is, what qualifies as entertainment?

How much is too much? So if you go to a US college football game, these games drag on and on and on and on. But the marching bands, the cheerleaders, that is part of entertainment. But we accept that because that's sort of traditional entertainment. So we realize, even if it's University of Chicago playing against DePauw down in Indiana or

in Hyde Park in Chicago, there's going to be a band there, there's going to be some cheerleaders, it is entertainment for the day. So now I think what's part of the issue is when the entertainment becomes, like you said, intrusive and starts to overwhelm the product as opposed to complement the product. And you start asking yourself, well, what did I come here to watch? Did I come here to watch Jamal Shedd run the offense in transition, show us his improved three-point shooting?

Or did I come to watch somebody shoot t-shirts at me out of a can? Right? And so to my mind, if the on-field product is that good, all you need is the other stuff to complement it instead of getting this other stuff to take my mind off of what I came to see. We may not be able to resolve that issue. But there's a reason for that. It's because of the consumer segments. I think the reason the Toronto Raptors is the one that comes to the foreward of our mind, the biggest spectacle in terms of entertainment, it's a reflection of who their consumers are.

And they're the most diverse in the city, typically, younger, who are actually looking for that type of engagement with the spectacle and the experience. We don't see it as much at the Jays game because they skew a bit older. So there's a reason that you see the pattern of entertainment in the properties. What about the cost? Is the cost of going to a professional athletic event beyond too many people nowadays?

I took my son to a hockey game, well, this was some years ago now. And which team? Maple Leaf game. And the next day, my father and a friend had invited us. This was some years ago now. Which team? Maple Leaf game. The next day a friend had invited us. The next day my father said, what does it cost to go to a hockey game these days?

Because he used to take me to a hockey game and it cost like seven bucks to get into Maple Leaf Gardens. I said, oh gee, I don't know. Ron bought the tickets. Oh, I got my coat on. Let me see. I pulled out the ticket. I went, my god, it was like 300 and something dollars to go. And I, you know.

Yeah. And so I suddenly realized that if, you know, a father and a kid, a mother and a kid, going to a game and parking the car and having a meal and whatnot, you're pushing a grand to go out to a ball game or a hockey game or whatever. So that's a bit unsustainable, I think.

I mean, there is something here I recognize of, you know, old man yelling at clouds, you know. But there is something for me that is getting in the way of athleticism. I love going to the women professional hockey games because that whole thing is toned down and you're actually sitting there watching a game instead of being, as you say, inundated. Well, I've been hearing for years that if it continues going the way it's going,

it will be unsustainable and too many people won't be able to go. Sherry, the stadiums are pretty full. People are buying $20 beers. They are buying souvenirs. And tonight it will be sold out for the Leafs game for context of the date. And I think tickets are face value. If there's a couple left you can get off Ticketmaster, 740, 750. So to your point, the market is still sustaining the inflation and prices. And we know in certain properties, corporate Canada really leans into those tickets and

the partnerships. So in this economy, it'll be interesting how that plays out. But sport is really valuable to the corporate Canada as well, which is outside of the realm maybe of what we're talking about, but we still see corporations really leaning into the value of having affiliations with sport. Well Morgan, one of the reasons that I still like going

to the Blue Jays games is that it's major league, and you can actually get in, you sit at the 500 level for 15 or 20 bucks and it's great. You know, it's a great night's entertainment and it's major league. Now that's not doable in many other arenas in the NFL or, you know, even the CFL for that matter. When people hear that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is going to make 500 million bucks over the

next decade or more. What comes to mind? Which people are we talking about? Well, I know his agent is happy about it. I know he's happy about it. How about the average fan? What do they think? Well, to your first point, I mean, the difference between baseball and every other sport is

inventory. Baseball is the only sport that has both the giant stadiums and 81 home games per year, plus some more if you're good enough to make the playoffs. Whereas the NFL, they got the big stadiums, but eight home games a year, eight and a half home games a year. Basketball and hockey have a lot of home games, smaller stadium. Now, as far as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is concerned, look, baseball does not have a salary cap. It has certain tax thresholds, but it

doesn't have a salary cap. So these players are going to make, the best players are going to make a lot of money, regardless. Two, you sort of have to keep in mind that Vladimir Guerrero's job is not like your job. He is a lot better at his job than most of us are at our jobs. He's also in a field that has very few,

has this giant pile of money that they have to distribute every year, but very few people who are qualified to make that money. And the reality is, he works in a free agent market. He never reached the free agent market, because if he had reached the free agent market, he probably would have pulled in a lot more than half a billion dollars because we saw how much Otani made, we saw how much Juan Soto

made. And Vladimir Guerrero Jr., if he'd hit the free agent market this winter he'd have been in position for that kind of money and that's just the market they are operating in. So the question of whether or not he deserves that money, by our standards, doesn't really matter, because much like the fans paying $750 for a hockey ticket, this is what the market demands, this is what the market sustains, and for right now, it's what the market's paying for.

There was an article in The New Yorker some years ago that when players first started making these huge salaries, written by an economist. And to the shock of everyone, the economist came to the conclusion that given the revenue these teams were creating, the players were actually being underpaid. How long ago did that article come out? I think it's, well, less than 10 years ago, I would say.

But I think it still holds true. I think that these are such enormous revenue creators that there's money to be had. And it might as well go, I'd rather it went to the players than to the owners. You know who you sound like? Remember Bill Vek? Yes.

Bill Vek, are you still in the Chicago White Sox? You say if there's a dispute between billionaires and millionaires I'm on the side of the millionaires. So he was with the players in that one. Well think about it this way we can single out Lagamere or Junior or Juan Soto is making too much money But when these leagues sign broadcast deals I think the NHL just signed a new broadcast deal with with Rogers the NFL there they Their revenue is increasing almost exponentially. And no one says the owners are making too much money.

No one says, Jerry Jones, you get too much money for owning the Dallas Cowboys. What we do is we praise their business sense. Whoever is receiving that money, we say, that's a smart business man. So Vlad Guerrero Jr., he's a smart businessman. He got some smart businessmen and women working for him because he has half a billion dollars and the rest of us get to watch him play.

Sure. I was just going to add, I mean, the ownership is really an interesting piece of it. One of the things I like to look at is what have been some pivotal moments in our market because we have to check ourselves and understand the economics, in particular, right now. It's going to be interesting in this city

when the Rogers deal goes through, because ownership will be very similar across the board in Bremner Street. That's where the sky dome is. Yes, sorry. Sorry, Rogers. At the local references. So I think that's going to be really interesting

in terms of, there's not a lot of other competitors and big owners in the market after that point. And so I think that'll be really interesting to follow that case. Let's talk gambling. Do we have to? Afraid so, or gaming as they like to call it. We launched in the province of Ontario in 2022

legal sports betting. And this is from a McLean's feature by Anthony Milton written a few months ago. Sheldon, you wanna bring this graphic up and I will read along for those listening on podcast. Each of these companies is aiming to become part of the fabric of Canadian sport itself, to make gambling on a game as much a part

of the experience as hot dogs and cracker jacks. Arguably, they already have. The rapid integration of sports media, franchises, and betting operators was part of a long-term strategy for the gaming industry at large to become an indispensable part of the sporting experience." Okay, David, let's get started on this. The introduction of legalized sports gambling and how that has changed the sports fans' experience. Well, I shouldn't swear. I'm in response to the quotation that you've just read, but that's my response.

You're not a fan. There is nothing good to be said about gambling. Nothing good to be said about it. The sports leagues caved into it completely. It's tarnished the games, all the games that have been sullied by it. In my view, and again perhaps old man yelling at Klaus, but it's a catastrophe, a complete catastrophe. Why? Well it undermines the very spirit of sport. When I wrote on sports I had to recognize the fact that I had this love-hate relationship with sports. That I loved it very much. I'm someone who when I first stepped on to Centre Court at Wimbledon as a

journalist not as a player, to my surprise I burst into tears. I didn't just get a little bit misty, I actually burst into tears because I recognized that I was standing on holy ground. And so that kind of feeling, which I think a lot of sports fans have, that these places are sacred places, these endeavors are important things, are completely undermined by just the craven lust for dough, I would say. When I go to Fenway Park in Boston, I always say to myself, that's where Babe Ruth played and Ted Williams and Kari Ostremski, and I know what you mean by hallowed ground. How about the argument, Sherry, that by allowing betting, you sort of allow the casual fan, not the people who need to go to Gambler's

Anonymous, but the casual fan to kind of have a stake in something and therefore put a couple of bucks in and it's okay. I mean and that is the argument. We definitely see when it became legal, you just had to drive down that QEW in Toronto and inundated with ads coast to coast, you know or from one end of the city to the other. I survey my classes every term, and everybody puts their hand up in sport business classes. They have some type of app or two or three.

So it's out there and it's happening. I do think the students talk about, so I'll use that framework, that it does allow them to follow and be more indebted you know it's part of that cycle and that churn that the betting companies want and then I do a lot of work with women in sport and so I would suggest there too is another significant problem it is driven a lot of online hate and abuse and attacks for female athletes and And it's become a very large problem

in terms of the betting in that marketplace. Because of betting? Yeah, really big. It started at the US Open a couple of years ago. Certain players didn't win, and the online attacks of the women is seemingly higher than it is for men in that betting environment. And so the WNBA came out with just recently a task force

to study abuse towards women online. And part of it is because of the betting. Wow, yet another reason to hate betting. Do you have any reason, Morgan, or let me put it this way, what do you suspect players feel about all of this proliferation of betting? One, to Sherry's point, the proliferation of sports betting further dehumanizes a group of people who are already sort of dehumanized

in the eyes of a lot of fans. And so instead of seeing this player as a human being, you see him as a guy that missed the field goal, missed the free throw, dropped that easy fly ball out. That cost you $10. Before, when it just cost your team the championship, now it cost you your parley. And we've heard players like Tyrese Halliburton,

we've seen coaches like JB Bickerstaff saying that they open up their social media, they open up their email, and there are these angry fans in here berating them about you made me blow my parley. Even though Tyrese Halliburton did not grab your phone and make you place that bet, you made you blow that parley. That's not Tyrese Halliburton did not grab your phone and make you place that bet. You made you blow that parley. That's not Tyrese Halliburton's fault. The other big problem with sports betting is that

sport is a really powerful vector for a lot of things. Like my parents got me into reading through sport. They got me a sports illustrated subscription. That's what got me interested in reading and writing. And I don't know that I would have, they would have captured my imagination any other way. So now, you try to watch a sporting event, try to watch a Raptors game with your kids, try to watch a baseball game with your kids, your kids are being inundated with these messages about gambling. Like, even Formula One, when I was growing up, McLaren, their team, their car, remember Alan Pross was driving,

and their car was like a big Marlboro cigarette box. They don't even have that anymore, but all these betting companies have direct access to your kids. And now the betting companies love that, because you're getting people hooked earlier, and earlier, and earlier. And I don't know that we as a society,

because in some ways it's not just about sports, it's the fact that sport is an easy way. You can get to a kid through sport faster than you can get to them through poker or blackjack or whatever it is. And I don't know that we as a society have even considered what the long-term costs are going to be of raising a generation of people who think gambling is normal as opposed to what it really is, which is addictive and dangerous. The province of Ontario, Sheri, recently, I think it was last year, decided that professional athletes cannot be seen in ads

for gambling companies anymore. Right. Good move? I mean, I think on the surface, it makes sense, theoretically. But I think in practice, there's a lot of other things that are happening and being engaged. And I think you just have to I think in practice, there's a lot of other things that are happening and being engaged. And I think you just have to follow, for instance,

what's happening at the Super Bowl, and the biggest parties fan duel, and et cetera, et cetera. And I think there's a lot of tie-ins with the industry and the players. They use a lot of former athletes in the betting space. But in theory, it makes sense. You want to create distance. But I think there's a lot of other avenues that can be explored. Well, let me play devil's advocate here.

It's a legal product. Athletes participate in it. What's the harm in having them advertise? Well, I think the impact on kids. It's one of the things that really bugs me about, one of the many things that bugs me about gambling is that so many leagues, particularly the NHL, had a fetish about you kids out there. You know, they were like camp counselors.

You know, it's good for you to watch this hockey game because we're going to tell you how to be a good team player, how to, you know, etc, etc, etc. All this kind of wholesome stuff, meaning that sports wasn't sex, it wasn't drugs, it wasn't crime, it was a good thing for kids to be doing. And now we're saying, yeah, go up and watch the hockey game and sit down and watch all these ads. So I think it's enormously destructive, really destructive. Also because gambling is addictive and harmful. It's not one or the other.

It is both. And now we have pro athletes, again, our powerful spokespeople telling people, yeah, it's OK to gamble. When nine times out of 10, you're going to get addicted. And here's my other beef with sports betting, is that you see stories of people, like one, for the most part, you're going to lose.

So they tell us this is the best way to enjoy the game. And even cigarettes and alcohol don't go that far in terms of selling their product as something that is going to improve your life. But all these betting companies that say, you can make money. But one chance, though, you're going to lose money. Two, if you are the rare gambler who is good enough to beat the house consistently,

they start cracking down on you because they don't want you to win. They want everyone else to lose. This would be like if I got you hooked on heroin but never let you get high. You just take the drug. You get the addiction. But you never get the high.

What am I doing then? But this is what the gambling industry is selling. Like selling the game, but trying to get between you and the payoff. To your point and to the question, the reason we don't see alcohol and tobacco advertising is because it was regulated very heavily by the government eventually, right? Yes.

So I hope that's a good observation. Can I ask, Sheldon, can I get a three? There we go. Wide shot. Who's done it here? Who's used their? I've never done it. You've never done it?

No. You ever done it? Never done. You've never done it? No. I've never done it. I think we're an anomaly. Yeah, we are unusual here.

An anomalous group here. Obviously, there are a lot of people who are doing it. And Steve, you're probably going to get a call from a gaming company saying if you're interested in a sponsorship, right? What should I do? The agenda brought to you by losemoney.com. There you go. Should we take it or what?

Do what you want to do. You're a big boy. OK. Let's, you know, one of the things I know when we discussed when we discussed at our editorial meeting doing this program, I get what we're doing here. We're trying to shine a light on some of the things that are concerning in sports, and yet I don't want us to come off like we hate sports or that sports is terrible, because

the fact is I think we all love sports. Watch far too much of it probably. Go to too many games, are you concerned about conveying an impression that everything is terrible about sports nowadays and there's all these reasons not to like it when the fact is, come on David, we all love it. People love sports. I love sports. And I think you're absolutely right that part of our passion about this part of part of our outrage about gambling for instance

Has to do with these that sports are beautiful. They're fantastic at the level of athleticism it's really extraordinary and yet I feel as a fan if I can describe myself that way I have to sort of Fight through all this stuff to actually get to the athletic endeavor. And then I stay focused on it and it's amazing, amazing, amazing. The athletes are amazing. But oh man, it really pushes my buttons.

Are you concerned that we're coming off as too critical of something that the vast majority of people love? I think it's an industry that, it is an industry, so you need some critical analysis of every industry. I concur with you and probably you Morgan. I played varsity sports as an athlete. That's why I got into sport business as a volleyball. What did you play?

And went to grad school in Florida, did the whole thing. I think at his purest form, I went to the Olympics last year, which I was fortunate to do. Sport is phenomenal. It's phenomenal for bringing countries together. It's phenomenal on many levels. There is a layer to sustain it at a professional level in this country.

That is a lot of money for a lot of people in a very soft economy, which is something to follow from the business perspective. I will also say if we step back, and I admire it, from my lens, from a marketing management lens, if you look at what's happening in North America in terms of industries that are growing, sport is still growing. And corporate money, what's new, which will be the next part two of this, venture capital money is significantly coming into the field of play.

And so at its core and its pure form, it's a phenomenal experience and the athletes are phenomenal human beings. Are you able to like purely, truly enjoy it or is the critic inside you always on the lookout for something? No, no, absolutely. So what draws me to sport is what draws a lot of people to sport but don't really think about why they're drawn to sport.

You love and appreciate seeing what people are capable of doing. You've dedicated your life to mastering the craft. You get a bunch of those folks together. You put them in competition just to see how good they are at basketball, running, swimming, whatever it is. And also the fact that we, as a species, as human beings,

we love stories. Each athlete has a story. Each team has a story. And each competition is a story. And that on-field competition, what we like about it is that it's not scripted. We might think it's predictable, but it's not. We get these plot twists.

So the problems we see with talking about the things we're talking about today is when sports get corporatized, that can diminish the quality of the product. Because if I'm the NFL, I want, I had 16 games a year, regular season games. Now I have 17. Maybe I want more. Maybe I want more. Maybe I want 18. I want the season to be longer. But I want the athletes to take drugs.

But this sport is brutal. And so something is going to have to give. Often it's the athlete's bodies, and that diminishes the quality of the product. Or the athletes themselves have to hold back, because they have to play 17 or 18 games now instead of 16. And in terms of gambling, like the thing, the specter that's overhanging all of this is match fixing,

especially since we are raising a generation of young men and young women who think gambling is normal. So what's stopping them from gambling the way they gamble when they grow up? And so what we don't want is this idea that this match is fixed, that it's scripted, that the outcome is predetermined. There already is a forum for things that are like sport,

but with the outcome predetermined. That's pro wrestling, right? Which is fine. I watched a lot of wrestling growing up. But it's very different from boxing, because the outcome is not scripted. So what we're talking about are these things that sort of chip away at the things that we have always loved and still do love about sport, which is very different from saying

I hate sport now because of XY. Can I just add, I think, too, what I'm very optimistic about, and I think part of this is because of the women's market, is sport is becoming very athlete-centered, whether it's been at the college level, in the NCAA, through storytelling that we see in a multitude of platforms. And I think the shift will continue in a very positive way on the sports space to give the athletes professional in college more voice. And I think that's really important.

Let me follow up with you on that because we got about a minute to go here. And one of the kind of really nice developments we've seen in the last decade or so is the increasing prominence of women professional athletes. WNBA, Professional Women's Hockey League, New Women's Soccer League, it's kind of historic the moment we're in right now. Can we keep it pure or is it inevitably going to have some of these issues that we've been talking about here? I am highly optimistic. I think there's always outliers.

But I'm highly optimistic with the people behind and the athletes in front of those three leagues, in particular in Canada. And it's so exciting and so long due, overdue, that in the last year, we've gone from theory to reality of professional women's sport in this country. I went to a Scepter's game, the women's hockey team, I guess a month or two ago. It was great. Yeah.

It was absolutely great. Fantastic. Yeah. And they're not making millions of dollars, so you know they're playing for the love of the game. And it's really, you know, not that the guys don't love the game, but it's different. It's pure. Yeah.

Yeah. There is something different about it, that's for sure. Okay. I have time enough left to thank David McFarland over here on this side of the table. On Sports, look for it, his new forthcoming book. Sherry Bradish and Morgan Campbell on the other side of the table.

Great to have all of you here at our table on TVO tonight. Many thanks. Thank you.