The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Mansbridge And Maclean -- A Day Of R & R

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

Understanding why television networks are so desperate to get pro sports back on their schedules. Some pretty surprising numbers.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of the Bridge Daily. Here we are, it's hump day. Hump day of week 17. As we breeze through another week seemingly quickly in this world of COVID-19. Well, as you can see from the cover art for the podcast today and for the promotion on Instagram and Twitter, today the old man took a little bit of R&R.

I was out golfing with my good friend Ron McLean from Hockey Night in Canada. Ron and I have obviously known each other and worked together for years. Not only watching his hockey broadcast, but we've worked together at the Olympics as well and enjoyed a lot of good times over the years. And we enjoyed good times today. As you can see from our picture,

socially distant on the golf course, which wasn't hard today because especially in my case, I spent a lot of time not on the golf course proper. Like in other words, not on the fairway or in the fairway or on the green. So I was all over the place. But it was good fun and good to be out and enjoying a little bit of time in the fresh air. It was hot, though. Southern Ontario, we were in south of London, Ontario, playing at a great golf course, Redtail, courtesy of our friend Dan Matheson from Stratford here in Stratford, Ontario. Dan is a friend of both Ron's and mine, and Dan took us. And

Joel Darling, who is the executive producer of a lot of the different shows that Ron does, including the conversation show that he has been doing or did do through the early stages of the pandemic, a really good broadcast. Not about sports, but about life and living in a world of COVID-19. Anyway, Ron and I had a good time out in the heat of southern Ontario and enjoying hitting the little white ball around, which I must say Ron is a lot better at than I am. He certainly was today. We talked, obviously, during the day about things hockey,

because Ron is getting ready. If the NHL does run a series of games for the playoffs for the 2019-2020 season, training camp could start within the next couple of days, actually. It still isn't 100% nailed down, but it's looking very much like it's going to happen. And Ron is going to be a busy guy because there will be games day after day for weeks on end,

I think up to four games a day, certainly at the beginning of all this, which makes Ron's life a busy life. He's always busy during the Stanley Cup playoffs. This will be unlike any other year because it will be through the summer and into the early fall. All the games will be in two cities, Toronto or Edmonton. Kind of have the East playoffs in Toronto, the West playoffs in Edmonton, and one of those two hub cities,

they call them, will be, I think, for the final two rounds, will be in one city. So four teams. When it gets down to the final four, it'll all be in one city. But no fans, right? No fans in the arena. Lots of fans, we assume, watching on television. But it will be Stanley Cup unlike any other year we've ever seen. And we're all kind of puzzled and wondering what that's going to look like.

Why are they doing it, you say? Are they just doing it because, gee whiz, the guys want to get back out on the ice and play their Stanley Cup playoffs? Well, I'm sure that's part of the reason. But the big issue is money, right? It's money. And it's money not just for the players and the owners and the league. It's money for the television networks. Television networks have been dying. Those who depend on revenue coming in from sports, major league sports, whether it's basketball or baseball

or hockey. And that's why you see those three leagues all trying to organize, and soccer, all trying to organize a play now. And the TV networks are right in there. Because for many of them, their greatest revenue source is live sports action. That's what people want. That's what people watch. That's why advertisers are lined up to get into coverage of those games. So don't think it's all about players and owners trying to figure out how to make a buck.

It's also about the television networks who have taken huge hits over the loss of revenue. How huge, you say? Okay. I don't know the full deal on hockey, but I did see a breakdown on how big football is, U.S. football, for U.S. networks.

And this will give you some indication of why there's so much pressure to get things back in line. The NFL is huge in the United States, the National Football League, the league that ends up playing the Super Bowl. So I've got a breakdown here of how much money it actually means to each of the four networks that run the NFL. And this will give you some idea why they're so anxious, but it'll also give you some idea why the same thing is happening in hockey, baseball, basketball.

Not the same kind of dollars, but the same kind of drive to make things happen by the television networks. So here's the breakdown. Fox. This is what it means for their revenue base. Fox, which runs the most NFL games. $1.88 billion comes from the NFL. $1.88 billion comes from the NFL. $1.88 billion from the NFL per regular season.

That's just the regular season. College football, another $280 million. For college football. CBS, $1.56 billion. Not as much as Fox, but still an awful lot of money. That's from the NFL. $173 million from college football.

ABC and ESPN, they're kind of together on this, $502 million from the NFL. And a huge chunk from college football for ABC and ESPN. $1.19 billion. NBC? $1.35 billion from the NFL. $52 million from college football. Okay, I've thrown a lot of numbers at you,

and they all sound big, and they are big. But in terms of those networks, what's the percentage revenue for them, their overall revenue, just from the NFL? All right? For them, their overall revenue, just from the NFL. All right? So we're talking Fox has lots of major hits on its network. But what's the share of revenue for Fox just from the NFL?

40%. 40% of their revenue comes from the NFL. You don't think they're concerned about making sure the NFL plays again? Now, I don't want to suggest here that anybody's arguing that safety doesn't matter, because they're not. They're going through hoops trying to figure out the best ways to guarantee the safety of the game and its athletes as a result of COVID-19 through this period. But they're willing to spend a lot of money to ensure safety

because there's a lot of money at stake. For Fox, 40% of their ad revenue comes from NFL football. For ESPN, 17% of their ad revenue comes from the NFL. 25% of their ad revenue comes from college football. CBS, a quarter of its revenue. CBS, a quarter of its revenue. Comes from NFL football. NBC. 21%.

Of its ad revenue. Comes from NFL football. All right. So that's. That's a heck of a lot of bucks coming from NFL football. And does that give you some indication of why they are so involved in trying to ensure that professional sports is back, reopens in a sense, like take out food at the restaurant in your town. They needed to try and jumpstart their economy.

And the same thing is happening in professional sports. So, Ron and I didn't talk about that because I didn't see that graph until I was on the drive back late this afternoon from London, Ontario. Okay, so you think I've finished with giving you big numbers? No. Listen, I've been golfing all day, so I haven't been exactly tuned into watching the financial snapshot or whatever they're calling it in Ottawa today. In terms of the positioning of the federal government on the money it spent

in trying to support Canadians who've lost their jobs, support Canadians in the senior jobs, support Canadians in the senior ranks, support Canadians in businesses. They've spent hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. And today, the finance minister, Bill Morneau, gave us the first hint of what all this is costing us in terms of the federal deficit.

Now, you understand how this works. The government brings in revenue every year. They try to balance that revenue with the expenditures they make. Anything over and above that is the deficit. All right, so we've seen some big numbers over the years in federal deficits. We went through a long period where you know, it was a pretty flat line in terms of a balance sheet.

Until the early 70s and the Pierre Trudeau government and we started racking up deficits. It sounded huge, you know, eight, ten billion dollars. And then they worked their way down. It went up again during the Mulroney years. Then Chrétien and Martin came in. And Paul Martin, who was mostly regarded as the most successful finance minister the country's ever had, brought the deficit down to zero. We had balanced budget for quite a few years. Then after the financial crisis in 2008,

the federal government of Stephen Harper went into deficit. It's $50, $55 billion. Huge numbers, we thought. We'd never seen anything like that before. To try and prop up the economy. And it worked. And over time, Harper and his finance minister, Mr. Flaherty, brought those numbers down. Never got it down to zero, but got it pretty close.

Then it's gone up a bit over the Justin Trudeau years. But it was sitting, I think, this year, it was expected to come in somewhere around $34 billion. Well, today we found out what it's going to be as a result of all the expenditure programs that are being put in place because of COVID-19. It's 10 times the amount. It's over $340 billion. And the national debt,

okay, that's all the accumulated deficits of the past years, is over a trillion dollars. Haven't heard that figure used before to describe the national debt. But it's going to be somewhere around, I think it was 1.3 or 1.2 trillion in 2021. Now, the numbers are big. And they're, you know, to some are surprising. You know, I'm not surprised.

You can't have the kind of programs that have been put in place over the last four months and not expect there were going to be huge numbers, and the deficit was going to be in the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. The question that I've asked and you've asked and the opposition leaders have asked is, okay, how are you going to pay for it? How are you going to bring those numbers down? What's the plan? Are you going to increase the GST? Are you going to increase personal income taxes?

Are you going to increase the GST? You're going to increase personal income taxes? Are you going to increase corporate taxes? At some point, you're going to have to do something to bring those numbers down. You can't just assume, you know, a year from now the economy is going to go crazy and it's just going to be all this huge revenue pouring into the public coffers and it's just going to wipe out the deficit and bring down the national debt you know hopefully there'll be some of that but people are wondering what's your plan how you gonna do this and the government is, you know, the government at the moment, I'm sure, is just hoping, please, let's just hope that we've got this thing under some form of control, that we're not going to have to redouble our efforts to prop up the economy, prop up individuals who are in need, prop up companies that are in need, and that the deficit and the debt are going to go even higher. Anyway, we didn't get those answers today about how they're going to pay for it. At least if we did, I didn't see it, and I haven't seen it yet.

Then again, I have this excuse. I just got off the golf course. But I've seen the headlines. I've seen the big numbers. But I think Bill Morneau has explained that he has still got a lot of explaining to do on how all this is going to work out. So we'll have to wait for that. And the opposition will have to wait for that.

And the opposition will be pressing for answers. It's a tough time for the country. It's a tough time for the government. It's a tough time for Parliament on a lot of these issues. And most of all, it's a tough time for all of us. We'll have our moments, whether it's golf or swimming or traveling with our families in a safe way. But overriding all of this is,

when are we going to get out of this? How are we going to deal with the issues surrounding school for our kids? Is it going to be safe? How are we going to pay for it? I gave you those cents of some of those school numbers and what they're likely to be yesterday in that podcast. So there's lots to be determined.

And as much as I enjoyed today, I also know that having the luxury of playing a round of golf in the middle of all this is just a momentary pause. We all still have lots to be concerned about, lots to think about, and lots to contribute to in the sort of overall discussion of the COVID-19 situation. So if you have some thoughts on all of this too, don't be shy. You can send them along. You know, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Hope you've enjoyed your day. I certainly enjoyed mine. And as always, I've enjoyed talking with you right here on The Bridge Daily. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks for listening. And you know where I'll be this time tomorrow. Thank you.