Arguably the best shoulder season of the annual sport business calendar is in full force this week. The first PGA Tour major of the year puts the spotlight this weekend on the Masters at Augusta, Georgia, just a few days after college basketball wrapped up with engaging championship finals in the men’s and women’s NCAA Final Four. It was the most-watched final weekend since 2017 and the most-viewed men’s final since 2019, with more than 18 million Americans tuning in for the dramatic finish to Florida’s win over Houston Monday night. Read More
Meanwhile Pittsburgh Pirates are the big losers in the sports business world
Meanwhile Pittsburgh Pirates are the big losers in the sports business world
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Bulls of the week
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Arguably the best shoulder season of the annual sport business calendar is in full force this week. The first PGA Tour major of the year puts the spotlight this weekend on the Masters at Augusta, Georgia, just a few days after college basketball wrapped up with engaging championship finals in the men’s and women’s NCAA Final Four. It was the most-watched final weekend since 2017 and the most-viewed men’s final since 2019, with more than 18 million Americans tuning in for the dramatic finish to Florida’s win over Houston Monday night.
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Elsewhere, it’s a basketball lovers delight this week with the closest NBA playoff races in more than 40 years. Going into the week, 15 of the 20 post-season seeds were still undetermined. The traffic jam of teams within a half game of each other has created the tightest final two weeks of NBA regular season basketball since 1983-84, setting up what should be must-watch TV in the play-in games next week.
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Still to come this month are the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs — which will go shoulder to shoulder with the NBA post-season — and the NFL Draft in less than two weeks, by far the juggernaut of off-season events in North American professional sport.
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Meanwhile, give credit where credit is due: It’s been a bullish week for the Toronto Blue Jays, who signed Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. to that monster 14-year, US$500 million deal, featuring a $325 million signing bonus that is not taxable in his resident state of Florida. For the Jays, they not only extend one of their most popular players in franchise history, buying themselves a Canadian-born player that is more than just home runs and WAR. With Guerrero, Jr. now committed through the 2029 season, they also lock in to a mid- to long-term strategy for the Rogers-owed Blue Jays. From a business point of view, that’s unquestionably better than a season of death watch and indiscernible pathway forward in the American League East. Next up? Shortstop Bo Bichette.
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Yet no one had a better week than Alex Ovechkin, the Washington Capitals superstar who has done what was thought until recently to be impossible — reach 895 goals, breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record in perfect storytelling fashion. First, he tied Gretzky with 893 and 894 at home before breaking the record last Sunday against the New York Islanders at UBS Arena. It was a game that averaged 905,000 viewers, becoming the most-watched non-Winter Classic NHL regular season game in history on TNT. That game peaked at 1.3 million on TNT/TruTV when Ovechkin went highlight-reel with number 895, with Gretzky in attendance. Setting aside the political complications, it was a big moment for hockey, the NHL, the Capitals and Ovechkin himself. Among the biggest partners in the moment was Budweiser, which went viral with a tribute to the 28 goaltenders who never allowed a goal by Ovechkin and Upper Deck, which ensured relics from the ceremonial carpet will be in the Russian’s record-breaking hobby set.
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