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MLSE CEO Keith Pelley and Blue Jays CEO Mark Shapiro are both favourites of the supreme leader, Edward Rogers
On Thursday, Rogers finalized its purchase of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, creating a new entity, Rogers Sports. Now the competition to see who runs the show can really begin.
The top contenders are MLSE CEO Keith Pelley and Blue Jays CEO Mark Shapiro. Both are favourites of the supreme leader, Edward Rogers. Both have built out their respective businesses so that as you enter their establishments, you can feel your money begin to vibrate. It wants to leave you.
Both have said, for the public record, some version of: “Head up the largest sports-based entertainment group in this beautiful, beautiful country filled with equally attractive fans? What a wild idea. ” And everybody knows they’ve both been angling to do that for months. On Thursday, Pelley appeared to take the lead.
Along with his current job, he’ll now oversee Sportsnet and Rogers Media. This guy’s going to be eating dinner at 3 a.m., passing out leaned against a flat-screen showing Argos highlights, and regaining consciousness 45 minutes later in an Uber on his way back to the office. But this isn’t a new regime. It is instead an effort to maintain the status quo of the old one.
The important thing is that nobody lost anything. Shapiro still controls the Jays; Pelley still runs everything else. So what happens now?
“As a next step, we’ll build the best operating model for Rogers Sports and share details when we’re ready,” said Rogers vice-president of communications Sarah Schmidt. In other words, gentlemen, start your Succession-ing. If you’re a Toronto sports fan, it shouldn’t matter to you who wins this Battle of the 0.01-per-cent-ers. No CEO has ever made a lick of difference in a season’s outcome.
At best, they set a tone that allows others to do the actual work. At worst, that tone is an endless series of gongs. CEOs are no friend of the average fan. Their function isn’t to make your championship dreams come true.
It’s to make sure those dreams are packaged with an algorithmically determined dream-maintenance fee. Shapiro got at this during Wednesday’s white-flag presser.
“The ballpark changes … bring our fans closer to our players,” he said, referring to Rogers Centre renovations. “They provide some alternatives when the games aren’t going well for our fans to still have some fun. ” Oh, you paid a bucketload of money expecting you’d see winning baseball? Yeah, we’re so sorry about that.
How about a hundred different kinds of hot dogs instead? This is what a CEO does. But though it shouldn’t matter, one suspects many in Toronto will have strong feelings about who wins this competition. To figure out who you’re rooting for, ask yourself this question: Do you like your verticals horizontal, or your horizontals vertical?
Pelley is by far the more affable. Also – and this is no longer a small thing – he’s Canadian. On the one hand, the Leafs have gone sideways on his watch. On the other, when have the Leafs ever not been going sideways?
In his plus column, access to the lower bowl now requires a business line of credit. Shapiro gives off a stiffer, Harvard MBA vibe . He is extremely American, which you know because he’s always talking about Canada like it’s a place he’s heard is amazing but never actually been to. His greatest accomplishment is transforming the Rogers Centre from one of baseball’s grimmest prison blocks into a liquor-licensed halfway house.
Shapiro has had greater recent sporting success, but whatever reputation he had as a franchise resurrector took a knock this year. If Vladimir Guerrero Jr. continues down his bad path, Shapiro will forever be the guy who thought giving him US$500-million was a good idea . If the goal is to make gobs of money, both men have shown they can do that.
If the goal is also to provide Edward Rogers with reputational cover should his teams continue their adventures in mediocrity, they’ve shown they can’t. Both can turn a press conference into a Tim Robinson skit.
However, both are also effective lightning rods – an underrated skill for people in their position. Over many years, they’ve absorbed gigajoules of negative energy and kept smiling . Are they good at their jobs? I’m not sure either one has an actual job.
Not like you have a job. They don’t show up and put in a shift. They show up and have vague feelings about how things should be, and others make sure they are that way. If the measure of a sports CEO is winning at sports, half of them should be fired every year.
But it isn’t, so they aren’t. That being the case, what do any of them actually do? Your guess is as good. In the end, the winner will presumably be the person whose line of patter Edward Rogers likes best.
I’m not often invited to dinner at Ed’s place, so I’m unfamiliar with his preferred banter. I’m good on mid-century American fiction and have strong opinions on why men should never wear shorts. You heard me right – never. Ed, if that sounds like your kind of thing, call me.
I’m developing a plan to surface more value from season ticket holders by robbing them. I’m not talking euphemistically. I’ll have the ushers jump the drunk ones in the VIP bathrooms. How long will figuring out who should be in charge take?
Who knows? Maybe six months. Maybe forever. Maybe Rogers likes his subordinates permanently unbalanced.
There’s also a world where a mystery third candidate emerges. In the interim, what’s fun is the idea of two incredibly powerful sports executives locked in a secret death match to win the approval of a man who knows next to nothing about running sports clubs, yet is now in charge of pretty much all of them. When you think of it that way, you’ll understand why your team – whatever team that happens to be – is a mess.
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