From Sat Star
Geee.....I think I said this about a week ago. As long as you Maple Laffs fans keep watching and going to crap then that is what MSLE is going to keep giving you. Wake up Sheeple!
Wins, losses mean nothing to MLSE
And Peddie babysits the bottom line
Jan. 28, 2006. 09:16 AM
KEN CAMPBELL
SPORTS REPORTER
The choir is building, even if the song remains the same: when it comes to building winning sports teams, Richard Peddie couldn't find a skunk in a phone booth.
He should have nothing to do with choosing the people who choose the people who play the games. Because his judgment in this area, terrible to this point, as reaffirmed by the Rob Babcock bungle, is beyond ever trusting again.
But talk about building the brand of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, or about making his bosses happy — in this case, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan — and Peddie is doing a tremendous job. Fire him? The higher-ups wish his picture was on the money he's making them.
Let us review. Twenty-five years ago, a man named Harold Ballard ran an aging arena and an institution of a hockey team and, for some reason, also bought a Canadian Football League team. The entire operation had a budget of $5 million; the Maple Leafs were a $4 million outfit and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats cost $1 million, front to back.
Things happened. Ballard died. The Blue Jays got very good and very popular and 15 years ago, the Leafs remained an institution, but played a clear second-fiddle as the Jays ruled the roost briefly. That's a fact. But things kept happening. Baseball quickly fell out of favour and the Maple Leafs, spurred by a generation of young fans with scant or zero personal recollection of the glories of 1967, became big. Bigger. Huge.
This entire Leaf Nation thing took on a life of its own in the past dozen or so years, even as ownership of the team passed through the Honest Grocer's hands. A basketball team arrived and was kind enough to build its own arena — without dunning the public, by the way — and with the building all but in place, the hockey proprietors took over the basketball team from feuding owners and here it suddenly all was — Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, operating out of the Air Canada Centre.
Arriving, too, was Peddie, whose previous lives included stops at Pillsbury and the SkyDome. Peddie quickly understood that the Maple Leaf logo had both magical and foolproof marketing powers and — this is critical — those powers did not diminish whether the team was good or bad. Not even a disgraceful pedophilia scandal had harmed it. Nor will any eight-game losing streaks.
Peddie figured everything out and acted while Larry Tanenbaum, chairman of the board, filled the cliché role as smiling owner who wished to hang around players. He went on vacation with Vince Carter and Tie Domi and was everyone's friend. (When the time came, he made sure Domi got his contract.)
In Larry's other life, he likes to pour concrete. He's a high-end Liberal bagman and strangely enough, government money keeps rolling toward his building companies.
It was Peddie, though, who moved the company forward on the logo's marketing power and look at MLSE now: it has condo towers and a hotel deal and restaurants. It has two television channels. It has a deal with an online poker company that looks here like the first step toward obtaining the inevitable downtown casino licence. It has a soccer stadium coming, coerced out of taxpayers, and a pro soccer team on the way. It swiped a city-owned arena at the CNE, giving it a home for its top minor league team, and inserted itself into control of a $45 million arena in Oshawa built, again, by the public. It's angling now to scoop up Union Station, which would give it almost all the property from Front St. to the Lake Shore and Bay almost to University Ave. They'll call it Fortress Maple Leaf.
While other sports teams tried to sell T-shirts and keychains, Peddie went bigger. He knew to use the logo to sell $800,000 condominiums. Sell souvenirs to kids, by all means, but also sell phony promises to governments.
Harold Ballard's little $5 million empire — yes, we called it an empire in those days — has been replaced by this ever-growing conglomerate that, at last year's callover, was valued at $1.1 billion and shows no signs of shrinking.
The basketball team may suck and the hockey team can equal its longest losing streak in 10 years tonight. In the big picture, it scarcely matters. (Remember, the hockey lockout eventually provided more revenue for MLSE in salary savings alone than three rounds of playoff gates would provide.)
The big wins for MLSE — the only ones that clearly matter — come on the balance sheet and have Peddie's fingerprints all over them. So, again, find somebody to run the sporting side, by all means. But fire him? The way MLSE does business, it would be crazy to.
Geee.....I think I said this about a week ago. As long as you Maple Laffs fans keep watching and going to crap then that is what MSLE is going to keep giving you. Wake up Sheeple!
Wins, losses mean nothing to MLSE
And Peddie babysits the bottom line
Jan. 28, 2006. 09:16 AM
KEN CAMPBELL
SPORTS REPORTER
The choir is building, even if the song remains the same: when it comes to building winning sports teams, Richard Peddie couldn't find a skunk in a phone booth.
He should have nothing to do with choosing the people who choose the people who play the games. Because his judgment in this area, terrible to this point, as reaffirmed by the Rob Babcock bungle, is beyond ever trusting again.
But talk about building the brand of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, or about making his bosses happy — in this case, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan — and Peddie is doing a tremendous job. Fire him? The higher-ups wish his picture was on the money he's making them.
Let us review. Twenty-five years ago, a man named Harold Ballard ran an aging arena and an institution of a hockey team and, for some reason, also bought a Canadian Football League team. The entire operation had a budget of $5 million; the Maple Leafs were a $4 million outfit and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats cost $1 million, front to back.
Things happened. Ballard died. The Blue Jays got very good and very popular and 15 years ago, the Leafs remained an institution, but played a clear second-fiddle as the Jays ruled the roost briefly. That's a fact. But things kept happening. Baseball quickly fell out of favour and the Maple Leafs, spurred by a generation of young fans with scant or zero personal recollection of the glories of 1967, became big. Bigger. Huge.
This entire Leaf Nation thing took on a life of its own in the past dozen or so years, even as ownership of the team passed through the Honest Grocer's hands. A basketball team arrived and was kind enough to build its own arena — without dunning the public, by the way — and with the building all but in place, the hockey proprietors took over the basketball team from feuding owners and here it suddenly all was — Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, operating out of the Air Canada Centre.
Arriving, too, was Peddie, whose previous lives included stops at Pillsbury and the SkyDome. Peddie quickly understood that the Maple Leaf logo had both magical and foolproof marketing powers and — this is critical — those powers did not diminish whether the team was good or bad. Not even a disgraceful pedophilia scandal had harmed it. Nor will any eight-game losing streaks.
Peddie figured everything out and acted while Larry Tanenbaum, chairman of the board, filled the cliché role as smiling owner who wished to hang around players. He went on vacation with Vince Carter and Tie Domi and was everyone's friend. (When the time came, he made sure Domi got his contract.)
In Larry's other life, he likes to pour concrete. He's a high-end Liberal bagman and strangely enough, government money keeps rolling toward his building companies.
It was Peddie, though, who moved the company forward on the logo's marketing power and look at MLSE now: it has condo towers and a hotel deal and restaurants. It has two television channels. It has a deal with an online poker company that looks here like the first step toward obtaining the inevitable downtown casino licence. It has a soccer stadium coming, coerced out of taxpayers, and a pro soccer team on the way. It swiped a city-owned arena at the CNE, giving it a home for its top minor league team, and inserted itself into control of a $45 million arena in Oshawa built, again, by the public. It's angling now to scoop up Union Station, which would give it almost all the property from Front St. to the Lake Shore and Bay almost to University Ave. They'll call it Fortress Maple Leaf.
While other sports teams tried to sell T-shirts and keychains, Peddie went bigger. He knew to use the logo to sell $800,000 condominiums. Sell souvenirs to kids, by all means, but also sell phony promises to governments.
Harold Ballard's little $5 million empire — yes, we called it an empire in those days — has been replaced by this ever-growing conglomerate that, at last year's callover, was valued at $1.1 billion and shows no signs of shrinking.
The basketball team may suck and the hockey team can equal its longest losing streak in 10 years tonight. In the big picture, it scarcely matters. (Remember, the hockey lockout eventually provided more revenue for MLSE in salary savings alone than three rounds of playoff gates would provide.)
The big wins for MLSE — the only ones that clearly matter — come on the balance sheet and have Peddie's fingerprints all over them. So, again, find somebody to run the sporting side, by all means. But fire him? The way MLSE does business, it would be crazy to.
