Grange on MLSE: Feeding the addiction

If you are trying to make sense of the largest sports and media transaction in Canadian history, it really isn’t that complicated.

Does the Internet rank slightly behind oxygen in terms of things you can’t live without and ahead of food (which you can order online)?

If you misplace your phone do you keep reaching for it like a phantom limb?

Do you sweat when you’re not sure where it is?

If that’s you, and you happen to be a sports fan, the decision by Rogers Communications Inc. (who I work for) and BCE inc. (the mortal enemy, sort of) to drop $1.32-billion for a 75-per-cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. is pretty much all your fault.

You can’t live without your phone or the Internet. You live for sports. You easily lined the corporate coffers.

Don’t feel badly. You are in good company.

Bemoan corporate ownership all you want. Fantasize about a benevolent financial knight to arrive and carry on like a Mark Cuban or Arte Moreno sparing no expense to win if you like. The reality is our passion (sounds nicer than compulsion) for consuming sports has made properties with broad, loyal fan bases too valuable for any individual to sweep MLSE off its feet.

No one can afford to spend $1.32-billion for love.

The irony is that as fans we’re so willing to go deeply into our pockets and even deeper into our spare time that companies like Rogers and BCE can’t afford not to be in the game(s).

They have to take their piece of the action, even if it costs $533-million for their respective 37.5-per cent share.

How exactly the whole thing will shake out in cooperation with Larry Tanenbaum — the sole individual investor who upped his stake to 25 per cent — will remain to be seen. It’s a complex deal not expected to close until next summer. Still to be determined is who will run MLSE when chief executive Richard Peddie leaves at the end of the year.

And based on the face-washing Rogers Nadir Mohamed, president and CEO was giving his BCE counterpart George Cope at Friday’s unveiling, how exactly these entities will play nicely going forward seems like a less than sure bet.

Will it bring MLSE teams any closer to winning? Fans can at least take some comfort in knowing that unlike the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Rogers and Bell are consumer-facing brands. If fans are angry they can at least switch cell phone plans.

But for all the uncertainties what is known is that there are two things a particular kind of consumer can’t live without.

One is an open faucet from which the Internet floods without stopping.

The other is sports.

The menu may change – for some it’s all about the Leafs and the NHL; for others it’s the NBA and the Toronto Raptors. The hope is that as the demographics of Southern Ontario change MLSE’s investment in soccer will help keep the portfolio suitably diversified.

But the proof seems to be irrefutable. While the preferred delivery system is still the warm glow of our big screens, the secret is out: we’ll watch anywhere, anytime and by any means necessary.

In the short term the rush will be to get more sports to you more ways. If you’ve ever hankered to watch the Leafs’ morning skate on your smart phone, Friday was a big day for you.

How the vision will take shape is hard to know for sure. I’m certainly not going to sit here and try to predict the yet-to-be-invented platform you’ll be watching the Raptors win an NBA title in 2022 (hey, if Rogers and Bell can get together, anything is possible). Congratulations to someone bold enough to try.

But I will bet that more people will be watching more and that sports – and by extension the brands that exchanged hands Friday – will continue to occupy a bigger place in our lives.

It wasn’t long ago that professional sports were mom-and-pop. Maple Leaf Gardens may have been part of Canadian myth, but was simultaneously a run-down rink where you could slide in from Church Street and watch practice if you happened to be in the neighbourhood.

Kids with a Toronto Marlboros minor hockey jacket could get a ticket to see the Leafs for a buck. The first time Kobe Bryant played in Toronto it was at the Gardens (where the Raptors played when their dates at SkyDome conflicted with the Blue Jays), and he changed in what was the visiting junior hockey dressing room, which was roughly the size of not-very-luxurious hotel suite, minus amenities.

Harold Ballard owned the Leafs until 1990 and went out of his way, it seemed, to run them like a creepy popsicle stand. Steve Stavro, who won control of the team and the Gardens from Ballard’s estate, would sit in board meetings and lecture his partners about the hot dog buns. This was not 20 years past.

The new owners won’t be talking about hot dog buns. Those days are gone.

The passion for sports has always been there but with the advent of cable and satellite and cellular and digital there exists — more than ever – the mechanism to monetize those desires. Insatiable demand has met insatiable supply.

The talk Friday was about the future and mobile devices and distribution systems and real time, with the necessary nod to championships whenever anyone remembered.

But what it’s really all about is never being able to have quite enough. It’s about sports as entertainment creeping into the air we breathe and hard-wired into the way we think.

Whether it’s good, bad, indifferent or forever, no one knows. But what used to mom-and-pop and is now Ma Bell, our founding father Ted (Rogers) and uncle Larry (Tanenbaum).

Our passions are their big business, and it’s hard to see how we ever go back from here.