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Properties can work together to weather slings and arrows

As this horrific year ends, with American and Canadian deaths from COVID-19 surpassing 300,000, the two of us are about to hit a different kind of milestone with Sports Business Journal.

This is our 100th column — dating to September 2009 — in which we’ve offered (questionable) advice, commented on faddish trends or predicted the unknowable future. Thankfully, reader feedback and hallway conversations energized us, kept us writing and make us want to write 100 more.

From a data standpoint, we’ve produced nine columns a year for 11 years, always trying to assess (and appreciate) the challenges SBJ readers faced and tried to do so with a hint of humor and dash of pro bono counsel.

But 2020 scared everyone, us included. That’s because COVID knocked on our stadium walls and ivory castles. In some cases, the damned virus came in through the windows.

Looking out at the desolate landscape, we saw a global sporting community under attack. Untold billions were lost from empty seats, never to be replaced. Young people left traditional leagues and media platforms in droves. Reliable audiences shriveled. At multiple points during the past eight months, our industry found it was among the hardest hit of any sectors in North America (in terms of employee hours lost).

Unfortunately for many of us, neither the politicians nor scientists could stop the crisis. Masks were not enough. Even with the promising prospects of a vaccine coming out of Pfizer, Oxford University and other institutions, best-case scenarios continued to suggest fall 2021 was the earliest that traditional crowds might refill stadiums. 

That means 2021 will repeat much of 2020, although we should have a vastly improved know-how (in fighting the virus), a possible medical solution and prominent officials grasping that organized sport benefits the nation’s mental health.  

In the meantime, the industry’s foot soldiers must keep slogging. They must go “once more unto the breach” (a long-ago command from Shakespeare’s Henry V) and boldly suffer the “slings and arrows” of outrageous misfortune (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I). 

Why did we choose Old English for a sport business article? 

Well, primarily because the Bard somehow seems appropriate for a virus raging on every continent. We’re witnessing a war that has discriminated (by race) yet left none of us untouched. It’s been a year of daily battles that seem predatory and strikingly ancient.

In November, new positive cases in the U.S. averaged 149,000 per day. Where late November and December would have once meant games involving the NFL, CFL, NBA, NHL, NLL and MLB’s winter meetings, there was only the NFL. Sadly, there was no Grey Cup in November after the CFL canceled its season.

In ages past, we would’ve written about sponsorships, promotions, marketing, creativity and entrepreneurs. Today, we can comfortably suggest that strategic tools and innovators are more important than ever. Survival of the fittest is a description of adaptation. The nimblest pivot. The sluggish stumble. Digital savants thrive where traditionalists stall.

In the 2009 book “Born to Run,” Christopher McDougall suggested the possibility that Homo sapiens emerged as the dominant upright species because of endurance running. Early tribes discovered running as a pack allowed them to outlast and subdue faster-moving prey. Neanderthals, McDougall suggested, didn’t adapt and, as the planet produced vast open spaces, they failed.

It may be a bit much to suggest multiple sport entities should look at banding together, but history suggests when the environment is dramatically altered, interdependence is critical to surviving. The strongest get humbled quickly by the realities of an ice age or choking clouds of smoke.

What are we suggesting?

One idea is that all entities in a specific sport should consider uniting. What if the NFL, CFL, players associations, NCAA football, XFL and high school football were to work together to emerge stronger? 

We know that very concept will be seen as sacrilege in our capitalistic realm (where failure is much appreciated). So, let’s put it this way: If groups like the PGA and LPGA won’t merge, then the kingdom should expect a wave of consolidations. 

Example? We wrote about Toronto’s Larry Tanenbaum in September. Is there something to be learned from Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, where two competing media companies and Tanenbaum collectively own the Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, Argonauts, the Scotiabank Arena and various other holdings? That’s one formidable castle.  

A second idea suggests the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and NCAA unite to support all Olympic sports. In the wake of a delayed Olympics and elite NCAA schools cutting programs, the USOPC and NCAA could efficiently enable athletes from all Olympic sports to enhance their digital and social media profiles. In return, smaller national governing bodies might digitize their sponsorship offerings and create new digital events, including esports. 

Let’s agree these are unprecedented times calling for stamina and fortitude. Maybe we need Shakespeare to give marching orders like he did in Henry V:

For there is none of you so mean and base,

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge … 

Let’s work together to make 2021 a great year. Onward!

Rick Burton is the David Falk Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University. Norm O’Reilly is director of the International Institute for Sport Business, University of Guelph. They are finishing a new leadership book for the University of Toronto Press.

Editor’s note: This column is revised from the print edition.

Questions about OPED guidelines or letters to the editor? Email editor Jake Kyler at jkyler@sportsbusinessjournal.com

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