Tom Mayenknecht: Stanley Cup and NBA finals roar out of the gate

Vancouver Sun

16 hours ago

If the opening games in the NHL Stanley Cup Final and NBA Finals are of any indication, then hockey and basketball fans are in for a real treat over the next two weeks. Game 1 for each delivered plenty on the entertainment meter, setting the stage for big world of mouth and heavy social media traffic going into their respective Game 2. Overtime games and one-point buzzer beaters result in the television ratings spikes that are pure joy to broadcast programmers, national sponsors, merchandisers, licensees and sports bars and restaurants across North America.
That's exactly what we saw Wednesday in the 4-3 overtime win by the hometown
Edmonton Oilers
over the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers and Thursday in the 111-110 jaw-dropper that the Indiana Pacers laid on the Oklahoma City Thunder. Indiana overcame a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter to completely change the tone and tenor of the NBA Finals, beginning with the surge in viewers that happened in the final 12 minutes. The OCT became the first NBA team in 28 post-seasons to lose a game in which they led in the last three minutes of regulation time by seven or more points. Game 1 of the NBA Finals saw Tyrese Haliburton of the Pacers outdo MVP Shai Gilgeous Alexander — the Canadian from Hamilton, Ontario. The track record this season for Gilgeous Alexander and the Thunder has been to rebound nicely from their rare losses and that could happen here, but make no mistake that there is now no more room for error by the Thunder, a consistently dominant team all year and one anchored by the professional poise of SGA.
The biggest bull market may be lining up for Connor McDavid and the
Edmonton Oilers
, who could become the first Canadian-based team to win the Stanley Cup in the 32 years since the Montreal Canadiens did so in 1993. The single biggest beneficiary would be the personal legacy of McDavid, already one of the stars of Canada's win at the Four Nations Face-Off in February. He needs a Cup to cement his status as an all-time great, in much the same way stars such as Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin have done over the past 40 years.
It's one thing for Major League Baseball to have two of its franchises — the Tampa Bay Rays and the team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics — playing in minor league ballparks or spring league venues seating about 10,000 fans. It's quite another thing for the Miami Marlins to be drawing flies to their much larger ballpark in South Florida. Television images of the Marlins playing at home are not worthy of the major league designation. They're the antithesis of what you want to attract new fans, especially when stadium employees outnumber paying customers.
Those three clubs are the cellar dwellers when it comes to MLB attendance numbers as the baseball season approaches its midway mark. Playing at Steinbrenner Field — the Grapefruit League home of the New York Yankees — the Rays are drawing an average of 9,855 per game while the Athletics are averaging 10,005 in Sacramento. Yet the Marlins' average of 11,648 fans per game — which is less than one-quarter the attendance of the league-leading Los Angeles Dodgers (50,250) — is the most embarrassing of all given their stadium capacity of 37,422 at LoanDepot Park.
Think of it this way: the Marlins need to play more than four games to match a single night's turnstile count at Dodger Stadium.
Tom Mayenknecht is the host of The Sport Market on Sportsnet 650 on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Vancouver-based sport business commentator and principal in Emblematica Brand Builders provides a behind-the-scenes look at the sport business stories that matter most to fans. Follow Mayenknecht at:
x.com/TheSportMarket
.