Tom Mayenknecht: Tennis finds new star in Canadian Victoria Mboko; NFL also has big week
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It was a bullish week for both the National Football League and ESPN, with the NFL gaining a 10 per cent stake in the American cable giant and the Disney-owned sports network taking on the rights to and operations of NFL Network and Red Zone TV. It's a game-changing deal for the way leagues and their media rights holders relate to one another, on and off the field, so to speak. Watch for it to lead to many similar arrangements involving other leagues and their rights holders. It will only further elevate the upside and preferred position held by official rights holders, not only in the NFL but across all major men's and women's professional sports leagues operating in North America. Yet it will also lead to ongoing scrutiny and second-guessing of league decisions given the coziness and high stakes of the ownership relationship.
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The Toronto Blue Jays had an all-time franchise-high of 45 runs scored over a three-game series as they swept the hapless Colorado Rockies in lopsided fashion this week (15-1, 10-4 and 20-1). They also became the first Major League Baseball franchise since 1900 to amass 63 hits in a three-game series, with 13 home runs, 13 doubles, one triple and 36 singles. The Jays go into the weekend with a 68-48 record, 20 games above .500 and four games ahead of the Boston Red Sox in the American League East. The Rockies series was a lot of fun for the Jays and their fans, but make no mistake, their opposition will be a lot tougher against the 66-49 Los Angeles Dodgers, 66-48 Chicago Cubs and 60-56 Texas Rangers over the next week.
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Yet the biggest winner this week in the business of sport was Canadian 18-year-old Victoria Mboko of Burlington, Ont. She became the third Canadian woman to win the National Bank Open presented by Rogers (Canadian Open), following in the footsteps of 2019 champion Bianca Andreescu. Mboko's ascent to tennis champion and Canadian sports hero is both improbable and remarkable, as was her final match win over four-time Grand Slam women's singles champion Naomi Osaka (2-6, 6-4, 6-1). Wins over four Grand Slam major champions will take her from a world ranking of 85th to begin the tournament to within the top-25 on the WTA Tour. This from a player who began the year outside of the top-300 in the world.
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To put the sport business side of the Mboko story into proper context, consider this: She earned $752,275 for the win. That single tournament score is more than her year-to-date career earnings of $458,001. She's now 53-9 in 2025, coming off only her seventh time playing in a WTA Tour main draw.
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Perhaps most unfathomable about the come-from-behind win over Osaka is that Mboko was playing with a wrist injury suffered the night before in her semifinal win over former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina.
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The flip side of the big three-game sweep at Coors Field in mile high Denver is how pathetic the Rockies are. It's an embarrassment to baseball that a team can be 30-84, winning barely once every four games; 35.5 games behind in the National League West.
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Yet arguably the biggest bears of the week are the New York Yankees, 4-6 in their last 10 and now 6.5 games behind the Jays in the American League East. The Rockies have the ninth smallest payroll in MLB but the Yankees have the second highest at US$298 million, with approximately $40 million of that going to superstar Aaron Judge. The Pinstripes also feature slugger Giancarlo Stanton ($32 million), Cody Bellinger ($27.5 million) and Paul Goldschmidt ($12.5 million). Those four players themselves earn $112 million. The Rockies' payroll is $122 million all in.
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Needless to say, the Yankees have been the talk of the town in the Big Apple and not in a good way.
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WASHINGTON — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has met privately in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump to make a case he did not want to hear: the automotive industry he said he wants to save is being hurt by his tariffs. Article content The Democrat came with a slide deck to make her points in a visual presentation. Just getting the meeting Tuesday with the Republican president was an achievement for someone viewed as a contender for her party's White House nomination in 2028. Article content Article content Article content Whitmer's strategy for dealing with Trump highlights the conundrum for her and other Democratic leaders as they try to protect the interests of their states while voicing their opposition to his agenda. It's a dynamic that Whitmer has navigated much differently from many other Democratic governors. Article content Article content The fact that Whitmer had 'an opening to make direct appeals' in private to Trump was unique in this political moment, said Matt Grossman, a Michigan State University politics professor. Article content It was her third meeting with Trump at the White House since he took office in January. This one, however, was far less public than the time in April when Whitmer was unwittingly part of an impromptu news conference that embarrassed her so much she covered her face with a folder. Article content On Tuesday, she told the president that the economic damage from the tariffs could be severe in Michigan, a state that helped deliver him the White House in 2024. Whitmer also brought up federal support for recovery efforts after an ice storm and sought to delay changes to Medicaid. Article content Article content Trump offered no specific commitments, according to people familiar with the private conversation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity to describe it. Article content Whitmer is hardly the only one sounding the warning of the potentially damaging consequences, including factory job losses, lower profits and coming price increases, of the import taxes that Trump has said will be the economic salvation for American manufacturing. Article content White House spokesman Kush Desai that no other president 'has taken a greater interest in restoring American auto industry dominance than President Trump.' Trade frameworks negotiated by the administration would open up the Japanese, Korean and European markets for vehicles made on assembly lines in Michigan, Desai said. Article content But the outreach Trump has preferred tends to be splashy presentations by tech CEOs. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave the president a customized glass plaque with a gold base as Cook promised $600 billion in investments. Trump claims to have brought in $17 trillion in investment commitments, although none of those numbers has surfaced yet in economic data. Article content Under his series of executive orders and trade frameworks, U.S. automakers face import taxes of 50% on steel and aluminum, 30% on parts from China and a top rate of 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico not covered under an existing 2020 trade agreement. That puts America's automakers and parts suppliers at a disadvantage against German, Japanese and South Korean vehicles that only face a 15% import tax negotiated by Trump last month. Article content On top of that, Trump this past week threatened a 100% tariff on computer chips, which are an integral part of cars and trucks, though he would exclude companies that produce chips domestically from the tax. Article content Whitmer's two earlier meetings with Trump resulted in gains for Michigan. But the tariffs represent a significantly broader request of a president who has imposed them even more aggressively in the face of criticism. Article content Article content Materials in the presentation brought Whitmer to the meeting and obtained by The Associated Press noted how trade with Canada and Mexico has driven $23.2 billion in investment to Michigan since 2020. Article content General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis operate 50 factories across the state, while more than 4,000 facilities support the auto parts supply chain. Altogether, the sector supports nearly 600,000 manufacturing jobs, forming the backbone of Michigan's economy. Article content Whitmer outlined the main points of the materials to Trump and left copies with his team. Article content To Grossman, the Michigan State professor, a key question is whether voters who expected to be helped by tariffs would react if Trump's import taxes failed to deliver the promised economic growth. Article content 'Everyone's aware that Michigan is a critical swing state and the auto industry has outsized influence, not just directly, but symbolically,' Grossman said. Article content Article content AP VoteCast found that Trump won Michigan in 2024 largely because two-thirds of its voters described the economic conditions as being poor or 'not so good.' Roughly 70% of the voters in the state who felt negatively about the economy backed the Republican. The state was essentially split over whether tariffs were a positive, with Trump getting 76% of those voters who viewed them favorably. Article content The heads of General Motors, Ford and Stellantis have repeatedly warned the administration that the tariffs would cut company profits and undermine their global competitiveness. Their efforts have resulted in little more than a temporary, monthlong pause intended to give companies time to adjust. The reprieve did little to blunt the financial fallout. Article content In the second quarter alone, Ford reported $800 million in tariff-related costs, while GM said the import taxes cost it $1.1 billion. Those expenses could make it harder to reinvest in new domestic factories, a goal Trump has championed. Article content 'We expect tariffs to be a net headwind of about $2 billion this year, and we'll continue to monitor the developments closely and engage with policymakers to ensure U.S. autoworkers and customers are not disadvantaged by policy change,' Ford CEO Jim Farley said on his company's earning call. Article content Since Trump returned to the White House, Michigan has lost 7,500 manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Article content Smaller suppliers have felt the strain, too. Article content Detroit Axle, a family-run auto parts distributor, has been one of the more vocal companies in Michigan about the impact of the tariffs. The company initially announced it might have to shut down a warehouse and lay off more than 100 workers, but later said it would be able to keep the facility open, at least for now.
