Miami Dolphins running back Raheem Mostert, left, gets past New York Jets safety Jordan Whitehead and carries the ball into the end zone for a touchdown during the fourth quarter of an NFL football game, in East Rutherford, N.J. on Nov. 24.Adam Hunger/The Associated Press
In the satirical TV comedy Upload, set in a near future in which people who die can upload their consciousness to a virtual world and live forever (or as long as they can afford the monthly subscription fees), corporations dominate public life to such an extent that holidays themselves have been renamed. U.S. Thanksgiving and Black Friday have become a single family-feast-and-consumerism bacchanal known as Cyber Discount Day, in which drones buzz across the landscape delivering courier boxes bearing a swooshy logo that looks eerily like the real one for Amazon.
Created by Greg Daniels, who adapted The Office for U.S. audiences, Upload is a cheeky indictment of late-stage capitalism and our own collective shrugging surrender to big tech. Which I suppose is why it streams on Amazon’s Prime Video TV service: Consider it a comedic pressure valve installed by Jeff Bezos, so that we can enjoy a collective chuckle at our shared anxiety and then safely keep on shopping.
Because if some elements of the show seem a little far-fetched, Cyber Discount Day feels like it came to fruition this week, when Amazon used an entirely new day of NFL action to create a shopapalooza that kept millions of Americans glued to their smart TVs, safely watching football and clicking on online deals instead of stampeding over strangers to get to door-crasher specials.
Like other global tech companies, after a few years of experimentation with live sports, Amazon is now moving forcefully into the game. Last year, the company struck an 11-year deal for the U.S. rights to Thursday Night Football, paying a reported US$1-billion for 16 games annually, including one preseason match.
This year, like a patron of an exclusive restaurant who wants to feel special, it ordered something off the menu, asking the NFL to stage a game for the first time on Black Friday, featuring Miami vs. the Jets. Amazon is reportedly paying US$100-million for the U.S. rights.
It sold plenty of ads, and armed with reams of shopping, searching, and viewing data on its subscribers, it was able to serve up to three different versions of commercials to different audiences, depending on viewer profiles.
Even so, don’t bother doing the math. It doesn’t add up, at least not in any conventional sense. Ads that aired during the game sold for upward of US$500,000 for each 30-second spot, according to reports. With an estimated 50 minutes of commercials across the three-hour broadcast, that still means a loss in the range of US$75-million.
But the company doesn’t care, because selling ads isn’t where it makes its money. Prime is a shopping-loyalty program. Amazon just wants consumers to feel more positively toward the company by virtue of having a bunch of NFL games thrown in as part of their subscription, which will make them more likely to use the platform for their shopping.
And Amazon made sure Prime customers didn’t even have to get off their couch to shop Black Friday sales by peppering the broadcast with a series of QR codes on the TV screen, enabling viewers to use their phones to access steeply discounted offers. If you weren’t watching, you missed out.
Jay Marine, the vice-president of Prime Video and global head of sports for Amazon, noted in a podcast interview this week that the company uses sports both to create “stickiness” for Prime and to bring in new subscribers to the loyalty program. That means it can lose money on sports, as long as those programs help encourage customers to stay in the Amazon ecosystem. To that end, Marine explained that Amazon doesn’t need all of the games of any given league; it just needs a selection of the important ones, enough to ensure serious fans have to sign up.
“We want to give more than we’re charging, and sports are uniquely valuable,” he told The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast. “They are must-watch, they’re non-substitutable. If you love the Premier League, you can’t watch rugby instead. … If you love the NFL, you’re going to watch the NFL.” He added that, unlike dedicated sports broadcasters, “we don’t have to fill hours, or a linear schedule, so we can really be selective.” In Europe, Prime Video streams only one UEFA Champions League match a week, all it needs to make the service a must-have for hard-core fans.
Apple is taking a similar approach. Last year, it struck a deal with Major League Baseball for the rights to stream weekly doubleheaders in eight countries on its Apple TV+ service – national broadcasts with no frustrating regional blackouts. Like Amazon, Apple figured it only needed a small piece of the MLB action to grab the attention of potential customers. Also like Amazon, it doesn’t need to actually make money on the sports if it can bundle Apple TV+ to boost its core business: selling more iPhones.
And now the big companies are starting to move in on Canadian broadcasters’ turf.
Last week, at the annual Primetime Sports and Entertainment Conference in downtown Toronto, a trio of executives from Rogers Sportsnet, Bell Media’s TSN, and CBC were asked what they thought was the biggest development in sports media they’re preparing to confront. Right off the top, Rob Corte, the vice-president of Sportsnet and NHL Production, said, “the big global companies … the Amazons, the Googles … it’s going to be a significant challenge for us.”
Over the past two seasons, Sportsnet missed out on broadcasting some Toronto Blue Jays games – a team owned by its parent company, Rogers Communications Inc. – because Apple owned the rights. TSN, meanwhile, aired only a selection of Toronto FC games this season after Apple swooped in and bought up the rights to all MLS games. Adding insult to injury, Toronto FC is co-owned by TSN’s parent company, BCE Inc., which has a 37.5-per-cent share of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.
Can Canadian sports broadcasters – which have a pretty simple business model, buying up the rights to sports events and selling them to viewers and advertisers for a profit – compete with companies that don’t really care if they lose gobs of money on sports, as long as they can make up the difference in selling gadgets? Amazon is the world’s second-largest retailer; it has a market capitalization of US$1.5-trillion. Apple’s market cap is almost US$3-trillion. Companies like that are planets with their own gravity and atmosphere.
In his opening remarks at the conference, Corte said that competition from the “big juggernauts that are global” is “getting pretty close, and we’re trying to figure out how to deal with it, and we might not be able to actually deal with it ourselves.”
What did that mean, exactly? Was he suggesting someone – the government? a regulatory body? – might have to step in to save Canadian sports rights for Canadian broadcasters?
This week, I requested a follow-up interview with Corte, in hopes that he might elaborate. Through a spokesperson, he declined.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
