Tom Mayenknecht: Women's sports on the rise, Canadian Juniors biggest losers this week

Sports business showing strong trends heading into 2025.

Published Jan 03, 2025  •  Last updated 7 hours ago  •  3 minute read

Canada forward Ethan Gauthier (left) sits on the bench alongside teammates Luca Pinelli and Brayden Yager during the third period against Czechia on Thursday in Ottawa. Photo by Adrian Wyld /The Canadian Press

Bulls of the week

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When it comes to the game-changing rise of women’s sports, we’re picking up where we left off at the end of 2024. If the first week of the New Year is any indication, women’s sports will continue to grow in a veritable bull market in Canada and the U.S. American gymnast extraordinaire Simone Biles was named Sports Illustrated sportsperson of the year on the strength of yet another medal haul at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where the 27-year-old’s three gold medals and two silvers last summer not only gave her 11 Olympic medals over three Games but consolidated her place as the most decorated gymnast of all time, with 30 world championships medals. She also figured strongly in helping NBC deliver a couple of the top-100 U.S. television shows of 2024.

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On another front, Denver was named the newest side in the National Women’s Soccer League, setting a record for the largest expansion fee ever paid for a women’s franchise anywhere in the world. The 16th NWSL club already made its first payment on the US$110 million entry fee, more than double the previous record ($53 million for Boston and San Francisco in 2023) and more than 50 times the $2 million that Angel City FC (Los Angeles) paid just five years ago. That’s truly astronomical growth.

Meanwhile, the new WNBA schedule for the next regular season that tips off May 17 sees rookie of the year Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever slated to face rival Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky five times. Those will be early markers for the highest get-in ticket prices and largest television audiences this coming year. Yet also making news this week is Unrivalled, the new three-on-three women’s league that makes its debut later this month. Reese will be among those doubling up and playing three-on-three, only adding fuel to the fire of women’s basketball in particular and women’s sports in general.

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Bears of the week

The J.T. Miller-Elias Pettersson soap opera inside the Vancouver Canucks’ locker room continues to be a big talking point among NHL insiders and fans on social media, and you would have to think an annoying distraction for the team and its front office as the NHL schedule approaches its midway mark. It shows no signs of subsiding and could very well continue to be a thing until such time as either of the two Canucks stars are traded or they convincingly set the issue aside in the best professional interests of the team. Inexplicably, that hasn’t happened yet.

Yet the biggest losers this week in the business of sport are Hockey Canada and its under-21 national junior team, one that will be on the outside looking in during the medal round of the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships in Ottawa. For the second straight year, Canada was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Czechia amid all kinds of second-guessing on roster selection and player usage. Worse than the disappointment on the ice — where it is always gold medal or bust — is the way Canadian GM Pete Anholt and head coach Dave Cameron seemingly took limited accountability for the sub-par performance. The post-game media conference was not what the PR doctor ordered and didn’t reflect well on Hockey Canada and its world junior team, typically a beacon of excellence, success and leadership at the IIHF tournament over the years.

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.

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