Weekly Recap: PacWeather, Cuba, TFC and more…
A few times in recent weeks I’ve had folks tell me they enjoy my Facebook posts. I always smile and thank them and accept the compliment, but the truth is I’m ambivalent about that type of Facebook praise.
Facebook is fun, and Facebook is useful, and harnessing the power of Facebook is a must for any business serious about winning exposure and audience engagement and (maybe) some profit. But Facebook doesn’t pay me to publish. Canada’s largest newspaper does. But they’re not just a legacy media company. They’re a multimedia news organization with several robust platforms on which I publish regularly, and where my work finds its broadest audience.
Yet people compliment me on my Facebook posts.
The face a journalist makes when folks praise their Facebook posts but not the work they do for money.
It’s not a problem necessarily. To the extent that I have an audience, I’ve learned something about it. The biggest lesson? My regular readers are dedicated, but they’re disparate groups. Some folks know me as a the funniest guy on Twitter and Instagram, while others know me as the guy who carved out the sportsbiz niche at the Toronto Star. Some people know me as the reporter who bridged cultural gaps on the baseball beat, while others think of me as a boxing scribe.
I’m all of those people, and sometimes I’m several of them within the span of a few hours.
To help folks keep up, and to encourage my social media followers to check out what I do on the day job, I’ll start posting every weekend to update folks on stuff I’ve published on various platforms just to encourage some audience crossover and keep my small band of fans in the loop.
So with that in mind:
We started the week exploring the relationship between Cuba’s sports regime and U.S.-based outfitters. If you’ve been watching track this season you’ve seen Cuban athletes like Dayron Robles competing in Nike gear. How is that even possible given that U.S.-Cuba relations are still a long way from normal? I donned my #Sportonomics cap to investigate.
Of course the biggest sports news of the month came two Fridays ago, when Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao announced their long, long, loooooooong overdue meeting. We addressed the topic a few times this week.
On the blog we discussed whether Floyd was, in fact, scared of Manny Pacquiao. Years of pre-fight hype say yes. Facts suggest the opposite. Click here to read the post on it.
We also learned an American basketball player had been cut from a team in the Philippines for having the nerve, temerity and audacity to suggest Manny Pacquiao isn’t that good at basketball. To read the player’s scorching hot take and my level-headed and completely non-sarcastic analysis, click here.
And a big fight announcement always means an invite from my man Corey Erdman to visit The Fight Network for an on-air discussion. We recorded this live and posted the results unedited, which explains the blooper you’ll see in the video below.
The work week ended with a trip across the street to the Air Canada Centre, where #Sportonomics got an exclusive first look at the new Toronto FC jersey. At first glance it looks a lot like the old one but it’s different in important ways, both as an article of clothing and as a sponsorship activation.
For words and video on why soccer jerseys are some of the most valuable real estate in sports, click here.
So What’s next?
I can’t tell you yet what I’m doing on the day job, but can assure you it’s interesting #sportsbiz stuff. Sponsorship, fan engagement, technology and more.
And on the blog I’ll return to two of my favourite topics — the upcoming PacWeather bout, and 40-yard-dash Tall Tale Season.
If you don’t want to miss any of it, you have options.
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I just want to make sure that if you can find my work anywhere, you can also find it everywhere.
Thanks one more time for reading.
Morgan Campbell: A Writer on Sports and More 