Visa Canada is slip-sliding away from its sponsorship of Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton (BCS) after 20 years, Golden Goals has learned.
The payment giant’s contract expired with winter, but BCS president Don Wilson said it agreed to one more year at a reduced rate. Wilson declined to discuss the value, but a source said it was worth between $250,000 and $500,000 a year.
“Visa was an absolutely fantastic partner,” Wilson said from Calgary. “Many of the properties that were sold or controlled by Visa are open, and we’ll be looking for a couple of major sponsors to join with us in our pursuit for Sochi.”
Team Canada’s biggest surprises at the 2010 Winter Olympics were on the Whistler Sliding Centre track where bobsledding duo Heather Moyse and Kaillie Humphries and skeleton’s Jon Montgomery won gold.
The International Bobsleigh and Toboggan Federation’s world cup returns to Whistler January 30 to February 4, 2012. The world championships are scheduled to run two weeks later in Lake Placid, New York.
The headline on the Canadian Tire website promoting its friendly $771 million acquisition of Calgary’s Forzani Group says it all: Ultimate Authority in Sports.
It’s a sly swipe across the border at The Sports Authority, lest it or Dick’s Sporting Goods cross the 49th parallel and engage in a retail war.
Canadian Tire already competes to a certain extent with Wal-Mart, and most Zellers stores will become Targets next year.
What began as Forzani’s Locker Room in 1971 expanded to include Sport-Chek in 1991 and Hogarth’s Sport and Ski in 1992. By 2000, it included Coast Mountain Sports, which was rebranded Atmosphere last year. Forzani boasted $1.635 billion in 2011 fiscal year sales at its mix of 533 corporate and franchise stores.
The new ownership by Canadian Tire means the company will have dominant buying power for top domestic and international sportswear and equipment brands, from bikes and balls to fishing gear and flip-flops. Licensed merchandise, too.
Flagship Sport-Chek has 23 locations in B.C., all but two are standalones. The rest feature a Nevada Bob’s Golf, Atmosphere, Hockey Experts and/or S3 department.
Forzani is also part of the global Intersport Group, based in Bern, Switzerland, which counts 5,320 branded or affiliated stores in 39 countries.
The Vancouver Whitecaps’ maiden Major League Soccer season is almost two months old. No better time for the MLS Players Union to release its salary report.
The Whitecaps are set to earn $3,164,110 in base pay. MLS rosters are salary-capped at $2.675 million, but the league pays extra for designated players. By comparison, the Canadian Football League’s 2010 salary cap was $4.25 million.
Three of the Whitecaps’ top earners, however, have been notable for their absences from early season matches. Top earner is Eric Hassli, who scored the first goal in the club’s first win, but missed three games on suspensions. The league picks up $335,000 of his $660,000 base. His guaranteed annualized salary, including bonuses, works out to $900,000. That makes him the highest-paid non-Canuck athlete in the market. Next is captain and chronic groin-injured Jay DeMerit, whose base is $300,000. Backup veteran goalkeeper Joe Cannon’s base is $199,500.
Jay Nolly has handled starting duties and gets only $65,000. Assistant captain Terry Dunfield ($65,000) and midfielder Wes Knight are bargains ($50,000). Striker Omar Salgado, the Mexican-American first pick overall in the MLS draft, has an $80,000 base. With bonuses, he could make $121,868.67. Not bad for a 17-year-old rookie.
In a bid to soften the blow of the Olympic Village fiasco for taxpayers, Vancouver city hall took over 32 properties owned by Millennium Development that were appraised at $82.2 million.
It didn’t, however, touch the company’s VANOC sponsorship. That included rights to sponsor the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) through London 2012. The COC held a bi-annual partner conference May 5 in Toronto. Millennium did not attend.
twitter.com/bobmackin