Sport’s showpieces are strictly business

First things first.

Since when was the scheduling of games at Junior B level the accepted metric for organisational incompetence? Whence comes this desire to compare such noble contests with the cancellation of Rugby World Cup games in the land of the rising sun?

Back to this in a tick, because nothing can delay me from what’s happening with World Rugby. And the NBA. And the FAI. And FIFA.

At this stage it’s not every week, or every day: it seems to be every other hour that some new catastrophe erupts like a pulsating boil. Mind you, the communications teams of all these organisations must be sending hampers of gifts to Colleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardey for their sterling work in distracting the known world from what’s happening.

The temptation is of course to say these organisations are all the same, which isn’t true, but there are a couple of interesting aspects to the big snarl-ups worth looking at.

Take the mess surrounding the typhoon in Japan and its impact on Rugby World Cup scheduling. People have been quick out of the traps to ask what World Rugby was thinking of, settling on Japan in typhoon season as the best date for its tournament.

This misses the point entirely. There is no flexibility with the date because of the network of professional leagues and international games and commercial commitments around the globe. It’s this time of year because it has to be this time of year.

Once the wheels start to move, and in this case they started years ago, then it’s not a matter of exploring other options. There aren’t any.

This is not due to the commercial imperative. This is professionalism.

People think professionalism is about paying players, but it isn’t. It’s about maximising the return from the product, be it rugby, basketball, soccer, or athletics.

World Rugby forecast last month that it expected £360 million (€409m) in proceeds from the 2019 World Cup, compared with £330m (€375m) earned at the previous tournament. Eighty per cent of World Rugby’s revenues are generated by the tournament every four years, which shows how central it is to the growth of the game; that’s particularly important when World Rugby was knocked back in its efforts to organise the Nations Championship earlier this year.

As a juicy sidebar, consider this from the Financial Times on that Nations Championship idea: “World Rugby had agreed a 12-year broadcasting deal for the new concept with Infront, a Swiss-based marketing agency, owned by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda and run by Philippe Blatter, nephew of former Fifa president Sepp Blatter.”

The Blatter connection is something we’ll just have to deal with another time, but note the reference to a Chinese conglomerate.

This may resonate for you, reader, if you recall the NBA’s scrambling last week when Daryl Morey, general manager of one of its teams, tweeted a message in support of the Hong Kong protests against new extradition laws.

China provides the NBA with 10% of its revenue after careful courting, pun intended, by basketball bosses. The backlash was immediate and overwhelming. Companies with ties to the NBA from travel agents to milk suppliers cut those ties, while there are also reports of shops in China ceasing to sell NBA tops. What makes this all the more interesting is the NBA’s reputation as a socially aware sports league, with outspoken athletes and officials — Commissioner Adam Silver in particular — vocal on behalf of inclusion and progressive causes.

Interesting, but not surprising. The only real surprise left is people are surprised. This is professionalism, pure and simple. The NBA’s driving principle isn’t enabling players to be vocal on what matters to them: the principle is to maximise the return.

This is why FIFA’s World Cup in Qatar is a tournament being built by on the backs of hundreds of dead immigrant labourers. This is why the IAAF runs World Championship events at midnight rather than moving them from Doha.

Michael Corleone was right all those years ago. It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.

‘Cruel, stupid, and thoroughly corporate’: The demise of Sports Illustrated

Sympathies this morning with those in Sports Illustrated who were let go last week in what columnist Ray Ratto described accurately as a “pointless, needlessly cruel, stupid, and thoroughly corporate” way.

A few years ago I rocked up at Sports Illustrated headquarters and was welcomed in. Basketball writer Dan Greene, who clearly drew the short straw, took the time to show me around — the office, the framed covers, the headed paper.

I learned from social media that Dan was one of those cut loose by Sports Illustrated’s new owners.

Again, Ray Ratto on those who did that cutting and their ilk: “May their demises be slow, painful and filled with screams only they can hear.”

Radcliffe’s careful words on Salazar disappointing

I see now that the Nike Oregon Project has been shut down in the wake of its head coach, Alberto Salazar, being banned for four years for doping violations.

Yes, yes, crookedness in elite athletics. In other news, grass is revealed as green. In other (other) news, I hope you didn’t put yourself through Paula Radcliffe’s thoughts on Salazar.

“We’ve all talked about in the past about how Alberto, in particular, will push it right up to that line . . .” Radcliffe told the BBC.

He’s been very conscious of trying to find out where the limits lie and how close he can push it to get those last little bits of gains to compete with athletes that, in his mind, in other parts of the world, are really cheating. He’s overstepped that.

“He probably should hold his hands up and say, ‘I did, I overstepped. The rules were broken, I will now take the punishment for that’.

“Because no athletes have been sanctioned, have real anti-doping [rules been] transgressed by athletes? I don’t think so. Otherwise we would have seen athletes banned at this point.”

As the kids say on social media, that is ... something or other, but there’s one thing it isn’t. And that’s a full-throated condemnation of a cheat.

Paula Radcliffe is a Nike ambassador. Her husband is Mo Farah’s coach. Farah was previously coached by Alberto Salazar.