The greatest complaint about sports betting from people who don’t know a parlay from a chardonnay is the effect on young people seeing so much on wagering. Alert: In every jurisdiction it is illegal for anyone under 18 (sometimes 19) to bet legally. The image of 11-year-olds betting props on their own phones is a canard.

We are in a holding pattern as the media demand answers. Such as, will the biggest signing in the sport’s history now face federal charges that prohibit wiring money to an unlicensed sports gambling operation? Will MLB suspend him for life for dealing with an illegal gambling operation? Why is Ohtani’s name on the money trail? Also, are these payments about something else?

To most people who’ve watched tennis’ Hawkeye system or soccer’s goal-line system the response to all this is, What took so long? Fans watching games on TV at home have seen a virtual strike zone for years now, helping them and the homer announcers see accurate results live. The answer: Gambling.

it’s a reach to say that Flames fan watching the Edmonton playoff series in April of 2022 could have foreseen this teardown happening so fast and so brutally to a team that sped out to a 5-1 lead over the Oilers that night. But it did. The only thing making it worse will be an Oilers Stanley Cup win in 2024. 

It’s a sad state for golf fans being denied the best players on a weekly basis or—  even more disappointing— at the majors. There is little indication what format the so-called settlement will entail when it’s finally hammered out between the Tour and LIV. But one thing they can agree on is that none of this is doing anything to please fans or sponsors of the sport. 

While the players are trying for the umpteenth time to establish women’s hockey as a “thing” in the Canadian sports firmament, Canada’s progressive media are ready to use these attendance figures to make arguments for women’s hockey as “equal pay for work of equal value”.

Coming soon, our latest book “Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey”. With my son Evan, we look back to Espo to the Bruins (1967), Gretzky to the Kings (1988) , and St. Patrick to the Avalanche (1995), Deal With It tracks the back story behind the most impactful trades in modern NHL history. With detailed analysis and keen insight into these and five other monumental transactions, Deal With It recalls the moments when history was changed. Plus a ranking of the Top 25 Deals in NHL History.

As we head to this weekend’s Super Bowl, a demographic that doesn’t know a touchdown from a touch-up will be closely following Taylor Swift’s travels over a 72-hour span as he she exits a concert in Japan, flies across the Pacific to Las Vegas, site of the Super Bowl, to see Travis Kelce play and then depart for her next concert in Brisbane Australia. (Points deducted if you mention carbon footprints,) 

This case is about power, stardom, exploitation. Ugly, yes. Life-wrecking for some. But trying to pigeon-hole the sport of hockey as the unique engineer of the tragedy is ignorant and irresponsible. 

The Patriots’ owner has a season-ticket base that is overwhelmingly white. But his new coach doesn’t care. His priority is dressing-room politics and the love of ESPN. Robert Kraft, too, has put NFL DEI compliance ahead of his fans’ priorities. 

Like people who’ve had root canal surgery or women who’ve gone through childbirth, the fans’ awful pain of being robbed by NHL refs teams does fade quickly. To help prepare fans for the inevitable miscarriages of justice we harken back to last May when we provided our Playoff reffing primer: 

While Miami contemplates either arsenic or strychnine in its Tua dilemma, they can look out and see a team that played the QB Casino perfectly. Houston’s C.J. Stroud— selected second in the 2023 Draft— lit up the Cleveland Browns in his first playoff game, looking every inch the Sure Thing NFL clubs crave. 

Make no mistake, the DEI hires aren’t going away. They’ll remain in organizations— even if they fail. Which leaves us with the conclusion that the North American economy may not right itself until the hires of today are retiring.

The key to their success, as we have written on several occasions, will not be glowing media stories, feminist narratives or even traditional hockey fans. The success will be predicated on whether their fellow women decide to grasp this league in a way they have not done for other female sports leagues. 

Borje. You know you’re famous when you can go by a single handle. In Canada, that was the legacy of Borje Salming. The publicity has begun for the six-part TV series Borje: The Journey of a Legend— a dramatic tribute to HOF defenceman Salming who died of ALS at age 71 in late 2022.

It is a cliché in city planning that, adding roads to prevent congestion, in fact ends up in more cars and more congestion. IDLM was reminded of this seeming contradiction while watching another episode of Law & Order: NFL Crappy Refereeing. In this week’s episode, what was considered pass interference on Thursday is Saturday’s “let ‘em play”’

As we know now, the private jet awaited by breathless media contained not Ohtani but Canadian TV star/ entrepreneur Robert Herjavec. Ohtani was instead in his home in southern California. The Blue Jays were, alas, not getting the Japanese Babe Ruth. They were getting another phantom handshake from fate. And a Shark Tank dude.

Which brings us to the worst news for the Tiger Tour: Spaniard Jon Rahm, arguably the No.1 player of the Tour, is taking his act to the dreaded LIV Tour— perhaps as soon as this week. After fervently committing to the Tour earlier this year, Rahm has apparently tired of the Woods/ McIroy cabal that dominates the Tour.

Justin Trudeau is well on his way to creating an apparatus for regulating both public and private speech. The past week it announced that it was extending its grant money though 2029 to failing media outlets, up to about $30,000 per employee. Not to be outdone, Heritage Canada is putting $40,000 per journalist as a target to promote “diversity”. On top of CBC’s $1.5 B annual haul. No wonder so many CDN media legends rushed to defend a hapless CP reporter who was verbally upbraided by Poillievre. 

The AI variations extend past music. Can some clever soul create a new Humphrey Bogart movie using previous material? What about reviving Katherine Hepburn from her many films? Could Glenn Miller suddenly emerge from the mists to lead his band in Fredericton?  The ramifications in the arts, sports and politics are endless.