Tom Mayenknecht: Women's sports and the Whitecaps wearing the crowns this week

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Bulls of the week

It was another solid week for the rise of women’s professional sports, with the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) confirming Seattle would be its eighth franchise. That happened just one week after Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum was officially announced as the home of the league’s seventh entry. Unmistakable is the corporate clout and financial capacity behind the PWHL, which is currently emerging as a single-entity structure with all teams owned and operated by the Walter Group, led by Mark Walter, the managing partner of Guggenheim Baseball Investments and controlling owner of the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball. The newly announced Seattle PWHL franchise will play out of Climate Pledge Arena, operated by Oak View Group.

Elsewhere in women’s sports, Caitlin Clark continues to drive remarkable interest as the biggest star in the WNBA. The upcoming exhibition game between Clark’s Indiana Fever and the Brazilian national women’s team will be the most expensive forum she’s ever played in, with the get-in price on the secondary market currently at US$440. There’s still plenty of work to be done on behalf of the PWHL and WNBA, but anyone questioning the popularity and commercial appeal of Clark in particular, and women’s sports in general, isn’t paying attention.

Yet for the second consecutive week, the biggest winners in the business of sport have been the Vancouver Whitecaps of Major League Soccer. Everywhere we turned last week, the Whitecaps have been winning. They upped their MLS regular season record to a league-leading 7-2-1 last week with a 3-1 win over Minnesota and that was impressive in and of itself as it came on the road last Saturday.

The big news, however, was Wednesday when the Whitecaps humbled Lionel Messi and Inter-Miami CF 3-1 at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale. That gave Vancouver a jaw-dropping 5-1 aggregate win in the CONCACAF Champions Cup semifinals and advanced them to the regional club championship of North America. They’ll play Cruz Azul of Liga MX in Mexico City on June 1. They’re the third Canadian club to reach the final and are looking to become the first Canadian club to win the CONCACAF club playdowns.

Bears of the week

The buffet table of playoff games on national television has been the big driver in the business of sport in North America, with the NHL and NBA running their post-seasons shoulder-to-shoulder for the past two weeks. The NBA will not be happy to have lost the Los Angeles Lakers from the playoff roster, in much the same way that the NHL is struggling to capture the imagination of casual hockey fans in the U.S. without any of its American-based Original Six franchises — the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers — playing in the Stanley Cup tournament. It’s the first time that has happened.

North of the border, however, the television footprint should be quite dynamic for national rights holders Rogers Sportsnet, especially if the Winnipeg Jets go into the weekend as the third Canadian-based franchise to advance to the second round (they’re playing in St. Louis Friday night). A win there will see the Jets — this year’s President’s Trophy winners — join the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Edmonton Oilers among the final eight teams vying for the Stanley Cup. It’s shaping up as one of the rare occasions when an all-Canadian Stanley Cup Final is still possible heading into the second round. Of course, most Canadian hockey fans would take a win of any kind in the big dance, something that hasn’t happened since the Montreal Canadiens were the last Canadian-based team to win the Stanley Cup in 1993.

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.