CEO Pelley is hoping World Cup can help bring Toronto back

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“It makes me sad. It’s not the city that it used to be, not the country that it was 10 years ago.”

Pelley is the CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd, the largest sporting conglomerate in North America, maybe the world. MLSE owns the Maple Leafs, the Raptors, the Argos, the Marlies, Toronto FC, a bunch of restaurants and real estate and just about anything else it wants to own. And what Pelley wants more than anything is for Toronto to return to being the Toronto he remembers, the city he reveres, and for Canada to return to being the country he adores.

And it is rare to hear anyone in a position of such power and prominence to be this honest, be this glib and this outspoken in a format such as this.

And then his eyes lit up and began to dance when he spoke of the World Cup of Soccer coming to Toronto and Canada in 2026. And all it can do for the city, for the people, for the country.

“This isn’t just a sporting event,” said Pelley and he was quick to point out that MLSE is not making “one penny on the World Cup” which we may or not believe.

“Six hundred and three days to go,” said Pelley, who called the World Cup the secret sauce for the city. “Are we behind (in the planning)?” asked Pelley. “Absolutely?” And then he spoke about the power of sport as a community builder and healer. “We have an opportunity to do something special. So we can talk about (our) city in the greatest of terms. It’s like having six Super Bowls. Can you imagine that?”

The Board of Trade is hardly the platform for anyone to wonder about the state of its city. But you can hardly go anywhere these days without someone talking about what Toronto used to be. Before all the traffic. Before the housing costs. Before the homelessness. Before the constant construction. Before the crime. Before the hatred. Before the anti-semitism. Before this Mayor.

A lot of befores that hit too close to home for far too many of us. The city we used to love and brag about. The city we’re not quite so sure about anymore.

Pelley understands all the responsibility that goes along with his job at MLSE. There is all that money and all those games and teams that have fallen short of expectations. He has, at times, to speak about the Leafs and their annual playoff failures that he has had nothing to do with. He has to speak about the nearly irrelevant Raptors and the beginning of the rebuild. He has to speak about the disaster that has become Toronto FC, the wayward soccer team going nowhere. He has to speak about the Argos, the team that wins more and draws less than almost anyone in their corporation. That’s all on his plate.

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Yet when they opened the floor to questions yesterday, there wasn’t even a matter brought up about the Leafs, about the Raptors, about anything to do with Toronto teams. Normally, the business crowd and the sports crowd mixes well together at one. This crowd was more business and less sports, or maybe just shy to put their hands up and ask anything in public.

It’s hard to go anywhere these days in this city and not be asked a derisive question about the Leafs. I get it all the time. But Pelley got a free pass Wednesday about anything that wasn’t the World Cup.

He did mention the Leafs while talking to the room. “I think they haven’t won since 1967,” he said. “That’s what I keep hearing…I really want to feel that (championship) again.”

Pelley was president of the Argos when they won the Grey Cup in 2004. He was in Europe when the Raptors won the NBA title in 2019 and when TFC won an MLS championship before that. He even played minor soccer in Etobicoke growing up, when the fastest kid on his team was a blonde haired young guy named Doug Ford.

Pelley was the head of the consortium that televised the Vancouver Olympics and he’s still like a proud papa when he talks about Sidney Crosby’s scoring the winning goal for Team Canada and 26.5 million people tuning in to watch part of that game.

The largest audience in Canadian television history.

“That’s sport bringing people together,” said Pelley. “There will be 750-million plus people watching Canada’s first game in the World Cup in 2026.

“Now it’s all on us to get behind it … I don’t think the city knows what we’re about to get into to. I don’t think we understand. I would love the legacy of the World Cup to be that football, in such an ethnic city, elevated us to a whole different level. Wouldn’t that be something?”

ssimmons@postmedia.com
twitter.com/simmonssteve

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