Not surprisingly, I received an email from an agent at International Management Group, displeased with the piece published Sunday about Mary Joe Fernandez’s television conflict of interest in commentating matches involving clients of her husband, who is a top executive at IMG.
“Do you really believe that Mary Joe thinks about IMG when she is commentating? You don’t think she is more professional than that?” the representative wrote, then went on to make some solid observations that several other people involved in commentating matches for ESPN also have a personal interest in certain players.
There was Patrick McEnroe, he pointed out, head of the USTA player development program. He mentioned John McEnroe, because he’s Patrick’s brother. He pointed out that Darren Cahill has a contract with Adidas, and he does matches involving players who are sponsored by Adidas.
So it isn’t just Mary Joe Fernandez, who was doing analysis for ESPN2 for Sunday’s Cincinnati final between Jelena Jankovic and Maria Sharapova, who is IMG’s most lucrative client, and he saw nothing wrong with Fernandez, the McEnroes, Cahill or anyone else doing TV commentating.
If you could crystallize the point being made by the IMG spokesman, it would be that (in my words), “Lots of people do it, so it’s OK.”
No, it’s not OK. Not just the tennis public, but the public in general is entitled to know if the people purporting to present them with media information have a vested financial interest in the people on whom they’re reporting. It doesn’t mean any of those people are doing a dishonest job, but at the very least the public deserves to know about their associations.
When talk-news maven Keith Olbermann made a financial contribution to a Democratic congressional candidate and never disclosed it to the public, he was suspended when MSNBC found out. Late last year, the Reuters news wire business branch ordered an investigation of its reporters’ possible financial interest in companies they interviewed.
No one at Reuters necessarily thought reporters were on the take, but the deep concern is how their association would be perceived by the public.
Why should it be any different in sports? Don’t tennis fans (or football, baseball, hockey, etc. fans deserve to know if there is a serious connection, particularly a financial connection, between on-air talent and players or coaches they’re presenting?
You’ve probably seen network TV news programs where information flashes on the screen or where commentators announce that they have a relative or an investment with a company which is the subject of a story. Tennis needs to do the same.
What’s wrong with a commentator disclosing information before the match. As in, “Hi, I’m Darren Cahill, and I have a contract with Adidas. One of the players today is sponsored by Adidas.” OK, now that we all know that, let’s get on with the match.
Or, “Hi, I’m Mary Joe Fernandez. My husband is a leading executive with IMG and both players today (Jankovic and Sharapova) have representation contracts with IMG.”
Or, “I’m Jim Courier, captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team. Andy Roddick, who is playing the semifinal this afternoon, is one of the players the U.S. depends on to be on the Cup team.”
Or, on the Tennis Channel, “Hi, I’m Justin Gimelstob, and I’m a member of the ATP board of directors.”
And so on and so forth. Of course, there are so many of these commentators with suspect player or corporate connections that it might leave viewers wondering whether anyone doing tennis on TV is free of a conflict.
This is a significant problem for tennis fans, but there is a broader problem as well, and that’s the incestuous relationship between the hierarchies at the women’s and men’s tennis tours and the financial interests, like IMG, who have their fingers all over the game.
IMG not only represents players, but owns tournaments, including the Sony Ericsson Open on Key Biscayne, Fla., the second most important tournament in the U.S. Would an IMG player get special consideration at an IMG-owned tournament? Tennis fans have to answer that question for themselves.
It wasn’t so many years ago that Jan-Michael Gambill, who was represented by SFX, sought a wild card into the IMG-owned tournament in Scottsdale, Ariz. — a tournament he won the previous year. It was denied and the three cards given to IMG clients.
There needs to be a wide-ranging discussion about the whole range of conflicts which infect tennis and there’s no time like the present to start talking.