There are plenty of cases of sports media figures exiting a company they’ve long worked at, but how that played out with Canadian hockey commentator Jeff Marek seems a little odd. Marek had been at Rogers-owned Canadian cable network Sportsnet for 13 years and had survived plenty of past layoffs and restructurings. But he’s now exited in an unusual way.
Throughout his decade-plus at Sportsnet, Marek was known for his presence discussing hockey on Twitter (now X). And he has 244,000 followers there, or 0.85 Kleimans . But, before Friday, the last time he posted anything there was on June 28, the first day of the NHL Draft, which he was covering for the network (which holds national hockey rights in Canada) live from Las Vegas. (And his last posts were retweets of @Sportsnet clips of him interviewing players on-air.) That was also the last day he appeared on Sportsnet’s TV or radio airwaves, and the 32 Thoughts podcast he co-hosted with Elliotte Friedman hadn’t uploaded a new episode since then either.
Marek’s unexpected and unexplained Twitter absence sparked some speculation for a while on what was up. Some clarity then emerged Thursday with a report from Jonah Siegel of Toronto Sports Media, who cited multiple sources and wrote “for unconfirmed draft reasons , @JeffMarek will likely be no longer performing duties at Sportsnet hockey” and “all we can confirm is he was at draft & then he wasn’t hasn’t been heard from since & told most likely won’t be back either.”
Sportsnet then confirmed Marek’s exit to Colton Pankiw of The Daily Hive, but only with a spokesperson saying “Jeff Marek is no longer with Sportsnet.” And, on Friday, Marek broke his Twitter silence with a post thanking people for their support and saying he was “moving on”:
Following that, Marek got many further notable expressions of thanks and support. One significant one came from Elliotte Friedman, who discussed Marek’s role as co-host of his 32 Thoughts podcast:
The portion of that tweet cut off by the embed reads “Life throws curveballs at you. I will miss being his teammate, and thank him for being a tremendous co-pilot on the start to our 32 Thoughts podcasting voyage — which will continue.” And while that’s definitely not specific, the “curveballs” line adds to the strangeness around this departure.
As mentioned off the top, there are plenty of people who wind up leaving outlets they’ve been at a long time. Sometimes, that’s an obvious jump for a different opportunity; other times, it’s a contract non-renewal or an inability to agree to new contract terms. And that can’t be ruled out here, but the strange timing has many wondering if there’s more going on.
On that front, Steve Warne wrote a piece on this for The Hockey News ‘ Ottawa Senators site he edits Saturday titled “Trying to Piece Together the Curious Case of Broadcaster Jeff Marek and His Recent Split With Sportsnet.” Warne, a veteran broadcaster himself (particularly known for past work at TSN 1200 Ottawa and CTV Ottawa), wrote there that the timing of Marek’s dismissal is something he’d “never seen”:
I’ve seen more than my share of Canadian broadcast job carnage. What I’ve never seen is an employee being sent across the continent to help host an important live TV event, watched by millions nationally, only to be cut from the herd in a mid-assignment layoff.
…At this year’s NHL Draft in Las Vegas, Marek worked day one on the draft floor, interviewing all the first-rounders moments after they were selected, including Ottawa Senators first-rounder Carter Yakemchuk.
By that night, with the job only half finished, Marek was on a red-eye flight home. Weeks later, we learned Marek and Sportsnet had parted ways.
…The first thought, for the reasons I mentioned above, is a cost-cutting move. But that would be a weird tactic. Layoffs are planned for weeks in advance and almost never happen to just one guy, especially in the middle of a big, important production. And when layoffs do happen, the company usually reports it as such. Everyone doesn’t go into a month-long radio silence about it.
Warne is quite correct that the timing there is remarkably odd. Sending someone to a live event, especially something as big as a draft, is a significant expense, and live event production comes with specific responsibilities for everyone working on it. Mid-event departures and changes do sometimes happen, but they’re usually about illness or other assignments , and they’re usually clearly explained. Similarly, departures over contract disagreements or changing directions in coverage usually come with at least some level of public explanation on what happened, making the radio silence here odder still. But this one has Marek and Friedman declining comment, including to Gilbert Ngabo of The Toronto Star , and a Sportsnet spokesperson only adding that they “cannot share details on individual employee matters.”
Why does this matter? Well, who a network chooses to have on its coverage is certainly of interest to the public, and if a change is made for editorial and/or cost-cutting reasons , that’s something the public definitely will weigh in on. If a change is made for violation of company policies , that often gets discussed too, including if those policies are appropriate or not. And how someone leaves a job often impacts their future employment, and the discussion that springs up if and when they are hired next.
In a case like this one, it’s quite difficult to talk about the parting of ways and what might be next for both Marek and Sportsnet without any information on what happened here. And it’s exceptionally unusual to see someone taken off-air in the middle of an event, then everyone involved keep quiet for a month until brief “no longer with” and “moving on” statements.
We’ll see if more information emerges on this. We do at least have Marek’s tweet saying “More to come soon.” What we do know for now is that Sportsnet’s hockey coverage is going to go on without one of its most prominent and longest-tenured faces. But we don’t know why.
[Jeff Marek on X/Twitter, The Hockey News ; image from Sportsnet on YouTube]
The post Jeff Marek says he’s ‘moving on’ from Sportsnet, but mystery remains on apparent mid-Draft parting of ways appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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