A REGION-SIZE HOLE

IN JANUARY 2018, I published my first book, The Winner Within: Lessons in Sports About Accomplishing Anything. It was geared towards inspiring student-athletes, but it found an audience far beyond its target. One such reader was the late, great Pat Rousseau, former chairman of SportsMax. He called to congratulate me and said he had one directive: “Write a book about the SportsMax story. It’s an institution that we’ve built that unites the entire region.” As the former WICB president, he added with a laugh, “Not even West Indies cricket unites us the way SportsMax does.”

It’s a powerful truth that deserves to be told.

A vision born in the Caribbean

SportsMax was launched in October of 2002 by Caribbean pioneers Pat Rousseau and Chris Dehring. They envisioned a 24-hour sports channel dedicated to Caribbean folks, an outlet that would give our athletes and fans a platform of their own. They approached local investors and legends alike: Shaka Hislop, Courtney Walsh, Phillip Martin, and others said ‘yes’. Oliver McIntosh left a high-paying job in the UK to become CEO and lead the vision forward. The mission? Bring world-class content: West Indies cricket, the English Premier League, the Ashes; to Caribbean cable systems that had never before had access.

The first time I saw SportsMax was in Usain Bolt’s living room. He was timing his relay splits on a SportsMax broadcast. At the time, I was volunteering with the Special Olympics Caribbean. A Bahamian colleague invited me to watch the National Basketball League, and there I saw a professional crew in SportsMax-branded shirts. I applied for a job the next day, and was verbally hired in October 2004. I officially started in March, 2005 and I would spend the next 14 years, first as marketing officer, then marketing manager, then Caribbean marketing manager, and finally vice-president, marketing, helping shape the Caribbean sports giant.

A regional powerhouse

SportsMax expanded from Kingston across Jamaica into Trinidad & Tobago in 2007 and, by 2010, it made the trek from island to island, cable operator to cable operator, rolling out the channel until it was available across over 1 million households in 27 Caribbean markets. In the early days, we believed we needed to pair the channel with a US brand to reap any success, and so we partnered with Fox Soccer Channel. I travelled right across the Caribbean; Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua, in over 20 markets, training the sales team at each cable operator on how to market sports. When we travelled to these islands, we were treated like royalty. They were pleased that someone was finally showing sports from a Caribbean perspective. Eventually, Flow introduced set-top boxes and we had viewership data for the first time. It revealed that SportsMax had the highest viewership of any sports channel, outpacing ESPN and Fox. Our mission was achieved.

So we grew. We went from struggling to get content to fill a full 24 hours to eventually launching SportsMax2 to handle overflow: English Premier League (EPL), UEFA Champions League, the NBA, IPL, Windies cricket, the Olympics, and the FIFA World Cup. In 2010, we opened a sports restaurant in New Kingston to host World Cup viewing parties. Hundreds came. Sponsors followed. Subscriptions soared.

Local productions, regional voices

SportsMax wasn’t just about international content; we made local sports world-class by taking on the marketing and brand building. With 13-camera setups, we did the Jamaica Premier League and the Flow Champions Cup, we set out to match the quality of the EPL. Our marketing arm was its own force. We ran the cricket party stand at Sabina, raised record sponsorships for NBL basketball, carried international netball, and conceptualised the Under-18 Elite League with the JFF. We hosted massive watch events for Champs, the Olympics, the World Cup, and the UEFA Champions League final. We were first to put our local Premier League footballers on billboards. We hosted the first WBA Championship fight in Jamaica with Axeman Walters. We hosted the record-breaking Pacquiao-Mayweather watch party. We brought PGA Tour golf to Jamaica. We set Caribbean streaming records during Champs 2011, and hosted massive UEFA Champions League watch parties in Trinidad, the party capital of the Caribbean. We hosted golf tournaments in Barbados and in Miami, to build relationships with our rights holders. We were purposeful and strategic.

By 2011, McIntosh set out to build a powerful on-air team: Lance Whittaker from CMC Barbados, Joel Villafana from TV6 Trinidad, Wavell Hinds for cricket expertise, and Alexis Nunes, who went on to ESPN. They were the first faces of our flagship programme, The SportsMax Zone. When it debuted in 2011, it became a hub for breaking sports stories. Marlon Samuels, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Dave Cameron, all trusted SportsMax as their voice. Eventually, the team evolved to include Simon Crosskill, George Davis, Donald Oliver, Mariah Ramharack, and Ricardo Chambers.

A Caribbean first

Before SportsMax, the Caribbean wasn’t recognised as a legitimate broadcast market. We had to buy North American rights and sell them back to the likes of ESPN and Fox, while retaining the Caribbean rights. We licensed Olympic and World Cup rights and sold them to Caribbean free-to-air stations in each country. We sent our production team to cover these events and told our stories from our perspective: Grenada’s Kirani James and Bahamas’ Shaunae Miller-Uibo saw their golden moments on SportsMax and could speak to our team right after each race.

The people’s channel

Digicel acquired SportsMax in 2015. Those who came after did not understand what SportsMax meant to the region. When our footballers needed footage for their agents, we were the source. When Usain or Asafa broke records, we were there. I coined the tagline: Home of Champions. Because that’s exactly what SportsMax became. A team of production, marketing and digital powerhouses who did big things from our small office off Molynes Road.

From producing Secondary Schools Football League in Trinidad to our efforts in branding, PR, and sponsorship, SportsMax didn’t just cover sport, we developed it. We made sport in the Caribbean bigger, brighter, and bolder.

A legacy worth protecting

In 14 years, I saw SportsMax transform from a Kingston-based channel to the Caribbean’s most watched sports network. It united us. It gave us pride. It was ours.

It’s a shame to see a juggernaut in our region put to bed.