Baseball spring training is here! Hurray!
Whether or not you’re a fan, it’s a symbolic reminder that the end of winter is just around the corner. It’s a time of celebration akin to the best pagan renewal rituals.
But we’re not here to talk about the pending arrival of spring and sunnier days ahead. We’re here to discuss the problem in Toronto sports in general, and Canadian sports overall. And that is the monopoly that one company – Rogers Communications – has over all of it.
After buying out its “rival” Bell’s share of Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment last year, Rogers now owns 75 per cent of the company and therefore full control of its properties, which include the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, the Argos and several other teams.
Along with the Blue Jays, which Rogers bought in 2000, the company also owns the Rogers Centre (it’s still Skydome in these parts), the Scotiabank Arena, television broadcast rights and much of the media that covers the teams.
Strangely, no one is doing anything about it. The Competition Bureau gave the MLSE transaction a pass in late 2024 and didn’t even say why.
David Shoalts is an award-winning veteran of Canadian sports journalism. He spent decades covering sports for The Globe and Mail and, in 2018, published the latest of his three books: Hockey Fight in Canada, about how the CBC lost its NHL broadcast rights to Rogers.
He joins Do Not Pass Go to discuss how Rogers’ sports monopoly is bad news for fans – not just when it comes to the prices they pay for tickets, snacks and beer, but also in how the teams are covered in the media and how that can affect their chances of winning.
