1 day Ago By Rob Longley
Article content The sporting behemoth that is Rogers Communications has yet to sign Toronto Blue Jays star first baseman Vlad Guerrero Jr. to a multi-year extension, but the company is as bullish as it has ever been in the world of pro sports with news Monday of a massive long-term deal of another kind. According to multiple reports, the telecommunications giant has reached agreement on a new 12-year deal with the National Hockey League for television rights that will begin in the 2026-2027 season.
Sportico, which broke the news early Monday evening, the deal is for a whopping $7.7. billion US, or $11 billion Cdn.
That contract is a hefty jump from the current Rogers deal, which was signed in 2013 and rocked the Canadian broadcast scene. The deal was later confirmed by the Associated Press. It’s just the latest move by Rogers to tighten its stranglehold on the Canadian sports scene, a process that has expanded rapidly in recent years under the stewardship of company CEO Edward Rogers.
The company already owns the Toronto Blue Jays and the Rogers Centre and currently owns 37.5 per cent of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, which includes the Maple Leafs, Raptors and TFC. The company is also in agreement to double that MLSE interest by purchasing Bell Communications share.
Rogers has spent close to a billion Canadian dollars on renovations of the Rogers Centre and the Jays player development complex in Dunedin, Fla. According to Baseball Reference, the current projected payroll for the Jays is $240 million US. The Sportico report says that the new rights deal needs to be approved by NHL owners but the league’s media and executive committees have recommended to rubber stamp the deal.
And why wouldn’t they? In an era where traditional broadcast rights deals are changing rapidly, a guaranteed haul of this magnitude for owners, one that is a significant escalation from the previous one, would be difficult to pass up. The current $5.2 billion US deal – a 12-year pact – is set to expire following the 2025-26 season.
With another full season before the current deal expires, Rogers was said to have an exclusive window to negotiate on an extension, which it clearly exercised. The right deal provides expansive inventory for Rogers Sportsnet and other platforms, much as the Blue Jays provide in the summer months. There had been speculation that the NHL would have preferred parcelling off the rights to multiple networks and streaming services but presumably at that price Rogers blew that idea out of the water.
It’s also conceivable that Rogers could parcel portions of its inventory to streaming services or other networks. The all-encompassing expansion of the company’s interest in sports can be traced, in many ways, to Rogers Communications CEO, Edward Rogers. In a recent interview, Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro said that it’s clear the company patriarch is keen to expand his involvement in sports – both in his commitment to win and to be involved in ownership.
“From the time that I agreed to come here, he was bullish on sports,” Shapiro told the Sun. “He said to me ‘I know sports are going to be important in the landscape of what my family business is what our business is for for generations.’ “So now, it’s obviously an enhanced level of interest, involvement and desire to be a great sports owner.
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