It’s a frustrating season to be a Toronto Raptors fan. The team has performed well below expectations, and what’s more, many of its games have been unavailable to hoops lovers in Southern Ontario due to the inability of CTV and Rogers Cable to strike a deal that would see Rogers add TSN2 to its basic digital cable package. TSN2, which launched last September, has the broadcast rights to 24 Raptors games this season.
The situation has angered fans, demonstrated almost daily in the comments section of the sports pages. “I Hate You So Much TSN2,” read the headline of one reader comment on the Toronto Star website in February.
Reporters have speculated that the stagnant progress of negotiations is a matter of competition—Rogers does, after all, own rival Sportsnet, which lost its Raptors broadcast rights to TSN after last season. But to hear TSN and Rogers tell it, petty grievances are not the issue. What makes a deal with Rogers more difficult than those TSN has already struck with Cogeco, Shaw and Starchoice, is all of CTV’s specialty stations—including Discovery, Bravo and the Comedy Network—are due for renewal with Rogers.
“It’s not just, what do you want to do with TSN2 and let’s move on,” says Phil King, president of TSN. “That’s why we didn’t have those issues with the other carriers, because they just focused on TSN2. It’s a much more complicated negotiation.”
Phil Lind, vice-chairman at Rogers Communications, echoed King’s point in a February interview on Rogers-owned sports radio station FAN 590.
While it may be true that negotiating terms for the carriage of multiple stations is more complex than reaching a one-off deal, TSN2 may be responsible for a disproportionate degree of complication. CTV, for example, has insisted TSN2 receive the same broad distribution that other sports stations enjoy, rather than be sold as a stand-alone product or as part of Rogers’ Sports Pack.
“What we’re asking for is not to be put into a tier without wide distribution,” says TSN’s King. “You can’t run a general-interest sports network in a tiny tier.”
Lind’s counter-argument, however, is carrying stations comes at a price, one that must eventually be reflected in Rogers’ subscriber fees.
But there is a silver lining in the explanations offered by both Lind and King—if it’s not about competitive payback, there is hope for a deal. “There is nothing personal or underhanded going on here,” says King. “There will be a deal done. I just can’t tell you when.”
Whenever a deal does get done, it will come as a relief to Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which sells the advertising inventory for Raptors games prior to each season based on expected average audience from all the stations that broadcast games, including The Score and CBC.
Tom Anselmi, chief operating officer at MLSE, says advertising deals were done with the expectation that CTV and Rogers would reach an agreement on broad distribution for TSN2 before the season started, and that his company has been forced to take measures—such as giving advertisers additional spots—to make good on their commitment to deliver audiences.
“We’re disappointed that [a deal] hasn’t happened yet,” Anselmi says. “All we can do is encourage them to get a deal done as quickly as possible.”
And all Raptors fans can do is wait.
