Big move after big move led to a mega sports-content deal that shocked the country and changed the industry
It’s a little after noon on Friday, Dec. 9, a couple of hours since Rogers Communications and Bell Canada Enterprises transformed Canada’s sports landscape by announcing they have acquired a majority interest in the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Rogers Media president Keith Pelley and I are talking hockey. His son’s team, the Humber Valley Sharks, has been dominating my son’s Toronto Eagles all season.
Speaking above the murmur of the post-press conference crowd at the Air Canada Centre, we casually chat about the Sharks’ hard-fought 3-1 win over the Eagles two nights earlier, before the conversation turns, as it inevitably must, to more appropriate subjects like “media assets,” “cross-platform content” and “synergies.”
Pelley is obviously a Sports Guy. His resumé alone is proof, including as it does stints as a producer with Fox Sports, president of the sports channel TSN, CEO of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, and president and CEO of the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium.
Now, with Rogers having partnered with its bitter telecom foe BCE to acquire a 75% interest in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment—owner of the Leafs, the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, Major League Soccer’s Toronto F.C. and the American Hockey League’s Toronto Marlies, not to mention the Air Canada Centre, the sports specialty services Leafs TV and NBA TV Canada and a downtown Toronto condominium development called Maple Leaf Square—he finds himself surrounded by the country’s leading sports assets.
Pending approval of the blockbuster $1.2-billion deal by the Competition Bureau and the respective leagues, Rogers and Bell are expected to take ownership of the MLSE assets sometime in mid 2012.
“A voracious need for content certainly makes for strange bedfellows,” quips Bob Stellick, president of Toronto sports marketing firm Stellick Marketing Communications.
Bruce Neve, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group in Toronto, believes the impact of this so-called “frenemy” move won’t truly be felt until the current regional broadcast deals for the Leafs expire in 2014, but is certain it won’t mean the end of an increasingly heated battle for audience share between Sportsnet and Bell Media’s flagship sports channel, TSN.
It is a blockbuster deal. One that establishes Rogers Media (which owns Marketing) as one of Canada’s pre-eminent content companies—owner/part-owner of a sprawling array of iconic brands spanning professional sports (Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays) and related TV channels, traditional TV (Citytv, OMNI Television), specialty TV (Sportsnet and FX), radio (Sportsnet 590 The FAN, CHFI, KiSS 92.5) and print (Maclean’s, Chatelaine, Flare), not to mention their attendant digital properties and standalone entities like Sweetspot.ca.
The MLSE deal may have cemented Rogers as Marketing’s Media Player of the Year for 2011, but in truth the company has been laying the foundation ever since Pelley’s arrival in August 2010.
Since that time, virtually every aspect of the Rogers Media business has been radically overhauled, processes changed, personnel hired. Integration is the new (unofficial) company motto and Pelley, the man with perhaps the coolest eyewear in all of Canadian media, is its tireless champion.
“When Rogers hired [Pelley], you knew that his energy, drive, love of sports, multi-platform experience with the Vancouver Olympics and his ‘we can do that’ spirit would result in many changes at Rogers,” says Neve.
It would be easy for skeptics (In media? Never!) to point out that a Rogers-owned magazine is touting its corporate parent as the year’s top Media Player. When contacted by Marketing, however, no less an authority than Ivan Fecan—former president and CEO of Bell Media forerunner CTVglobemedia—expressed his opinion that we had made a “worthy choice” for the annual honour.
You don’t argue with a man whose ability to pick winners is legendary, and frankly, when taken as a whole, Rogers’ accomplishments in 2011 are among the most impressive of any of our recent honourees.
“Rogers has had a great year,” adds Peter Mears, president of MediaBrands. “They’ve got an impressive new management team, a good, solid progressive sales team, with increased share of tuning and an improved schedule.”
“If there is an award for shaking things up, they should probably win,” says Fred Forster, president and CEO of PHD Canada.
Under Pelley, the company has completely revamped its senior management team with several major hires—including former CBC Sports head Scott Moore as its head of broadcast, former PointRoll CEO Jason Tafler to the newly created position of chief digital officer, and former PepsiCo marketing whiz Dale Hooper as its senior vice-president of sales and marketing. Internally, Ken Whyte was handed control of the entire Rogers Publishing division, consolidating his growing power within the organization.
According to Neve, the addition of acknowledged talent such as Moore and Hooper, as well as the internal promotions of Whyte and Mitch Dent to executive VP of TV sales, provides Rogers with a “strong core team to drive towards the vision of leveraging the media assets they have—TV, radio, digital publishing, sports and, yes, even The Shopping Channel—across any available screen/digital channel.”
“I’m thrilled with the leadership team that we have and the momentum we’ve started to create,” says Pelley. “To be able to convince someone like Scott Moore, with the experience that he has, to come over from CBC, or someone with a pedigree like Jason [Tafler] has with what he can do for our digital offerings, is fantastic.”
The company also made significant investments in its on-air talent this year, particularly in sports, where high-profile additions included Toronto Star hockey columnist Damien Cox and former Globe and Mail columnists Michael Grange and Stephen Brunt as regular contributors to Sportsnet online, in the magazine and on radio. The company also lured back former Sportsnet personality Hazel Mae from an eight-year stint in the U.S. to host the 6 p.m. edition of its sportscast Sportsnet Connected.
But Rogers’ progress went beyond personnel moves. It also introduced a slew of new and refreshed media brands spanning multiple media channels, including Sportsnet magazine, the upcoming primetime series Canada’s Got Talent, the new specialty channel FX Canada, a rebranding of Setanta Sports Service as Sportsnet World, and a new Toronto-centric TV news service called CityNews Channel.
There was also a late-November entry into the burgeoning daily deal space with the launch of R Deals, the most notable manifestation of what Tafler describes as a “local digital” strategy.
Rogers also expanded The Shopping Channel’s presence in Quebec to more than one million homes from an estimated 100,000 thanks to a partnership with Vidéotron; revamped the websites of flagship properties like Chatelaine, LouLou and Today’s Parent; partnered with NBCUniversal to bring the female-focused online community iVillage to Canada; launched an online shopping site dedicated to beauty products called eBeauty.ca; deployed 11 new apps including a HockeyCentral app for the BlackBerry PlayBook and, through its August 2010 acquisition of the Montreal-based ad network BV! Media, grew its online traffic to nearly 17 million unique visitors per month from five million uniques a year ago.
Tafler, who joined Rogers from Gannett-owned PointRoll in February, says it was management’s steadfast commitment to growing the Rogers digital business that inspired him to return to Canada after several years in the U.S.
“What really was inspirational to me was meeting the senior team, and seeing that they had looked across all of these potential growth areas for Rogers Media and digital media was clearly in the top three,” he says. “There was a complete top-level commitment to investing in digital.”
The ultimate objective, he says, is to position Rogers Digital as one of the key online destinations for marketers looking to reach key segments such as sports, business and women.
Pelley, meanwhile, resorts to a sports metaphor to characterize 2011: “We’ve been running a 100-metre dash now for the whole year,” he says. “Sometimes we need to sit down on the park bench, but this industry moves so quickly that you don’t want to lose a leg up.”
He characterizes Rogers’ approach under his leadership as “calculated risk-taking,” spurred by a desire to create what he calls “first-to-market innovations.”
That approach was recognized at this year’s Media Innovation Awards, where the judging panel headed by some of Canada’s leading media minds named Rogers “Media Collaborator of the Year” for a wide-ranging collection of marketing initiatives that included the Swiss Chalet-branded Rotisserie Channel on Rogers Cable (but cooked up by the TV sales team at Rogers Media), which won Best of Show for Cara Operations and MEC Canada, its Maclean’s Rethink Issue partnership with General Motors Canada, a new research program for Fidelity, and personalized Rice Krispie ads for readers of Today’s Parent.
Pelley views Rogers Media as a collection of assets unmatched by any other media company in the country; he now has the job of extracting full value from them—whether through extensive cross-promotion of the sports franchises and Sportsnet or Citytv programs on other Rogers channels, or selling them in integrated packages.
“If we integrate those brands, the ability for us to reach Canadians in every demographic, every ethnic group, every income tax bracket is unmatched,” he says a few days after the hockey talk. “We can be stronger than any other media company based on the diverse portfolio that we have.
“We’re the only ones that have a robust publishing department, we’re the only ones that have The Shopping Channel with the ability to reach 450,000 targeted women, and we’re the only ones that have a sports franchise [the Toronto Blue Jays] that we own 100%.
“When you look at them all together, and watch them help and promote each other, it really is incredible.”
The MLSE deal also gives Rogers unfettered access to premium sports content that it can supply to the pipelines controlled by its wireless and cable divisions. Sports content, says Pelley, is increasingly “critical” in a media landscape. Live sports is one of the few remaining bastions of real-time viewing, highly coveted by advertisers seeking assurances that their commercials are actually reaching intended audiences.
Speaking with Pelley and Moore, it’s obvious that both men regard Sportsnet as one of the pillars for Rogers and have spent much of the year aggressively challenging TSN (a big reason many were surprised by the CTV/Rogers joint bid for MLSE). Sportsnet has made significant gains over the past year, with national audiences up 10% over 2010 and 5% increases in both the adult 25 – 54 and male 18 – 49 demos.
The objective, says Moore, is for Sportsnet the multimedia brand to become a go-to source for sports information and programming within the next five years. “It’s not about being the top-rated sports television network on any given day, although that’s a goal, but it’s about putting all those Sportsnet-branded touchpoints together to make it a stronger brand that resonates with our fans,” he says.
Moore points to a Sportsnet property like junior hockey as a perfect example of the new Rogers approach. While there is considerable consumer appetite for junior hockey in Canada—as evidenced by TSN’s success with the annual world junior hockey championships—the property had been largely ignored by Sportsnet, bouncing around the schedule, sometimes airing only in Ontario or the West and receiving little or no on-air promotion.
In 2011, it was given a permanent home on Friday nights, formally rebranded as Friday Night Hockey and given extensive promotion on Sportsnet and other Rogers properties. The result is a 66% increase in ratings.
The Sportsnet brand is a prime example of the integrated approach adopted by Rogers. The name is now part of the sports-oriented Fan radio stations, while its personalities regularly appear on Citytv’s Citynews newscasts and on the new CityNews channel. The new Sportsnet magazine provides yet another consumer touchpoint.
“Some people say ‘I can’t believe you launched a new magazine in an era where people are cautious about launching magazines.’ But we say it’s not about launching a magazine, it’s about a content extension,” says Pelley.
On the conventional TV side of the business, meanwhile, Citytv’s primetime audiences are up 7.5% over last season. Long equated with Great Movies, low-quality reality shows (Temptation Island anyone?) and science fiction fare, Rogers has made a commitment to acquiring high-quality Hollywood programs in recent years. In Terra Nova and New Girl, the channel boasts two of the top 10 new shows for the 2011 fall season in key markets.
“They have dramatically improved their TV content, which was a distant third in the market,” says Neve, noting that such gains are a “key driver” for any multi-screen play that Rogers is implementing.
“The Rogers culture is perfect for what we’re trying to do, because the concept at Rogers is always be first, and be known for leading and delivering experiences across all platforms,” says Pelley.
“When I came here, I realized pretty quickly that this is a company that wants to be known as a leader. Everybody is thinking about how we can get better. We’re going to make some mistakes along the way, but that’s okay—we’re just going to continue to get better and eventually we’ll reach that goal.”
Will the Maple Leafs usher in a heyday or dark times for the telecommunications company? Post your thoughts in our comment section.
This story appears in the Jan. 16 issue of Marketing. Subscribe today.
