With the ink on the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment deal barely dry, Rogers Media has put even greater emphasis on sports by adding another national brand to its growing sports roster.
The company officially announced Saturday morning that a new deal will see it wholly own the Score Television Network and acquire all of the outstanding shares of the network’s owner, Score Media. The final price tag of the deal is $167 million.
The acquisition will also see Rogers Media gain a 10% equity interest in Score Media’s digital media business. That business—which includes mobile apps and TheScore.com—will be spun into a new public company prior to Rogers Media’s acquisition of the TV business, said Keith Pelley, president of Rogers Media.
Pelley said that in a separate agreement Rogers Media has secured a multiyear license for a sports-branded version of the popular Score mobile app technology. “To be able to use their technology to enhance our mobile offerings very quickly was appealing for us,” said Pelley.
Pelley credits the tremendous amount of time Score Media has spent building its own digital technology, and said it will benefit Rogers by allowing it to focus on some of the other areas of its portfolio to accelerate their digital growth. “Based on now having this digital technology that allows us to expedite the Sportsnet mobile offerings, it allows us to focus on our digital technology to grow something like Hello! magazine or Chatelaine magazine or something along those lines,” said Pelley.
Commenting on the appeal of the Score Television Network, Pelley said it delivers premium niche content that’s complementary to Roger’s mainstream portfolio. With a focus on headline sports news and information, Pelley said the Score also has genre exclusivity. “It certainly complements and really extends our sports portfolio,” he said.
The younger demographic the Score attracts was also part of what interested Rogers in the network. “I think 66% of the Score Television Network’s audience is under 50 years of age. This is obviously very appealing to our advertisers,” said Pelley. “There’s no question they’ve developed a loyal following over the years with the younger programming, the edgy style and that was something that was definitely appealing to us.”
The first priority, he added, is to get CRTC regulatory approval—the release stated the transaction “will be carried out by way of plan of arrangement”—and go through the meeting of the Score Media shareholders, which is expected to be held in the fall of 2012. Pending regulatory approval, the network will be rebranded.
What will that look like? “It’s early days…very few people were aware of the acquisition internally so we haven’t brought a lot of people into the fold to actually start the strategic discussion around that. We haven’t discussed that other than the fact that it will be under the Sportsnet umbrella.”
Pelley said Rogers Media had been considering acquiring the Score for roughly two years and there have been discussions on “a number of occasions.” It was only in the last four or five months that the two groups met to have more serious conversations about a deal.
The Score Telelvision Network has 6.6 million TV subscribers across Canada.
