CBC Sports

What is CBC Sports?

CBC Sports is the English-language sports service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. Its statutory basis is section 3(1) of the Broadcasting Act, S.C. 1991, c. 11, current to 21 June 2026, which provides that "the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide broadcasting services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains", and that the Corporation's programming should "be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community, including the specific needs and interests of official language minority communities".^[1] That bilingual obligation is why the Corporation runs a separate sports service in each official language.

The service is not a standalone domain: CBC's sports journalism sits on a path of the corporation's main site, cbc.ca, alongside its news operation, and on CBC Television and the CBC Gem streaming service.^[3] CBC/Radio-Canada described its footprint in a February 2025 corporate summary as 27 television stations, 88 radio stations and one digital-only station, five subscription television channels, four Canada-wide radio networks and seven foreign bureaus.^[7]

What does CBC Sports cover?

The Olympic Games are the anchor. The Globe and Mail reported that CBC/Radio-Canada holds Canadian Olympic broadcast rights across all media through 2032, covering the 2026 Winter Games in Milano Cortina, the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, the 2030 Winter Games and the 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane, with financial terms undisclosed and a requirement that the broadcaster carry a minimum of 200 hours of Summer and 100 hours of Winter Games on free-to-air television.^[2] CBC sub-licensed parts of the 2026 coverage: its own audience release names TSN, Sportsnet and RDS as broadcast partners alongside CBC and Radio-Canada.^[3]

Club hockey has gone. CBC carried Hockey Night in Canada under a seven-year sub-licence from Rogers Media announced on 19 December 2017, running from 2019–20 through the end of 2025–26 and covering nationally televised Saturday-night regular-season games and all four rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs; under that agreement "Sportsnet will continue to produce the games, retain all editorial control, and manage the advertising".^[4] CTV News reported on 16 June 2026 that the programme, which it described as having been part of CBC television for nearly 75 years, would not return for the following season, the new Rogers agreement with the NHL having begun.^[5]

What replaces it was announced the same day. CBC/Radio-Canada said on 16 June 2026 that it was expanding weekend sports programming, with a new Saturday-evening programme on CBC Television and CBC Gem later in 2026, and listed among its coverage the 2026 Commonwealth Games, the Professional Women's Hockey League, the World Figure Skating Championships, the World Aquatics Championships, the Diamond League, U Sports championships and more than twenty further championships.^[6] See the Commonwealth Games, the PWHL, the World Figure Skating Championships, the World Aquatics Championships and the Diamond League.

How large is CBC Sports's audience?

CBC reported on 23 February 2026 that 30.5 million viewers watched the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games across CBC, Radio-Canada, TSN, Sportsnet and RDS, measured on Numeris TV PPM between 6 and 22 February 2026; that its digital and streaming platforms — CBC Gem, ICI TOU.TV, the CBC News and Radio-Canada Info apps and the dedicated Olympic sites — recorded 89 million streams and 42 million hours viewed between 4 and 22 February 2026 on Adobe Analytics, "more than triple compared to Beijing 2022 (29 million)"; and that 8.7 million viewers watched the closing goal of the men's ice hockey gold medal game at 10:52 a.m. ET on 22 February 2026 across CBC, SportsnetOne and TSN1.^[3]

For the corporation as a whole rather than its sports service, CBC/Radio-Canada stated in a February 2025 summary that 21 million Canadians use its digital services every month, citing Comscore Media Metrix for April to September 2024, and that digital minutes had risen 18 per cent since the 2019 launch of its current platform.^[7] Those are corporate figures, not figures for CBC Sports.

No Comscore or Numeris figure isolating CBC Sports from the rest of the corporation's output could be retrieved. For context on the category, the CRTC reported on 18 August 2026 that approximately 40 per cent of Canadians said they had consumed sports content on traditional television in the past month during the 2024–2025 broadcast year, against about 13 per cent on radio and under 10 per cent on online sports services.^[8]

Since when has CBC Sports existed?

The Broadcasting Act in force is S.C. 1991, c. 11, current to 21 June 2026 and last amended 26 March 2026; it is the statute that states the Corporation's present mandate, not the instrument that created it, and the two should not be collapsed.^[1] No primary source establishing a founding date for the sports department as a distinct unit, as against the Corporation itself, could be retrieved, and this page does not assert one.

Two dated anchors are available for the modern service. CBC's carriage of NHL hockey under sub-licence ran from 2019–20 to 2025–26 under the agreement announced on 19 December 2017, which itself followed a four-year sub-licence plus a one-year extension.^[4] Its current Olympic rights begin with the 2026 Games and run to 2032.^[2]

Why does CBC Sports matter in Canada's sport?

Because of the free-to-air condition attached to the Olympic rights, the Games reach Canadian households through a public broadcaster obliged by statute to serve both official language communities, rather than only through subscription services.^[1][2] The 2026 measurement — 30.5 million viewers on Numeris across the five participating networks over 6 to 22 February 2026 — is a cumulative reach for the Games as a whole rather than a figure for any one broadcast.^[3]

The loss of Hockey Night in Canada from 2026–27 changes what the public broadcaster is for in sport: its announced replacement programming is built around Canadian athletes in Olympic and amateur competition, the PWHL and U Sports rather than around the NHL.^[5][6] See sports in Canada and broadcast rights.