Sportsnet

What is Sportsnet?

Sportsnet is the English-language sports television group of Rogers Communications. The CRTC's broadcasting ownership chart for Rogers discretionary services, dated 9 February 2026, lists Rogers Media Inc. as the licensee of the national discretionary services "Sportsnet (Mainstream Sports)", "Sportsnet One (Mainstream Sports)" and "Sportsnet 360", alongside Bravo and OMNI Regional; the Toronto Raptors Network Ltd. holds the NBA TV licence within the same group.^[1]

Around the broadcast licences sits an unusually large holding of the events themselves. Rogers announced on 2 July 2025 that it had closed its purchase of BCE's 37.5 per cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment for C$4.7 billion, effective 1 July, giving it a 75 per cent controlling interest in the company, which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC and Toronto Argonauts; the same release records that Rogers owns the Toronto Blue Jays and Rogers Centre, and states that the company has "invested over $15 billion in Canadian sports over the past decade".^[6] That is a vertical arrangement — the broadcaster and the clubs under one corporate roof. The ownership position is stated as at July 2025.

What does Sportsnet cover?

The defining property is the National Hockey League. Rogers announced on 2 April 2025 a 12-year national media rights agreement covering the 2026–27 through 2037–38 seasons, valued at $11 billion in escalating annual payments, and said the agreement "allows for the possibility of strategic sub-licensing for a subset of these rights, including national French-language and a single-night exclusive national package".^[3] Both sub-licences were subsequently issued. On 28 July 2026 Rogers and Prime Video announced a 12-year agreement under which Prime Video exclusively carries Wednesday-night national regular-season games in English and French from 2026–27, a minimum of 26 national games a season, plus two first-round and one second-round playoff series a year; the announcement records that Sportsnet retains exclusive English-language rights to more than 500 national games a season on other nights and most remaining playoff series.^[4] On 3 September 2026 Rogers and Quebecor announced a 12-year French-language sub-licence for up to 350 regular-season games a season on TVA Sports.^[5]

Baseball is the other pillar. The Toronto Blue Jays are a Rogers property and their games run on Sportsnet, Sportsnet+ and Citytv; Rogers' 3 November 2025 audience release describes the seven-game 2025 World Series carried across those services.^[7] Sportsnet has also appeared as an Olympic sub-licensee: CBC named Sportsnet among the networks carrying the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, and SportsnetOne among the channels on which the men's ice hockey final was watched.^[8] For the competitions themselves see NHL, MLB and NBA, and for the mechanism see broadcast rights.

How large is Sportsnet's audience?

The largest figure Rogers has published is for baseball. In a release dated 3 November 2025 the company reported that Game 7 of the World Series, carried on Sportsnet, Sportsnet+ and Citytv, drew an average audience of 10.9 million viewers with a peak of 14 million at 11:38 p.m. ET, that 18.5 million Canadians — 45 per cent of the population — watched some or all of the game, that the pre-game averaged 2.3 million and the post-game 1.2 million, and that the seven-game series averaged 7.5 million viewers and reached 23 million Canadians. Rogers attributes the measurement to Numeris, Total Canada, and describes the game as "the most-watched Rogers broadcast ever" and "the most-watched English-language broadcast on record in Canada outside of the 2010 Winter Olympics" — both of those characterisations are the company's own.^[7]

For Olympic coverage, CBC reported on 23 February 2026 that 30.5 million viewers watched Milano Cortina 2026 across CBC, Radio-Canada, TSN, Sportsnet and RDS on Numeris TV PPM between 6 and 22 February 2026, with 8.7 million watching the closing goal of the men's ice hockey final across CBC, SportsnetOne and TSN1.^[8] Sportsnet is not isolated in that figure either.

No current channel-level Numeris average-audience figure, and no current Comscore digital figure, for Sportsnet alone could be retrieved. The CRTC's annual highlights for 2024–2025, published 18 August 2026, reported that roughly 40 per cent of Canadians said they had consumed sports content on traditional television in the past month, and that the PBIT margin of mainstream sports and national news discretionary services fell from 14.3 per cent in 2021 to 7.3 per cent in 2025.^[9]

Since when has Sportsnet existed?

The Canadian Communications Foundation records that "with CTV as majority owners, Sportsnet was launched in October 1998", and that the service was acquired and renamed Rogers Sportsnet in 2001 "when CTV had to sell off the specialty channel on acquiring control of TSN".^[2] The launch date and the date of Rogers' acquisition are therefore three years apart, and the corporate founding of Rogers Communications is a third, separate date.

The group grew by purchase as well as by licence. The same archive records that Rogers announced on 25 August 2012 a deal to buy Score Media Inc., that the CRTC approved the change of ownership on 30 April 2013, and that on 4 June 2013 Rogers announced the channel then known as The Score would be rebranded Sportsnet 360 from 1 July 2013.^[10]

Why does Sportsnet matter in Canada's sport?

From the 2026–27 season the national English-language broadcast of the country's statutory national winter sport runs through Sportsnet, under an agreement that does not expire until after the 2037–38 season.^[3] The two sub-licences issued out of that package — Wednesday nights to Prime Video, the national French-language package to Quebecor — set the terms on which every other Canadian outlet reaches NHL hockey.^[4][5]

The combination of rights and club ownership is the second reason. Rogers owns the Blue Jays and, since 1 July 2025, holds 75 per cent of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, so the broadcaster carrying the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, Argonauts and Blue Jays is also, in whole or in part, their owner.^[6] On the leagues involved see NHL, MLB, NBA and MLS, and on the country generally sports in Canada.