TSN

What is TSN?

TSN is an English-language sports television service licensed in Canada. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's broadcasting ownership chart for BCE and Bell Media, dated 14 September 2026, records The Sports Network Inc. as the licensee of TSN and places it beneath CTV Specialty Sports Holding Inc., which the chart shows holding 100 per cent of both The Sports Network Inc. and Le Réseau des sports (RDS) inc. The same chart shows CTV Specialty Television Inc. as 80 per cent owned by Bell Media Inc., through 3578704 Canada Inc., with the remaining 20 per cent held by "3167488 Canada Inc. (ESPN Sub), a non-Canadian corporation".^[1]

TSN is therefore a Bell-controlled service in which a subsidiary of the United States sports broadcaster ESPN holds a minority interest, sitting under the same holding company as the French-language service RDS. Rights are routinely acquired for the pair together: the CFL, Hockey Canada and Montréal Canadiens agreements described below are held jointly by TSN and RDS.^[1]

In the boilerplate attached to its own press releases, TSN describes itself as distributing content across "five national television feeds, TSN+, TSN.ca, TSN Radio stations, and the TSN app". That is the outlet's own account of its footprint.^[3]

What does TSN cover?

Canadian football is the spine of the schedule. TSN published a 2026 Canadian Football League broadcast schedule covering 40 regular-season games across TSN1, TSN3, TSN4 and TSN5 with selected games simulcast on CTV, running from 20 August to the end of the regular season on 24 October 2026, the playoffs that follow, and the 113th Grey Cup on 15 November 2026 on TSN and CTV.^[5] That arrangement is being replaced. The CFL announced on 28 May 2026 a six-year agreement with Bell Media beginning in 2027 under which TSN carries 60 regular-season games, six playoff games and the Grey Cup, simulcast on TSN, CTV and Crave; DAZN takes an exclusive Saturday-night package from 2027 and becomes the league's international broadcaster in more than 200 countries; and YouTube joins from 2027 as a platform partner carrying pre-season games and archive material.^[4]

Hockey Canada announced on 7 January 2020 that TSN and RDS would hold the exclusive multi-platform media rights to its events through the 2033–34 season, covering the IIHF World Junior Championship, the IIHF Women's World Championship, the IIHF U18 World Championship and a long list of domestic national championships including the Telus Cup, the Esso Cup, the Centennial Cup and the Allan Cup.^[6] Club hockey on TSN is regional rather than national: an extension announced on 10 October 2025 gives TSN 50 Montréal Canadiens games a season and RDS 45, for the club's designated broadcast region.^[7]

Beyond those dated agreements, TSN's own press boilerplate lists the NFL, the NBA and the Toronto Raptors, Major League Soccer, the FIFA World Cup, UEFA EURO, golf majors, Grand Slam tennis, Formula One, the Canadian Hockey League, and curling championships among its properties — again, the outlet's description of itself.^[3] TSN also appears as a sub-licensee of Olympic coverage: CBC named TSN among the networks carrying the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Canada.^[8] On how these arrangements work generally, see broadcast rights.

How large is TSN's audience?

The most recent measured figure in which TSN can be identified comes from Olympic coverage. 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, and that 8.7 million viewers watched the closing goal of the men's ice hockey gold medal game on 22 February 2026 across CBC, SportsnetOne and TSN1.^[8] Those are combined-network figures; they do not isolate TSN.

For the category as a whole, the CRTC's annual highlights of the broadcasting sector for 2024–2025, published on 18 August 2026, reported that approximately 40 per cent of Canadians said they had consumed sports content on traditional television in the past month, against about 13 per cent on radio and under 10 per cent on online sports services. The same report recorded that the profitability of mainstream sports and national news discretionary services fell from a 14.3 per cent PBIT margin in 2021 to 7.3 per cent in 2025, and that in 2025 the English-language services in that group returned 9.4 per cent while the French-language services returned −3.2 per cent.^[9]

No current channel-level Numeris average-audience figure, and no current Comscore digital figure, for TSN on its own could be retrieved. That is a limitation of the available evidence rather than a statement about the service.

Since when has TSN existed?

Three dates need keeping apart. The Canadian Communications Foundation records that the service was licensed in 1983 under the name Action Canada Sports Network, by the brewer John Labatt; that the name was shortened to TSN – The Sports Network; and that the channel went to air on 1 September 1984.^[2] The licence year and the launch year are not the same year, and neither is a corporate founding date for the companies that have owned it since.

The same source traces the ownership chain: Labatt Communications Inc. held TSN by 1987; after Interbrew bought Labatt in 1995, the broadcasting assets were moved to NetStar in 1996 to address foreign-ownership constraints; CTV received CRTC approval in March 2000 to acquire NetStar and with it TSN; and the service has since passed to Bell Media.^[2] The CRTC ownership chart of 14 September 2026 shows where that chain now ends.^[1]

Why does TSN matter in Canada's sport?

Its significance is structural. TSN and RDS together hold the Canadian Football League's Canadian broadcast rights — the CFL's 2026 announcement describes a six-year Bell Media agreement from 2027 covering 60 TSN regular-season games, the playoffs and the Grey Cup on TSN, CTV and Crave, with RDS carrying the Montreal Alouettes and the Grey Cup in French.^[4] The Grey Cup is the largest single annual domestic broadcast in the country, and the pair also hold Hockey Canada's events through 2033–34, which is where the World Junior Championship reaches Canadian screens.^[6]

The shape of TSN's hockey coverage changed with the 2026–27 season. National English-language NHL rights in Canada belong to Rogers under a 12-year agreement announced on 2 April 2025 and running from 2026–27 through 2037–38.^[10] TSN's hockey is therefore regional and international: 50 Canadiens games a season under the October 2025 extension, plus the Hockey Canada and IIHF programme.^[7][6]

For the wider architecture this sits inside, see sports in Canada, the Canadian Football League, the Grey Cup and the NHL.