TORONTO – Sports business experts say Rogers Communications Inc.’s full takeover of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment is the newest sign of a shift in Canada’s skilled sports landscape.
The telecommunications giant announced Monday it can acquire the remaining 25 per cent stake in MLSE it didn’t yet own for $4.35 billion, spelling the tip for longtime part-owner Larry Tanenbaum through his holding company, Kilmer Sports Inc.
MLSE owns the NHL’s Maple Leafs, NBA’s Raptors, MLS’ Toronto FC and the CFL’s Argonauts. Last 12 months, Rogers closed a separate $4.7-billion take care of rival BCE Inc. to purchase its 37.5 per cent stake in MLSE, making it the bulk owner.
Rogers and Bell previously owned equal stakes within the sports conglomerate, while the remaining quarter was owned by Kilmer. Rogers held an option allowing it to purchase out that remaining 25 per cent stake this 12 months.
The move comes amid other big changes involving Rogers’ sports ventures.
In a joint announcement with CBC last month, the pair said they wouldn’t renew their sublicense agreement that allowed the general public broadcaster to air NHL games on Hockey Night in Canada. Which means Rogers-owned properties might be the one option for nationally televised games in English on Saturday nights.
“The times of free-to-air are gone,” said Concordia University sports economist Moshe Lander.
“It’s not only the Canadian sports landscape that’s changing. That is something that other leagues have realized before the NHL, which is you simply have a lot money you can make from game day sales.”
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He said hockey has long been overly reliant on a revenue strategy of “what number of bums in seats are you able to fill,” but has recently taken steps to diversify, including through lucrative television deals. That forces fans to pay more to observe hockey, together with their other favourite sports.
Last 12 months, Rogers and the NHL prolonged their national TV rights deal for English broadcasts. The 12-year, $11-billion agreement starts within the upcoming 2026-27 season.
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Along with MLSE, Rogers owns the Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers Centre and Sportsnet network.
“They’re now realizing that, ‘Wait there’s rather a lot more other opportunities here to earn cash,’ TV being just one in every of them,” Lander said.
“If you’ve got teams which might be being owned by multimedia platforms, there may be that ability then to innovate and to create numerous different revenue streams that go just beyond, ‘Hey how many individuals showed as much as tonight’s Leafs game?’”
Rogers also has TV partnerships with the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, together with the NBA.
Lander said sports are among the many few remaining entertainment options where live programming continues to be valued. With MLSE, the Blue Jays and a national sports broadcaster all under one figurative roof, he said Rogers has a stranglehold on a number of the biggest content makers.
“When you’ve got Rogers owning (MLSE), they mainly create content for themselves and for his or her platforms,” he said.
“It is smart, I assume, in Canada to have all of that stuff concentrated in a single company. If you’ve got it opened up, if you’ve got different owners, if it’s not fully concentrated, then there’s not necessarily the identical unity of purpose.”
Some Toronto-area pro sports teams still exist outside the Rogers bubble though.
Kilmer owns the Toronto Tempo, who’re playing their inaugural WNBA season. Last month, it became the primary Canadian investor within the PWHL, which is owned by the Mark Walter Group.
Women’s soccer team AFC Toronto, of the Northern Super League, is majority-owned by Canadian-American investor Mark Mitchell. Inter Toronto FC, a men’s soccer team playing within the Canadian Premier League, was bought by Mexican brothers Ricardo, Eduardo and Miguel Pasquel, via Game Plan Sports Group, in 2023.
Yet there are relatively few competitors within the sports ownership space in Canada, which has led to an “oligopoly setup,” said Brock University’s Michael Naraine.
He said Rogers has “made a purposeful, intentional play to proceed to double down on being the sports leader on this country.”
“Rogers has been using sport to attempt to position themselves as Canadiana in the identical way that Tim Hortons does this with Timbits hockey and Timbits soccer,” said Naraine, a professor of sport management.
“To do this, they’re going to spend the billions of dollars to get hockey rights. They’re going to spend the billions of dollars to get the very best teams on this country.”
The strategy can also be playing out at a time of elevated Canadian pride, he noted, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war and rhetoric referring to Canada as “the 51st state.”
Rogers was also the jersey sponsor of Team Canada during last 12 months’s 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament, which happened to coincide with the peak of Canada-U.S. tensions after Trump returned to office.
“Rogers has discovered that these are products that folks want. That is content that folks across the country, coast-to-coast need to see,” Naraine said.
“These are things which might be related to Canadiana and as we undergo this era of nation-building and patriotism … sport goes to be much more relevant. Canadians are going to need to tune in and over time they’ll know that association, that Rogers is sport.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 7, 2026.
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