By Peter Menzies, former newspaper executive, past vice chair of the CRTC, and a Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow
On June 1, the Vancouver Whitecaps will play one of the most important games a Canadian club sports team has ever played.
In most countries – in fact in almost any country – broadcasters would be clamouring over each other for the ability to show it. The national public broadcaster might be claiming it as a program of national interest and politicians would be weighing in to play a little hero ball of their own and grab the spotlight.
The Whitecaps’ Concacaf Champions League final against Cruz Azul at 72,000-seat Estadio Olimpico Universitario in Mexico City will establish which team is the best in the northern half of the western hemisphere, and the winner will qualify for a future FIFA World Club Championship appearance. It is a very big deal for the game, Vancouver and the country.
But, thanks to years of corporate shenanigans, a taxpayer-funded yet tight-fisted CBC and the abject failure of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the game’s availability will be restricted to streamer and rights-holder OneSoccer and foreign streamer Fubo TV. That means that when the game is played, it won’t achieve the viewer numbers and sponsorship revenue it should because major soccer events like this one can draw big audiences in Canada these days. Just as important, the public won’t be served in the manner the Broadcasting Act envisions.
The first time a Canadian team was in the final, in 2015, the Montreal Impact drew a crowd of 61,004 to Olympic Stadium. The Whitecaps, in the home leg of their semi-final win over Lionel Messi’s star-laden Inter Miami, attracted a Major League Soccer era record crowd of 53,837. If you haven’t got the point already, it’s a major event and it’s happening at a time when the nation is crying out for national pride-building and unifying moments.
Several years ago, the only way for Canada Soccer to get its games on TV was to pay one of the nation’s broadcasters – usually TSN – to do so. Then Canadian Soccer Business and OneSoccer stepped up with an arrangement that actually earned money for Canada Soccer. In return, it got the rights to broadcast all national team – men’s and women’s – games at all levels outside of major competition finals, such as the World Cup and the Olympics. It also has rights to all Canadian Championship games (the competition Vancouver won to qualify for the Concacaf championship) and competitions within the region. And it broadcasts all games in the Canadian Premier League, which was created, in part, to ensure Canada could qualify as a co-host for next year’s FIFA World Cup.
But, while OneSoccer is available on Telus cable, neither Bell (TSN) nor Rogers (Sportsnet) cable have agreed to do the same. Three years ago, OneSoccer appealed to the CRTC, claiming Rogers had violated the regulator’s rules forbidding cable companies from giving their own products an undue preference at the expense of a competitor. In March 2023, the CRTC agreed. But, thanks to a spectacular combination of regulatory sloth on the part of the CRTC and regulatory gamesmanship by Rogers, there is still no deal. This has cost OneSoccer millions of dollars, which has a financial knock-on effect throughout the sport’s national infrastructure.
Ever since Rogers – which also owns Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) and its woe-begone MLS franchise, Toronto FC – took over Shaw for $26 billion, it has been fighting over every nickel. Undue preference complaints against it have been piling up and it has done its damnedest to defy the CRTC at every turn. The regulator appears to lack either the savvy or the spine to stand up to Rogers and, when that weakness becomes as obvious as it has, the repercussions are felt not just by the Vancouver Whitecaps and OneSoccer, but throughout the industry.
A little over a year from now, Canada will, along with the USA and Mexico, jointly host the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It has a young and exciting team that exudes speed, has a media-friendly coach and includes established international stars such as Ottawa’s Jonathan David of Lille FC and Edmonton’s Alphonso Davies of Bayern Munich. It has – as its TV ratings showed in the 2022 Qatar World Cup and last year’s Copa America (where it lost in a semifinal to world champion Argentina) – the capacity to capture the nation’s imagination and excite its attention.
At a time when U.S. President Donald Trump hovers menacingly over the nation – which simultaneously is staring down the barrel of an Alberta independence referendum – Canada needs all the unifying moments it can muster.
OneSoccer epitomizes what the Broadcasting Act was written for – a Canadian company showing almost entirely Canadian content featuring national teams and domestic teams from Halifax to Vancouver Island, binding the nation. And yet its regulator, which is being publicly humiliated by a cable giant, can’t even get it inside the system. It isn’t even clear anymore, for that matter, whose system it is.
Rogers has expressed the view that OneSoccer’s expectations are unreasonable. Perhaps they are, but that’s exactly why a resolution framework involving final offer (baseball) arbitration exists.
The situation, with events such as the Whitecaps’ big upcoming game, the Concacaf Gold Cup and the national team’s other (men’s and women’s) games leading up to next year’s World Cup is both embarrassing and intolerable. The public is not being served and the situation presents Canada as a laughing stock to a global community waiting to embrace Canada as one of the beautiful game’s emerging contenders.
This is an opportunity for our new “elbows up” Prime Minister, Mark Carney, to put on a pair of boots and kick whatever’s necessary to reassert national pride and institutional authority in Canada.
Do it.
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