Canadian phone giant BCE Inc. has inked a deal with rival telecom and cable TV giant Rogers Communications to sell its 37.5 percent stake in Maple Leafs Sports Entertainment for CAN$4.7 billion (US$3.46 billion).
The deal takes Rogers’s majority stake in MLSE, which includes the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors pro sport teams, to 75 percent. Subject to sports league and regulatory approvals, the transaction is expected to close in mid-2025.
BCE, while using the proceeds of the deal to pay down debt levels, has also secured for its Bell Media subsidiary access to the content rights for the Maple Leafs and Raptors games for TSN, its TV sports channel, for the next 20 years.
The long-term rights agreement with Rogers aims to shore up TSN as a competitive Canadian TV sports channel. Live TV sports, once the glue holding together the Canadian cable bundle, has seen that grip loosen in recent years amid cord-cutting and as U.S.-based streaming giants increasingly snatch pricey pro sports TV rights from Sportsnet, Rogers’ own TV sports channel, and TSN.
In a recent deal, Amazon’s Prime Video in Canada struck an agreement to become the exclusive home on Monday nights for National Hockey League games as the entertainment industry’s sports arms race crosses the U.S.-Canadian border.
Terms of the two-year deal were not disclosed, but the U.S.-based streamer reached the deal with the NHL and Rogers Communications, the longtime rights holder to league games in Canada. Rogers and Sportsnet in 2013 outbid Bell Media and TSN for the domestic rights to NHL games as part of a 12-year, $4.9 billion deal.