Canadian telecom giant BCE Inc. has reached an agreement with rival telecommunications and cable giant Rogers Communications to sell its 37.5 percent stake in Maple Leafs Sports Entertainment for C$4.7 billion (US$3.46 billion).
The deal increases Rogers’ majority stake in MLSE, which includes the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors professional sports teams, to 75 percent. Subject to league and regulatory approvals, the transaction is expected to close in mid-2025.
In addition to using the proceeds from the deal to repay its debt levels, BCE also granted its subsidiary Bell Media access to content rights to Maple Leafs and Raptors games for TSN, its sports television channel, for the next 20 years.
The long-term rights deal with Rogers is aimed at solidifying TSN as a competitive Canadian sports broadcaster. Live sports, once the glue that held together the Canadian cable package, has seen that grip loosen in recent years amid cord-cutting and as U.S.-based streaming giants increasingly wrest expensive professional sports TV rights from Sportsnet, Rogers’ sports broadcaster, and TSN.
In a recent deal, Amazon’s Prime Video in Canada reached an agreement to become the exclusive home for National Hockey League games on Monday nights, as the entertainment industry’s sports arms race spills over the border between the U.S. and Canada.
Terms of the two-year deal were not disclosed, but the U.S. streamer reached an agreement with the NHL and Rogers Communications, the league’s longtime rights holder in Canada. In 2013, Rogers and Sportsnet beat out Bell Media and TSN for domestic rights to NHL games as part of a 12-year, $4.9 billion deal.