Toronto Blue Jays: Return of Montreal Expos baseball bad for business?
Bell Media VS. Rogers Communication
Canada’s national sports broadcasting landscape has two major players – Rogers the Toronto based telecommunications empire that owns the Jays and the Sportsnet, and Montreal-based Bell Media that owns TSN and has been nearly boxed out of baseball.
Although the networks have worked together in recent years including purchasing Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, there is still a zero-sum relationship between these two.
If Bell became partial owners of the Expos and TSN gained the broadcasting rights than Rogers would likely lose a lot of Quebec-based Blue Jays fans.
The return of the Expos would not be the death-blow to Toronto that the Blue Jays arrival was to Montreal. But a Bell-owned club could eat away at Sportsnet’s ratings.
During Toronto’s winning seasons in 2015 and 2016, Rogers and Sportsnet got a huge boost in the battle for sports ratings supremacy.
Average viewership (per game) Average Attendance
2015 901,000 (record) 34,504
2016 1,010,000 (record) 41,880
The Canadian Press released statistics in August of this season saying the viewership was down to 706,300 viewers up to that point in the season but attendance remained strong at 39,554 good enough for fifth overall in MLB.
The drop in viewership shouldn’t shocking, since Toronto did not have a winning record the entire season. But what if viewers had an alternative and better baseball option to watch if the Jays were struggling.
Montreal is far enough away that the presence of the Expos would have little impact on the daily attendance at the Rogers Centre. But national viewership could become an open race.
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For casual fans or Canadian baseball enthusiasts outside of southern Ontario, the chance to watch another baseball team in their country may be enough of a draw. But probably it will all come down to who’s winning.
Even if Bell was not part of the ownership group of the Expos and the broadcast rights were split between Sportsnet and TSN, any Canadian baseball played outside of the Rogers Network would eliminate their monopoly.
As Keri notes in his book the Jays and Expos were able to happily coexist, while Toronto was a struggling expansion club. But as soon as Toronto started winning, the fight to be Canada’s team was on.
If Toronto was going through let’s say a 22 year playoff drought and the Expos started to win, how would Sportnet’s Blue Jays viewership be effected?
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In 2017, there are enough sports channels and viewers, that two teams should be able to share 35 million viewers. But from a business perspective why would Rogers want to take that chance?