The Arrows play in Major League Rugby, a 12-team rugby union league in the US. Vancouver and Halifax have been rumoured for expansion teams. The Arrows are entering their third season in the league and typically split their seasons between Alumni Field at York U and Lamport Stadium.

The Wolfpack played in the Super League, a rugby league based in the UK. Perhaps predictably, COVID prevented them from competing in 2020 and they were removed from the league. If any sports team in Canada was truly sunk by COVID, killing all momentum they had built, it's Toronto Wolfpack, who had won promotion to the top level of Super League but never played there thanks to the worldwide pandemic.

MLR's been picking up some slight headway the past few years so it's not totally surprising TSN is giving them more attention.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/plans-...o-op-1.5328579

Plans announced to create a grassroots Canadian rugby league co-op

TORONTO -- Professional rugby league in Canada lasted less than four seasons with the Toronto Wolfpack. The Ottawa Aces have yet to take the field.

But there are plans to kick-start the sport at the grassroots level in Canada, in the form of the Canada Co-Operative Championship Rugby League (CCCRL). Organizers hope to eventually establish a 12 -team league with both men's and women's teams with fans literally able to buy into the concept.

Sandy Domingos-Shipley, a Toronto native now based in Leeds, England, is looking to help get the project off the ground.

“I've got children born and raised here,” the mother of three said in an interview. “And I've seen the impact of rugby league from a kid's point of view - how much they really do get involved in community and the good that comes out of the sport from the grassroots level.

“And I really want the people in Canada to have a bit of that. I want them to have more of it … We can make rugby league grow in Canada the right way.”

The Canadian co-op league idea is the brainchild of 37-year-old Chris Coates, an English native who is the founding firector of CCCRL. He has been mulling over the concept for some years now.

Coates is coach of the Sheffield Forgers, who play in the Yorkshire Men's League. He also has a hand in the international game as coach of the Lithuania men's team, describing himself as a “diehard expansionist at heart.”

“I believe that the game really should be for everybody,” he said. “And I find it perplexing that so many people love the game but don't want to see it grow outside its (northern England) heartlands.”

His day job is in the tech world. “I build super-computers for a living.”

Looking to develop the sport, the league will feature rugby league nines which is akin to rugby union's sevens - a faster, condensed nine-a-side version of the rugby league game. They believe nines is an easier introduction to the game.

The idea is to start with a six-team league in 2023, with plans of increasing up to 12 teams - six men's and six women's - with representation from B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec.

Divisional competition will be followed by championship play.

Domingos-Shipley says the league will also serve as a home for members of the Canadian national teams: the Wolverines (men) and Ravens (women). Players will be paid on a pro-am model.

The Canadian Rugby League Association is on board, although not contributing financially.

“What's exciting from our point of view is that the initiative is based on the development of grassroots rugby league,” said CRLA president Bob Jowett. “We certainly wish them al the best with it and are supportive of the initiative.”

Domingos-Shipley says the plan calls for the governing body to benefit from some of the profits from the proposed league.

Coates says the league will be funded 40 per cent in the form of private equity and 60 per cent by fans. Investors would get an annual return. They have not yet disclosed the minimum investment but say the average fan will be able to afford to get involved.

“The thing with a co-operative is it effectively buys brand loyalty,” said Coates. “People who invest in something are inclined to want to make that work.”

“Fans want to be part of growing something and this is the way they can do that,” added Domingos-Shipley, who moved to England in 2001.

Her passion for rugby league started four years ago when she started following the Wolfpack in England, becoming essentially a super-fan.


Coates applauded the expansion to Toronto although he says he saw “risks” with the Wolfpack agreeing to pay visiting teams' travel and accommodation costs.

Unable to play at home due to the pandemic, the Wolfpack stood down in July saying it could not afford to play out the remainder of the 2020 Super League season. The club's subsequent bid for reinstatement under new ownership in 2021 was voted down in November.

“As a business owner, I couldn't get my head around how we got to the place where we were,” said Domingos-Shipley, who runs a consulting company.

Coates, meanwhile, was prompted to look for alternate ways to grow the game. In his words, “If you could do it completely differently, how would you do it?”

He started talking to other people about the Wolfpack, including Domingos-Shipley, sharing his idea for a co-op league.

“I was like 'Right I'm helping you do this. I want this to work,”' said Domingos-Shipley, who is billed as the CCCRL co-founder and director of governance and compliance.

Coates also watched tape of the East-West game played at Lamport Stadium in January 2020. “It was good quality stuff,” he said.

He believes the talent and interest for a domestic league are both there.

“The Wolfpack have done fantastic job of growing that market, from nothing. To grow to 10,000 fans in four years from zero fans is a great achievement. But the problem is that it was done in an unsustainable way.”

Organizers say they are working with “appropriate organizations” to ensure that all financial participation is in line with regulations and expectations.

Coates says his group already has some commercial partners “in the pipeline.”

---

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 1, 2021.

https://www.sportico.com/business/me...al-1234624492/

"While terms of the agreement—which has yet to be finalized—remain murky, it is believed that ESPN will pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion to $2.25 billion for the package."

This works out to roughly $285-300M/year for roughly over half of NHL rights. It's looking like the NHL is going to at least double the amount of money they receive from their US TV rights fees whenever the second partner is confirmed. NBC currently pays $200M/year for all rights and the new deals look like they will add up to somewhere around $450-500M/year.

Reports out on Pat Mcafee show it is 2.8 billion over 7 years as mentioned doubling the NBC deal from 200m a year to 400m a year for the league. This should make most teams profitable now unless they overspend which they usually do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GnNkEpmCIU

Wow, I drop off the forum for a week due to browser issues and I miss the rugby chat!

Covid was the final nail in the coffin, but since then a ton of creditors have come out of the woodwork. The Wolfpack weren't paying anybody it seemed :shrug:

The Arrows were on TSN last year so that isn't new. The league is picking up some broadcast steam in the US though, once again they have a game per week on CBS Sports, and also announced games will be on Fox's FS1 and FS2.They also announced yesterday they are launching an online streaming service to watch out-of-market games. Previously this was done on Facebook.

Not sure what to thins of the CCCRL yet. I don't think they'd have that hard of a time putting together an east-west 9s series like they've proposed, but I do think they'll struggle to make it "pro" in any meaningful way, and may struggle in getting many people to pay to watch it unless they have a huge marketing budget.

They're dancing in the streets of Glendale I'm sure! :haha:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ewn27ILW...jpg&name=small

https://twitter.com/SportsnetPR/stat...12071537901570

@SportsnetPR
Now it's time for a #NHL mid-season update, brought to you by @Sportsnet

^ I wouldn't expect anything but an increase in viewership since every single game this season features 2 Canadian teams.

Wait until the playoffs. :deal:

New NFL tv deal is get this drum roll please $113 Billion with a B over 11 years

that's $40 million US PER Game that's the same as what TSN pays the CFL per season!

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nfl/article...y-night-games/

The NFL will nearly double its media revenue to more than $10 billion a season with new rights agreements announced Thursday, including a deal with Amazon Prime Video that gives the streaming service exclusive rights to "Thursday Night Football" beginning in 2022.

The league took in $5.9 billion a year in its current contracts. It will get $113 billion over the 11 seasons of the new deals that begin in 2023, an increase of 80% over the previous such period, a person with direct knowledge of the contracts told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the money figures were not made public.


Amazon has partnered with the league to stream Thursday night games since 2017, but it will take over the entire package from Fox, which has had it since 2018 after CBS and NBC shared the package for two seasons. Amazon streamed a Week 16 Saturday game between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals last year that was seen by an estimated 11.2 total viewers and had an average minute audience of 4.8 million. That was a record for the largest audience to stream an NFL game.

Games will continue to air on CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN, while ABC will have a limited schedule of games as well as returning to the Super Bowl rotation (two games) for the first time since the 2005 season. ESPN's deal was scheduled to end after 2021, while the others expired a year later, but ESPN will have a bridge deal for 2022.

With the exception of Amazon, the new deals will begin with the 2023 season and expire after the 2033 schedule. Games on Amazon will also be carried on over-the-air broadcast stations in the cities of the participating teams, which is also the case with games aired on ESPN and NFL Network.

Besides the two Super Bowls, ESPN and ABC will also gain the rights to flex games to "Monday Night Football," a right only previously given to NBC when flex scheduling was introduced in 2006.

The contract also expands digital rights for the other networks as well. ESPN+ will air one of the London games and NBC's "Peacock" platform will also have exclusive games.

With the hefty new contracts the 32 NFL teams and their players can look forward to increased salary caps throughout the decade. The cap decreased by nearly $16 million this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The broadcast partners also figure to get an extra game per season, likely beginning this year. NFL owners are getting ready to implement a 17-game regular season.

Rumours circulating that CHL will soon announce a new TV deal with TSN

https://twitter.com/yyzsportsmedia/s...01007838240775

Fantastic news for hockey fans. Makes sense given that it dovetails with TSN's WJHC coverage.

I have WHL TV, but I'd imagine the uptake for that is pretty limited. It's amazing to me that all of this great hockey is being played in a void with few able to see it due to no fans in the stands and only being available via separate streaming service.

That's awesome. Hopefully its more than just a game-of-the-week type thing that Sportsnet I believe used to do... I'll definitely be tuning in to TSN for these junior games

Oakland A's ballpark proposal in Oakland seems to really be falling apart due to California bureaucracy and red tape and MLB has given the A's the OK to seek relocation with Oakland's dithering the past 4 years if they are going ahead with the new stadium or not. This could be the quicker opening for the MLB group in Montreal to land a team.

https://ballparkdigest.com/2021/05/1...leave-oakland/

Game 1 of the #habs/#leafs series drew an average of 3.5 million viewers on @Sportsnet and CBC last night. The game reached 8.8 million Canadians in total.

https://twitter.com/reporterchris/st...652870151?s=19

This series alone going to pay off Rogers' 12 year deal :hmmm:

https://3fnah24cdq1a36q3gw1ozfsu-wpe...2-1024x576.jpg

NATIONAL LACROSSE LEAGUE AND TSN ANNOUNCE LANDMARK MULTI-YEAR PARTNERSHIP FOR CANADA

https://www.nll.com/news/national-la...ip-for-canada/

The rugby Sevens World Series returns to Vancouver in September, and new for this year, the following weekend in Edmonton.

https://www.canadasevens.com/2021/07...asevensisback/

(Nobody tell them Edmonton isn't good enough to show the world, lol)

TORONTO – The Canadian Hockey League announced today new multi-platform, multi-year broadcast rights partnerships that will make TSN, RDS, and CBC the home of the CHL.

Beginning with the 2021-22 season, the new partnerships include approximately 30 regular-season games each year delivered by TSN, in addition to select playoff coverage and the comprehensive suite of CHL national events. Additionally, the agreement includes approximately 20 French-language broadcasted games on RDS, early-season weekend games broadcasted by CBC Sports, as well as digital streaming rights featuring a CHL TV broadcast each week during the regular season on TSN, RDS, and the free CBC Gem streaming service.

“The CHL is committed to continuing to connect with our fans and engaging our growing audience in new ways and these broadcast partners are the ideal solution to help us accomplish this goal,” said Canadian Hockey League President Dan MacKenzie. “We are excited to get back on the ice alongside our new partners, with our season kicking off on CBC and TSN/RDS being the home of our biggest national events including the Memorial Cup presented by Kia.”

The CHL drops the puck for the 2021-22 season this fall as part of an exciting new year that includes the stars of tomorrow in Connor Bedard of the Regina Pats, Shane Wright of the Kingston Frontenacs, and Antonin Verreault of the Gatineau Olympiques. The coming season also sees the return of the Memorial Cup presented by Kia, with both Quebec City, Que., and Saint John, N.B., currently under consideration as host markets.

https://ontariohockeyleague.com/arti...t-partnerships

TSN wins Canadian Academy award for Best Live Sports Event: 2019 Grey Cup

https://3downnation.com/2021/07/20/t...2019-grey-cup/

television number was up 14 percent on TSN year-over-year with the average audience checking in at 3,682,600

TSN’s pre-game coverage, which began at 6 p.m. eastern time, drew 1,952,600 and post-game 1,517,000. Overall on Sunday, November 24, 2019, CFL content accounted for the top three ranked TV programs across Canada

If you're like me and want to watch the full Olympic events and not just clips they can be found here. It took me a bit to figure out where to find them so I thought I would post something if anyone else was having any trouble finding them.

Go to the linked webpage above and you'll see the screen below. In the middle where it says Today you can click the down arrow beside it to go to whatever day you want. If you click the Canadian flag emblem that will go to events (for that day) that feature Canadians. There will be a Replay button to take you to the event you choose.

Couple of interesting things the CBC still hasn't learned (even though I complained to them a couple of Olympics ago). One is that you can hear their commentators say all sorts of things on the live recorded streams that are edited before air, some may not be too appropriate.

The issue I complained about was that they post the scores next to the replay so if you want to watch the replay without knowing the result you're going to see the score (i.e. Wednesday July 21). There is absolutely no need of that.

https://i.ibb.co/ZfHNjSZ/cbc-olympics.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/gvkgsjf/Screenshot-...Tokyo-2020.png