As the one-year countdown to the 2026 FIFA World Cup looms, a fight to open the door to a wider TV audience for Canadian soccer drags on.
On one side is OneSoccer, the subscription streaming service that carries Canadian national team games as well as the Canadian Premier League and Canadian Championship. On the other is telecom giant Rogers Communications Canada Inc., which has refused to carry OneSoccer.
In March 2023, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) ruled in favour of OneSoccer, saying that Rogers, by refusing to carry OneSoccer, "has given an undue preference to itself and to other services comparable to OneSoccer, and has subjected OneSoccer to a disadvantage."
The CRTC directed the two parties to submit "by no later than 11 April 2023, proposed remedies for resolving the finding of undue preference and disadvantage."
Two years later, nothing has changed other than the case's paper trail has grown exponentially.
"Delays such as these are devastating for new independent programming services, such as ours," OneSoccer said in a February submission to the CRTC. "OneSoccer is spending millions of dollars this year to produce our channel, and we have very little revenue coming in."
OneSoccer remains available as a streaming service and as one of the channels provided by Fubo, also a subscription service. Telus cable subscribers in the West can also access it.
Scott Mitchell, owner of OneSoccer's parent company Timeless Inc., as well as chairman of both the Canadian Premier League and Canadian Soccer Business, is "perplexed" at the delay, saying the ruling was "very clear."
"Clearly Rogers has 小蓝视频 doing what they can to delay that 鈥� It's been with the CRTC for several years now and clearly it's taken far too long," he said in an interview. "We have a home World Cup on the horizon and we clearly have a growing soccer audience and ecosystem. And this issue should be dealt with quickly."
Rogers declined to make a spokesperson available, issuing a brief statement while referring a reporter to past company filings.
"We offer our customers a wide variety of popular and premium sports programming from multiple leading content providers," the statement said. "For those who want even more soccer content, they have the option to subscribe to OneSoccer as a stand-alone streaming service.鈥�
As a result, Sunday's high-profile CONCACAF Champions Cup final between the Vancouver Whitecaps and Mexican powerhouse Cruz Azul is available only to OneSoccer and Fubo subscribers in Canada.
"It's disappointing that not as many Canadians are going to be able to watch the match as there should be," said Mitchell. "Because clearly there is an audience for it."
Mitchell reports OneSoccer subscriptions are up 40 per cent this year. But a larger audience is out there. Rogers, in the wake of its merger with Shaw, controls about half the linear TV audience in Canada, Mitchell points out.
Rogers says there are "valid commercial reasons" for refusing to distribute OneSoccer, saying the channel has "limited appeal to Canadian consumers." OneSoccer's audience is small other than for Canadian national team games, it argues.
Rogers also notes that other major cable providers 鈥� including Bell, Cogeco, Videotron, Eastlink, and Sasktel 鈥� do not currently carry OneSoccer鈥檚 linear television channel.
Rogers has offered to show some of OneSoccer鈥檚 programming on Rogers On Demand and on the OneSoccer app on Ignite TV.
The two have partnered in the past. In 2021, Rogers Sportsnet carried OneSoccer鈥檚 broadcasts of Canadian men's World Cup qualifying games, agreeing to split advertising revenue with the proviso there be no OneSoccer branding on the programming.
In its submissions, Rogers has also argued that Timeless was "under the control of a non-Canadian entity" when it filed its CRTC complaint, referencing foreign-owned Mediapro. It argues "Canadian ownership and control" is a "foundational tenet of the Canadian broadcasting system."
Mediapro was OneSoccer's production partner until the two parted in a legal dispute, since resolved.
OneSoccer argues that while Mediapro "ran day-to-day operations and provided other services for OneSoccer, this was done on behalf of and under the direction of Timeless.
"At all times Timeless retained the authority to make strategic or organizational changes. Therefore, the service was always controlled by Timeless."
Canada's upcoming games at the Canadian Shield Tournament are 小蓝视频 shown on TSN as well as OneSoccer. While Mitchell's group owns the rights, he said it was happy to work with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which organized the event.
But such deals are rare.
"To this day, we've not been offered a single penny of investment for any of the media companies in Canada to carry any of the matches," said Mitchell.
Canada's games in March at the CONCACAF Nations League Finals were carried by both TSN and OneSoccer. Michell said OneSoccer, which produced the games itself, did not get a rights fee.
"Unfortunately we've been pushed into, at times, doing deals that are very economically harmful to us. But we do feel a responsibility, particularly on the national team games, to get the games distributed as far and as wide as we can. Unfortunately giving away the content for free is just not economically feasible in the long term."
"We appreciate TSN's willing to work with us on it but those arrangements are economically not feasible in the least."
While companies like Rogers don't like 小蓝视频 told what to do, OneSoccer consultant Laura Mellanby believes Rogers' resistance is down to the bottom line.
Cable providers are primarily willing to launch their own channels and work with inexpensive options, she argues. In contrast, One Soccer is a live sports channel with an expensive production budget.
Mellanby, who has worked for both Rogers and Bell, points to Willow, a cricket-themed channel carried by Rogers, that takes feeds from others rather than produce games themselves.
"Production is very expensive, especially sports production. And you can only simplify it so much. You can't do a single-camera coverage of a soccer game."
If Rogers were to carry OneSoccer, it would pay the service a monthly fee negotiated on the basis of the number of subscribers. Rogers would then mark their fees up, to recover its investment.
"Cost is always a problem," said Mellanby.
But she argues that the shared risk of carrying a sports channel with high production costs also comes with a shared reward 鈥� especially with a channel featuring a sport "that is in a pivotal moment in its history in this country."
"A good investment, if you ask me," she said.
Mellanby says OneSoccer has had "really productive conversations" with Bell about distributing the channel. But she says the rest of the industry is waiting to see what happens with the CRTC case.
"Nobody wants to spend any money 鈥� This is not a charity, it's a business," she said. "There needs to be a revenue stream."
Canada Soccer, which clearly wants to expands its audience, is understandably watching with interest, although CEO and general secretary Kevin Blue declined comment citing the ongoing CRTC case.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 31, 2025.
Neil Davidson, The Canadian Press
