OTTAWA – Telus has told the CRTC this week that Timeless Inc.’s complaint that Rogers’s refusal to carry its OneSoccer channel gives it an undue preference should be investigated by the regulator as “timely,” as Rogers pushes to buy Shaw Communications.
Rogers has refused to carry the channel because it said it has limited appeal with its viewers. Timeless, which said it has been trying to get a carriage agreement with Rogers for over a year, has argued in its original complaint last month that there is a “surge in popularity and success for Canadian soccer” and that Rogers will not carry it allegedly because it worries it will compete with its own channels.
But Telus, which carries the OneSoccer channel, said in its Tuesday response that Rogers has “conflicting interests” with carrying independent programming because “it would compete with its affiliated programming service, Sportsnet.”
The Vancouver-based company said the fact that Rogers is a vertically-integrated company – one that owns content and its distribution – “distorts those incentives and closer scrutiny is warranted when vertically integrated entities refuse carriage of independent programming services on their related distribution platforms.” The company, however, said it does not advocate a return to mandatory carriage requirements.
Rogers already won approval from the commission on the broadcasting review of its proposal to purchase Shaw Communication – which the CRTC said merits a review of policies to ensure independent programming is protected.
“Yet even before close of the transaction, Rogers is depriving an independent service of carriage on its distribution platforms despite the fact that its affiliate Sportsnet demonstrated interest in carrying OneSoccer’s programming,” the telco added, which was a claim made by Timeless in its application.
Rogers says application ‘has no merit’
In its own response this week, Rogers said the application “has no merit and should be summarily dismissed.”
The company said Timeless failed to demonstrate that Rogers was giving itself an illegal preference simply by virtue that it offered other sports services, adding that Telus being the only broadcast distribution undertaking of OneSoccer (over-the-top streaming service Fubo TV also carries it in Canada) proves that there are “valid commercial reasons for refusing to distribute the service.”
Rogers added that OneSoccer is not a “mainstream sports service” and therefore does not compete “in the same genre as Sportsnet and Sportsnet One,” adding it “offers little compelling programming and holds only a modest number of broadcast rights to games that our customers would want to watch.”
