OTTAWA – The CRTC ruled Thursday that Rogers gave itself and its own sports channels an unfair preference by refusal to carry for broadcasting Timeless’s OneSoccer.
Timeless first brought the complaint last summer that alleged Rogers refused to carry OneSoccer because it was concerned about competition with its own Sportsnet channels. Rogers said it refused to carry the channel because it allegedly had limited appeal to viewers. Telus, which has carried the channel since 2021, urged the commission to investigate the matter.
The regulator ruled Thursday that OneSoccer is a comparable service to the sports channels of Rogers and the Bell channels it carried, making the exclusion of the former unfair.
In its analysis, the CRTC said Rogers’s refusal to carry the channel “will, in the longer term, make it much more difficult for Timeless to survive in the traditional linear television market and possibly secure deals with other BDUs that compete” with Rogers. This is despite the fact that OneSoccer, which is available online and through the streaming platform FuboTV, is not losing any money by not being on that linear distribution.
“As such, it is the Commission’s view that [Rogers’s] distribution of OneSoccer would create additional revenues for Timeless and make the service more viable in the long term, and that a refusal to distribute OneSoccer would likely have a material adverse impact on Timeless,” the commission determined.
The regulator said both parties must submit by April 11 proposed remedies for resolving the dispute.
Launched in 2019, OneSoccer holds the exclusive rights to broadcast the games of the country’s national teams, World Cup qualifying games, Canadian Premier League games and other tournaments.
