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Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is interviewed after the Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Seattle Mariners during Game 6 of the ALCS at Rogers Centre.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
When the Toronto Blue Jays take the field for their first World Series in 32 years, the game won’t be the only thing unfolding Friday night that was years in the making.
Sportsnet has been the exclusive TV home of Blue Jays games since 2010, but because Major League Baseball has always entrusted its postseason coverage to U.S. national networks, no Canadian broadcaster has ever produced a World Series.
But now, after almost a decade of working behind the scenes with the Blue Jays and MLB to secure the Canadian rights to the postseason and to position itself for this moment, Sportsnet will produce the first-ever made-in-Canada World Series broadcasts for its home audience.
And as national sentiment continues to crest, network executives are looking to capitalize on a rare instance in which millions of Canadians are united in their support of a single sports team, fuelled by a patriotic yearning for some sort of win on the global stage.
The network, owned by Rogers Communications Inc., which is also the parent company of the Blue Jays, is investing heavily in the opportunity. (The U.S. broadcast will still be produced by Fox and accessible to Canadians who want to watch that instead.) It is also the first time MLB has allowed the home broadcaster of a team to produce all of its postseason games.
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“This will be the biggest production that we’ve ever undertaken,” said Greg Sansone, president of Sportsnet, in an interview, noting that the network is flying about 60 people between Toronto and Los Angeles to produce the broadcasts.
“It is such an important moment for the country. Thirty-two years after the last World Series, you can just sense the anticipation across the country. It is our job to rise to the occasion when we get to these types of moments, and we want to make sure that we bring this to Canadians in a way that rises to the moment.”
The Series represents an extraordinary editorial, commercial and branding opportunity for both Sportsnet and Rogers as the Jays bandwagon continues to grow. On Tuesday, Sportsnet announced its broadcast of Game 7 of the ALCS, in which the Jays clinched their berth in the World Series, drew an average of six million viewers, making it the most-watched Blue Jays game in network history.
Casual interest is also growing, with the network noting that reach – a measure of the number of viewers tuning in for even a small portion of a broadcast – had increased to 15.9 million for the ALCS from the 11.5 million for the ALDS, a jump of 38 per cent.
“That is just giving us a lot of optimism for what’s to come,” Mr. Sansone said.
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Canadians are increasingly tuning in to the Jays’ postseason run, with 15.9 million viewers tuning in for a portion of the ALCS series.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
The history of World Series broadcasts produced by U.S. networks featuring the Blue Jays is not a glorious one.
In 1992, CTV, which owned the Canadian rights to the postseason but opted to carry the CBS broadcast rather than produce its own, was swamped with calls after a lighthearted CBS pregame segment suggested Canadians played baseball with hockey sticks and pucks and that the country’s official language was French.
Peter Sisam, who was CTV’s vice-president of sports and business development in the early 1990s, recalled this week that wasn’t the only complaint Canadian viewers had about CBS.
“We found the American broadcast very biased, particularly in ’92,” he said in an interview. “I always got the feeling that they didn’t think a team in Canada should ever be in the World Series.”
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The moment was one in a long line of slights that put Canadians off the broadcasts at the very moment viewership north of the border was higher than ever. Similar events followed in 1993 with CBS’s on-air crew and again in 2015 when Fox was airing the ALDS.
Scott Moore, who was president of Sportsnet from 2010 to 2018, said this week that he had tried to negotiate the right for the network to produce its own postseason coverage in 2015 and 2016. “I was not successful in getting that done,” he said.
“Historically, the U.S. broadcaster was clearly the big dog, and because they go into Canada with their broadcast signal, the league was always more comfortable having just a single broadcaster.”
Instead, he said, Sportsnet did as much original coverage as it could, producing its own pregame and postgame shows, and inserting segments into the Fox broadcasts.
The network continued to have discussions with MLB, finally securing the postseason rights in its latest rights deal with the league.
Thousands of Blue Jays fans poured into the streets of Toronto on Monday night celebrating the team’s first World Series berth in more than thirty years.
The Canadian Press
“MLB really appreciates how important it is for Canadians to have their own broadcast,” Mr. Sansone said. “We have obviously this unique scenario where we have one team representing essentially 41 million people, so it’s important to all of us, all of the partnership, that we give people a made-in-Canada production.”
“I believe that we have the best broadcast team and crew anywhere,” he added. “Dan Shulman, Buck Martinez, Hazel Mae – they bring our production to a level that, when it comes to the Toronto Blue Jays, nobody else can.”
One long-time broadcast executive says Sportsnet has already demonstrated how both the network and viewers benefit from a home broadcaster producing the playoff run.
Mark Milliere, a former TSN senior vice-president who now runs M2 Consulting, pointed to the on-field interview that Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae conducted with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. after the Jays’ Game 6 victory on Sunday night as a rare moment that could only have been captured by a home broadcaster.
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As the Montreal-born Mr. Guerrero paused and looked around at the crowd, tears welling in his eyes, Ms. Mae stepped out of the frame and the camera operator slowly circled the player twice, creating a cinematic scene that was shared widely on social media.
“The crew are operating on a very high level. That familiarity of being there day-in and day-out with the team is paying off right now.”
He also noted that Sportsnet’s on-air crew had the editorial freedom to criticize the Jays’ manager John Schneider for a controversial pitching change he made in Game 5.
“That buys them authenticity and brand image – those are two pretty incredible attributes if you’re a broadcaster. And that halo has the potential to go beyond the broadcaster to their corporate owner Rogers.”
Mr. Sisam, the former CTV executive, suggested that Canadian broadcasters have turned the page on the deference they used to show the U.S. networks.
In the early 1990s, he said, “Canadians just felt that, because it was the World Series, it had to be done by Americans. But it’s been a lot of time since the first pitch was thrown [at the Blue Jays home opener] in 1977, and I think everyone feels, ‘Oh, these guys are as good as anyone else, maybe even better.’ Canadians think the time has come, let’s get on with this.”
