RadioActive wrote:

Remember just a few short weeks ago when Rogers closed down six radio stations and fired every staff member to help pay for its acquisition of MLSE? See if this sounds familiar. 

ESPN in the U.S. has also begun laying off many of its on-air people and other employees, after it took over The NFL Network. In fact, one familiar face on the network, Ryan Clark, was on the air when he was terminated. He left when he found out and didn't finish the broadcast. Ironically, Clark is a football analyst for the network but adding the NFL assets meant they couldn't afford to keep him. 

And like Rogers, which also made cuts to other departments, it's not just ESPN. Disney, which owns the sports network, has also been firing people in other parts of the company. 

ESPN starts layoffs tied to NFL Network acquisition, memo says
 

I'm just not buying the premise, no matter how often it gets repeated here, that Rogers needed to close six mostly AM news/sports stations as the only way to pay for its acquisition of the remaining 25 per cent stake in giant MLSE that they didn't already own.
The purchase from Larry Tannenbaum's Kilmer Sports' stake is a $4.35-billion deal. Suppose each of the six stations was losing $1 million a year, the savings from closing them and turning in the licences would still only be a tiny fraction of what was required to buy the MLSE stake. And if they really were losing that much, I imagine the stations would have been closed long ago if buyers couldn't be found for the lot.
Rogers has said they are paying for the MLSE stake from their own cash at hand, so they are not needing to even borrow for the acquisition like most other companies would do, nor do they need to cut spending on other operations just to pay for it.
Back when Rogers picked up the Bell Media stake in MLSE it was widely speculated that Rogers' long-term game plan would be to set up MLSE or a portion of MLSE as a new income trust and then sell off equity to investors on the stock market, more than recouping all that they have invested in MLSE over the years, and then they would be playing with the house's money with whatever portion of MLSE they choose to retain.

Last edited by DX (July 21, 2026 3:15 pm)