Blue Jays raising Sportsnet viewership to record levels

[Kurtz]

Um the Jays roll up to the media unit.
TV channels, Radio stations, magazines, jays, mlse share are all the same reporting unit financially.
And they combine for a small part of revenues, and tiny part of profit/loss when compared to the other units.

It's like taking money from chequing to deposit in chequing.......

Lol

When MLB looks to collect the profit sharing cheques, they don't look at Rogers media Income statement, they look only at the Jays Income statement. By diverting revenue from the Jays to the TV division, Rogers is able to avoid having to give up $10+ mil annually to MLB via revenue sharing.

Now that's just smart business

Why pay more? They learned well from Turner and the Braves lol

Oh, for sure. It's smart, and all peifectly legal.

It's just when people say that Jays income statement shows a loss in 2014 or when it'll show a modest profit in 2015, and Rogers will use that as an excuse not to pursue Price...well, we'll know that's bs.

[Skin Blues]

MLB/CRTC should force Rogers to pay market rate for Jays TV content, it's not right the the owner is sand bagging their own team.

Those audience numbers are staggering and will only keep growing.

They're not sand bagging their own team. They're suppressing revenue to avoid taxes and get a bigger piece of the MLB revenue sharing pie. If anything this gives them more incentive to spend money on the roster because they get a better return on investment.

Sure they are. TV deals are huge across the MLB and Rogers are paying them chump change. The jays should be acting like the Yankees and Dodgers because they are that big market team and they deserve that big TV deal especially with the audience numbers we've seen since the AS break.

This doesn't make any sense. They wouldn't get any more value/money from having a TV deal, it would just be shuffled around differently. And the way the accounting works, they'd be forced to pay significantly more money into the revenue sharing pool. Not to mention there's probably not a TV network able to leverage the content in the same way that Rogers is, so they'd likely get less value form a TV deal than they get by reaping the benefits of all of the content themselves.

[Raps in 4]

Not true, advertisement CPM is through the rough right now.

Nah bro, Rogers makes no money off the Jays. They'll never be able to spend like Dodgers or Yankees because of that.

Rogers is making money off advertising though, they just don't pay a significant amount in to the Jays in terms of a TV deal like the Dodgers would earn. It's really just a numbers game for Rogers, they pay little to the Blue Jays (moving money from their books to the Blue Jays which is their own property) but then make and keep bigger profits off the advertising.

The Dodgers just get a huge windfall year after year to add to payroll or pocket. Rogers could spend the money if it wants, it just chooses not to until now.

I know, I was joking. Rogers makes enough from the Jays alone to be able to comfortably afford a $200+ million payroll every year.

[augustine]

And, there are many people like me who only purchase cable TV for the HD sports content, so Rogers cable in general is profiting from the Jays as well.

[dagger]

If Rogers decided to extend the success of this team into 2016, which would likely require a further payroll bump to assure a solid pitching staff and maybe hang on to Ben Revere, it could do so. It basically means extending the excitement over the winter, through the season ticket renewal and sales period. That's a function of FA signings, our own and not much more. It was estimated by a US marketing agency that each Jays fan spends $67 on average at the game on the ticket, food, beverage, merchandise. It wouldn't be unreasonable, in such a scenario, to budget for about 3.3 million fans (90% of capacity), or about $221 million spent just at the stadium. Even if you think that per-fan spending is on the high side, if you cut that back by a third, you're still get almost CAD $150 million spent at the stadium alone. It doesn't count other merchandise sales or US TV revenues. The Jays equal share of US National TV revenues is about US$51m. Rogers would presumably be able to sign much more lucrative advertising deals for the Jays next season. But here things get murky because Rogers wants them to be murky. Each team gets to keep 66% of its local TV rights money, but since Rogers is believed to be giving the Jays something like $35m for those rights, the true profit for Rogers is hidden from view. Rogers gets to keep the ad revenue, the carriage fees on other cable networks, etc. It gets a halo benefit now for its other programming. Moreover, it's killing TSN - between the national NHL deal and the Jays success, they are dominating the sports network scene. That has to have massive value. To put things in perspective, the Jays current TV ratings - which don't necessarily cover streaming on-demand views on computers, phones, tablets etc. - are in the same range as ESPN's Sunday Night Game of the Week and well above Dodger ratings in Southern California. The Dodgers were averaging 40,000 homes in June, the Angels 80,000. Much of the disparity for the Dodgers is a function of distribution issues. but Dodger viewership on local channels peaked at 154,000 in 2013.

The Blue Jays are averaging multiples of those Dodger numbers for which Fox is paying megabucks. Last night;s Cleveland mid-week game here in Toronto got 1.8 million viewers. Let that sink in! 1.8 million viewers.

I'm not even going to deal with playoff revenues since the MLB formula is more complicated than the NHL or NBA formula for how much of the gate the home team keeps.

The fact Rogers is putting out press releases to boast of their ratings only underscores just how powerful they are in terms of potentially influencing even a big conglomerate's bottom line. There is no excuse not to give the team a large market payroll for next season. In fact, it would be incredibly short sighted even for Rogers if it didn't

[hsb]

Toronto hasn't been this successful at this point of the season since 1993, let that sink in. This is what happens when you wake up a sleeping giant.

[protothe]

If Rogers is so concerned about profits, why don't they sell the rights to broadcast the games?

The reason broadcasters even pay huge money for teams is because of ad-revenue. (They wouldn't pay to show a team's games unless it was profitable long-term)
Rogers can just play the long game and keep the ad-revenue for themselves.

[stealthmode]

this is amazing. I don't mind the bandwagoners. the more the merrier

[Raider917]

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/toronto-blue-jays-playoff-push-increased-attendance-big-market-team-baseball-back-canada-090715

Rogers has no excuses anymore for not spending. This team can be a force for awhile. If these attendance numbers stay like this, re-signing price might not be impossible.

[Sifu]

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/toronto-blue-jays-playoff-push-increased-attendance-big-market-team-baseball-back-canada-090715

Rogers has no excuses anymore for not spending. This team can be a force for awhile. If these attendance numbers stay like this, re-signing price might not be impossible.

There will always be an excuse. The bottom line for Rogers is how the company is doing and not the Jays. And that bottom line has not looked good in recent years with stagnant revenues. I would not be surprised to see Rogers take any windfall from the Jays and not return it to the team but rather use it to exhibit revenue growth and increase their ROE.