Count Liberty Media Corporation in for a greater percentage ownership in CTV Sportsnet, should the other shareholders agree.

Dave Flowers, vp/treasurer for lmc, says the Colorado-based company would like to bring its stake up to the maximum foreign ownership allowed at 33% from its current 20%.

‘If those shares became available to us and the other partners thought it was best to distribute them [in this way], we would obviously be interested in increasing our ownership.’

lmc is a wholly owned subsidiary of tci. In 1996, lmc and Fox formed a 50:50 partnership in Fox Sportsnet, which consists of about 12 regional sports networks in the u.s.

According to Flowers, the attraction of the Canadian market is that ‘some of the product that we have and some of the product [the Canadians] have can move back and forth fairly easily.’ Also, ‘Canada is a good market for sports and what we found here in the States is that regional networks are very popular because they feature the home teams.’

Sportsnet owners ctv, The Molson Company and Rogers Broadcasting are looking to shape shift the cable channel ownership structure after the crtc denied a pitch from Rogers and Molson to transfer 20% of the latter’s 40% stake to Rogers last month. The 20% Molson wants to sell is worth a projected $7 million to $10 million.

ctv spokesperson Tom Curzon says ctv has no comment on who may be interested in acquiring a greater equity in Sportsnet.