The dark cloud that’s been hovering over Sportsnet throughout the last year will soon be parting as appointed trustee Scott Colbran has finally put out an offer to sell CTV’s 40% interest in the channel.

All three remaining shareholders – Rogers Broadcasting, Molson and Fox Sports Net Canada Holdings – have an equal stab at the channel, but Rogers, which has been vying for the sports specialty ever since CTV was mandated to divest of it last year, has greater leverage now that the CRTC has lifted its restriction on cable ownership of discretionary services.

Rogers is also the largest remaining shareholder with its initial 20% interest and the 9.9% the company acquired from Molson earlier this year.

Further to that deal, Rogers has an option to buy Molson’s remaining 10.1%, which has yet to be approved by the CRTC. Fox still retains a 20% interest, but unless it does some creative maneuvering, the American investor has reached its maximum in foreign ownership.

Shareholders had until July 6 to respond to the offer, which Colbran, a past president and COO of Rogers Cable (1995-96), says is in the same ballpark as ‘other similar transactions,’ like WTN, which Shaw picked up earlier this year for $205 million (24 times its EBITDA).

If none of the shareholders accepts the current offer, Colbran, whose trusteeship was suppose to end on June 29, will sell the shares to a third party. Colbran has filed with the CRTC to extend his trusteeship 90 days.

If Rogers accepts the offer, it will still have to be approved by the CRTC.

Alliance Atlantis Communications, CBC, Corus Entertainment and Astral Media have all expressed interest in the three-year-old channel, which boasts 7.3 million analog subscribers.

In approving CTV’s acquisition of NetStar, which included the top-rated sports channel TSN, the CRTC ruled in March 2000 that the broadcaster must divest of its interest in Sportsnet within a year’s time. When it failed to do so, the asset was handed over to the trustee, appointed by the commission.

And only weeks before Colbran finally put out the Sportsnet offer in late June did the CRTC rule that cable companies can own unlimited interest in analog channels.

Colbran says, however, the timing of the offer had nothing to do with the fact that Rogers can finally exercise some autonomy in increasing its stake in Sportsnet.

‘The timing is simply, that’s how long it took,’ he says.

Since he was appointed trustee, Colbran was charged with designating a Sportsnet board, including himself, and enlisting a financial advisor, TD Securities, to carry out the valuation process. *

-www.sportsnet.ca