With the announcement of three new sports outlets in a matter of weeks, the Canadian sports channel arena is set to get a lot more competitive.

CTVglobemedia was set to launch on Aug. 29 TSN2, a digital sports station complementing TSN with more than 800 hours of major league sports programming annually, while the CRTC has given the go-ahead to Rogers Broadcasting for digichannel Baseball TV and to CBC for SportsPlus, a tier-two digital channel spotlighting Canadian athletes. Meanwhile, the Canadian Olympic Committee is still waiting on a CRTC decision on its application for a ‘must-carry’ amateur sports station.

TSN2 – approved by the CRTC back in 2000, and which must adhere to all the conditions of licence of TSN – will offer live and exclusive coverage of NHL, CFL and NBA games, as well as golf, auto racing (NASCAR and IndyCar series), and U.S. Open and Grand Slam tennis.

TSN president Phil King says the major advantage of two outlets is that his main channel will no longer have to tape-delay if a conflict between two games arises, noting that live events are ‘TSN’s bread and butter.’

‘Ninety percent of our audience is in primetime for live games,’ explains King. ‘That is what separates us from the pack.’

However, nationwide carriage of TSN2 remains unconfirmed. As of Aug. 25, TSN2 had announced deals with Cogeco in Montreal and SaskTel, but had yet to sign with major distributors Bell TV, Rogers Cable and Shaw Cablesystems.

‘We are right in the middle of negotiations,’ says King. ‘I think a lot of distributors were waiting to see if we were really going to launch or not. There was some skepticism as to whether or not there was enough programming out there. Our belief is they will sign. We wouldn’t launch if we didn’t think so. We are not interested in launching a small little digi-network. That doesn’t work with sports – rights and production is too expensive.’

CBC’s SportsPlus bid also faced some hurdles. In its original application, CBC asked for a sports channel that celebrated Canadian athletes with an emphasis on amateurs, devoting 30% of its programming annually to amateur sports and the remainder to professional sports – of which 30% could be coverage of pro events such as basketball, football, tennis, golf and hockey games.

This caused an uproar among TSN, Sportsnet and The Score, which questioned if SportsPlus was in fact a professional sports channel in disguise. The sports outlets all filed interventions against the application, citing that SportsPlus would be able to program enough professional sports to put the digital channel in direct competition with their outlets, contravening a CRTC genre-protection rule that doesn’t allow Category 2 services to directly compete with existing Category 1 or analog, pay or specialty services.

The federal regulator responded by increasing SportsPlus’ amateur sports commitment to 30% calculated weekly, with no more than 30% of weekly broadcasts involving pro sports and no more than 10% of programming devoted to stick and/or ball sports per week.

John Levy, CEO of Score Media, says the CRTC stipulations are ‘a good compromise,’ and minimize the new service’s impact on the other sports channels.

However, Rick Brace, president of revenue, business planning and sports for CTV, notes that SportsPlus, as licensed, will be able to air roughly three hours of professional sports a night before reaching its 10% weekly maximum.

‘I am concerned as to what this channel will be, as compared to what it was deemed to be,’ says Brace. ‘Genre protection is slowly eroding, particularly in news and sports. It’s an attractive area [for licence applications], because sports are popular and the combination of advertising fees and subscription revenues can make for a tremendous business.’

Scott Moore, executive director of CBC TV Sports, says the other sports channels are merely ‘trying to keep what little competition there is in the marketplace to themselves.’

‘I found the interventions amusing, especially when you consider TSN intervened saying there isn’t a market for another sports channel, and then they announced they were launching TSN2,’ he says.

CBC’s competitors also pointed fingers over whether a government-funded network should be using its money to buy additional sports programming, but Moore says he expects SportsPlus – which will launch sometime in 2009 – to be self-funding.

‘It will not draw on taxpayers’ money,’ he says. ‘Our vision is that this service, like other sports services, will be cash-flow positive and return a profit to CBC.’

Where TSN and CBC agree is that the launch of additional sports outlets is necessary to stay competitive.

‘Rights holders want as much exposure for their sport as possible, and are demanding multiple platforms,’ says Moore, noting that with the addition of SportsPlus, CBC has a better chance of successfully bidding on sports properties.

As well, sports programming is increasingly being sold as part of bigger package deals, so it makes financial sense to have additional channels to air as much of it as possible to generate revenue.

‘You can’t just buy the U.S. men’s golf Open,’ says King. ‘You have to also buy seniors’ golf and ladies’ golf. Or if you purchase 20 hours of a tennis tournament and have to pre-empt 30% of those hours because you have to air a golf event, then you paid for something you can’t monetize.’

But a potential negative impact of the growing number of sports channels is increased costs.

‘Every time you add a competitor into the pool it drives up prices,’ adds King. ‘That isn’t healthy, especially when you are sending dollars outside of Canada for an American or European sport. The bottom line is every network has a fixed pie of money for rights and production, so if you wind up spending more for a golf event because there are more bidders, there is less money to do something else in Canada.’

However, additional sports outlets is good news for advertisers.

‘From my standpoint as a buyer, more competition gives us more options,’ says Florence Ng, VP at ZenithOptimedia, noting that she can combine more expensive buys on the bigger sports channels with less expensive advertising on the newer channels.

‘You won’t buy a digital 2 channel on its own, but rather use it to complement a purchase on Sportsnet or TSN or CBC Sports.’