By Andrew Phillip Chernoff | CanucksBanter
July 8, 2026
For the next few days, I will be focusing on the changes surrounding Vancouver sports broadcasting and the affects by Rogers in the altering of the sports media landscape in the Lower Mainland and in British Columbia.
Strategic Realignment in Vancouver Sports Broadcasting
As I reported on Monday in CanucksBanter, operating entirely outside the realm of on-ice deployment, a massive corporate shift occurred on July 6, 2026, when Rogers Communications announced an agreement to purchase the remaining 25% ownership stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) from Kilmer Sports Inc. for $4.35 billion, gaining 100% ownership.
While MLSE primarily controls the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors, this massive consolidation of Canadian sports equity by Rogers—which also owns the Toronto Blue Jays and Sportsnet—carries indirect implications for the Canucks.
- Rogers maintains a strategic partnership with the Vancouver Canucks, holding immense power over regional and national broadcast rights.
- As Rogers centralizes its sports media monopoly and pledges to invest in championship-caliber teams across Canada, the financial health and broadcast visibility of the Canucks’ rebuild will be intimately tied to these overarching corporate dynamics moving forward.
Rogers’ Corporate Ownership Shifts and Local News and Sports Broadcast Dynamics
On July 7, 2026, the Canadian sports media landscape experienced a seismic contraction that fundamentally altered the relationship between professional sports franchises and their local broadcast partners
Rogers simultaneously closed down News 1130 (the region’s primary AM news and traffic authority) and Sportsnet 650.
Over the last couple of decades, the economic viability of AM sports radio has been fatally undermined by evolving consumer habits and the ubiquitous availability of on-demand audio.
Things changed and supposedly the consumer has benefited, and went down a different path, putting at risk the way it was, until July 7, 2026 when time caught up.
The move reflects a critical evolution in how consumers, particularly dedicated sports fans, consume audio content.
Industry analysts note that listeners have migrated en masse from traditional, sports radio shows to highly specialized, niche podcasts.
Professional sports leagues and individual athletes have also consumed audiences by producing their own digital content, creating an environment where the outgrowth of sports radio has effectively devoured its predecessor., leaving it to only putt-putt along, while superior technology and a new audience, left it in the dust.
Now, the listeners of Sportsnet 650 and News 1130, are left wanting and wondering just what will replace it, and fill the void.
While the closure of Sportsnet 650 immediately silences daily localized sports shoulder programming—including highly rated drive-time shows—the live game broadcast rights present a complex contractual entanglement. Rogers Communications retains the exclusive regional television and radio rights for Canucks Sports & Entertainment (CSE) through the 2032-2033 National Hockey League (NHL) season.
Rogers’ divestment from local sports radio, the erosion of the Vancouver sports media platform, has now led to responding to the fallout, and how to respond to Rogers’ divestment from local sports radio, the strict limits of the existing Canucks broadcast contract, and the technological viability of the Canucks establishing an in-house media network.
Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) models utilized by the Vegas Golden Knights and the Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) models adopted by the Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks—are examples of the strategic choices available to Canucks Sports & Entertainment as they navigate a highly fragmented digital media ecosystem in the Lower Mainland and British Columbia.
The July 2026 Broadcasting Paradigm Shift
The continued erosion of the traditional AM/FM broadcasting model in the face of digital media proliferation has led this week to Canada-wide cuts resulting in the elimination of 230 positions across the Rogers Sports & Media division, with 80 jobs lost directly from the radio sector, many in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.
In Calgary, the company shuttered both 660 NewsRadio and Sportsnet 960 The Fan, the latter of which served as the official radio broadcaster for the Calgary Flames. In Eastern Canada, NewsRadio 95.7 in Halifax and 570 NewsRadio in Kitchener were also taken off the air. However, the most profound regional impact was felt in Vancouver, where Rogers simultaneously extinguished News 1130 (the region’s primary AM news and traffic authority) and Sportsnet 650.
According to internal data released by Rogers following the closures, the audience for local sports radio had dwindled to unsustainable levels.
- From October 2025 to May 2026—a period encompassing the entirety of the NHL regular season and the opening rounds of the playoffs—Sportsnet 650 averaged a mere 2,100 listeners at any given time. Its Calgary counterpart, Sportsnet 960, performed even more poorly, averaging just 1,200 listeners during the same period. Against the high overhead costs of maintaining terrestrial broadcast towers, unionized production staff, and premium on-air talent, these audience figures cannot support the advertising revenues required to maintain profitability.
| Impacted Market | Station Shuttered | Primary Programming Format | Historical Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vancouver | Sportsnet 650 (CISL-AM) | All-Sports Talk / Play-by-Play | Official Canucks broadcaster since 2017; region’s last sports station. |
| Vancouver | 1130 NewsRadio (CKWX-AM) | All-News / Traffic / Weather | Legacy Vancouver news authority. |
| Calgary | Sportsnet 960 (CFAC-AM) | All-Sports Talk / Play-by-Play | Official Flames broadcaster; legacy sports brand since 2001. |
| Calgary | 660 NewsRadio (CFFR-AM) | All-News / Traffic / Weather | Legacy Calgary news authority. |
| Halifax | NewsRadio 95.7 (CJNI-FM) | All-News / Talk | Primary regional news outlet for Nova Scotia. |
| Kitchener | 570 NewsRadio (CKGL-AM) | All-News / Talk | Local news coverage for the Waterloo Region |
The Drivers In Rogers’ Divestment From Localized Sports and News
As outlined at the top of this article, a mere day prior to the radio closures, Rogers Communications announced a monumental $4.35 billion acquisition of Kilmer Sports Inc.’s 25% stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE).
Consequently, Rogers now possesses 100% ownership of MLSE, giving the telecommunications giant absolute control over the Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL), Toronto Raptors (NBA), Toronto FC (MLS), and the Toronto Argonauts (CFL).
The elimination of local sports media in Western markets was done with forethought and allows the company to maximize profitability and streamline its focus on its newly acquired, wholly-owned franchise assets in Ontario.
All the above on the heels of the end of Hockey Night in Canada. In June 2026, Sportsnet and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) jointly announced the termination of their sub-licensing agreement, officially ending the public broadcaster’s 74-year run of airing NHL games.
Moving forward, nationally televised Saturday night games will be exclusive to Rogers’ paid cable channels and its direct-to-consumer streaming platform, Sportsnet+. Furthermore, Rogers sub-licensed its Monday Night Hockey package exclusively to Amazon Prime Video, entirely removing the programming from traditional linear television.
Besides the loss of investment of localized sports and news coverage across the nation of Canada, with nothing of note on the horizon to replace it in the wake of Rogers’ actions, the consumer is left with expensive subscription models from…that’s right…Rogers.
While that may answer the question of how people will get their fix of sports coverage, local news and sports is left wanting.
Media advocacy groups, such as Friends of Canadian Media, have warned that moving culturally significant broadcasts off free television severely reduces accessibility and harms the broader public interest. For Canucks Sports & Entertainment, the realization that their national visibility is shrinking makes the establishment of a supplementary, easily accessible in-house digital network an urgent priority for long-term brand survival.
The Historical Erosion of Vancouver Sports Radio
While Vancouver sports and news radio have gone through tough times before: sports talk was dominated by TEAM 1040 (later rebranded as TSN 1040 under Bell Media’s ownership). TSN 1040 then wrestled the Vancouver Canucks’ radio rights away from legacy news station CKNW in 2006. It also served as the audio home for the BC Lions, the Vancouver Whitecaps, and the Vancouver Canadians.
In 2017, Rogers launched Sportsnet 650 explicitly as a competitor to TSN 1040. Leveraging its immense corporate capital, Rogers secured the Canucks’ regional radio rights before the new station even went to air.
The July 2026 shutdown of Sportsnet 650 instantly eliminated the entirety of Vancouver’s daily sports shoulder programming.The loss of these shows creates a massive vacuum in the daily narrative surrounding the Canucks, fundamentally altering how the fanbase interacts with the franchise.
Reaction
British Columbia Premier David Eby issued a public statement along with others, lamented the loss of the stations, asserting that journalism and local coverage are more important than corporate profits, and noting that the closures represent a significant blow to British Columbians.
NEXT
Tomorrow, I will focus on what next and the hurdles: the 2033 exclusivity agreement between the Canucks and Rogers to deliver live game broadcasts to its fan base; Canucks Sports & Entertainment constraint of being legally prohibited from taking their live broadcast product to the open market; the FM simulcast pivot and its logistical challenges; the technological infrastructure at Rogers Arena and the Canucks ability in supporting an independent digital sports network.
Until next time, hockey fans
