Oh, Canada: National Media Coverage of University Sports is Disgraceful

Image Courtesy of Awful Announcing 

 Written by Drew McConnell 

Thumbnail Photo by Saint Mary’s University

Canada has forever been a nation rife with sports fanaticism. The Great White North has a long and illustrious history of sport that runs deep in our red and white DNA. You could say that athletics are as intrinsically Canadian as maple syrup and beavertails. In fact, the most-watched television broadcast in Canadian history is a sporting event: the 2010 Olympic gold medal men’s hockey game between Canada and the United States. That game had an average audience of over 16 million viewers, nearly half of Canada’s population at the time. 

A quick glance at Canada’s most-watched broadcasts also reveals something telling: the top 20 most-watched television events are all sporting events. Olympic events, Super Bowls, NBA finals -- it’s clear that Canada’s appetite for sports is insatiable. In the United States, it’s a similar story. A look at the top 30 American broadcasts of all time shows that 29 of those events are sports programming -- all of which are Super Bowls -- with the only exception being the 1983 series finale of M*A*S*H (an all-time great TV program, by the way). 

Indeed, sports in North America is destination programming -- appointment viewing, as it were. The most recent big-league sporting event to draw monster ratings on TV was the April 5th NCAA’s March Madness college basketball championship final. The game, which aired on broadcast giant CBS, attracted nearly 17 million viewers. In Canada, the NCAA’s multi-week basketball extravaganza was carried nationally by TSN – Bell Media’s sports television/streaming platform.

TSN did a masterful job of advertising the fact that they were the exclusive home to the annual tournament (although last year’s event was cancelled due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic). You couldn’t turn on a TSN channel (they have 5) or visit their website without being bombarded by reminders of their March Madness coverage. The same is true when it’s college football season and one of the 35 Bowl games is on the horizon.

It’s not a secret that college sports are a big-money business in the United States. In 2010, the NCAA signed a contract with CBS and WarnerMedia (owners of networks such as TBS, TNT, CNN, etc.) for those networks to be the exclusive rights holders for March Madness games for 14 years. Financially, the deal saw the NCAA receive over $700 million per year of the contract. In 2016, the deal was extended another 8 years until 2032 and will be worth an estimated $1.1 billion per year.

Other NCAA sports also receive mainstream media coverage. In 2011, the Disney-owned ESPN (America’s largest sports-oriented TV network) forked over $500 million for the rights to broadcast a plethora of NCAA events, such as men’s and women’s basketball and football. Furthermore, Mickey Mouse also ponied up another $1 billion over 12 years for exclusive rights to the NCAA’s American Athletic Conference (AAC) sporting events.  

The Canadian broadcasting rights deals are harder to find, as our networks tend to be more tight-lipped about their financial pacts with sports leagues and associations. But there is one thing we know for certain: they pay for the streaming rights to American collegiate sports and they broadcast and highlight them relentlessly. However, the question needs to be asked – what about Canadian university sports?

There is much left to be desired by Canadian media coverage of our student-athletes. Unfortunately, Canadian varsity sports are seen more as a niche product rather than a mainstream juggernaut like their American counterparts. There are no billion-dollar television contracts or multi-million-dollar sponsorships. U SPORTS is not the money-making machine that the NCAA is – but does that mean it deserves to be swept under the rug by Canada’s sports media?

Go take a look at Canada’s largest sports media platforms – The Sports Network (TSN) and Rogers Sportsnet. If you go to their respective websites in search of any university sports news or updates you’d better be an expert sleuth. On Sportsnet’s website, you need to navigate to the “More” tab and scroll down before you find the section devoted to U SPORTS. TSN’s website is even more of a challenge. On their homepage, you need to visit the “Sports” tab, scroll down to “More Sports” and then search among a massive list of sports before finding U SPORTS listed three spaces above the final listing of “other sports.” Oh, and interesting fact: the first sport listed under the “More Sports” tab? NCAA. Go figure.

Photo by Saint Mary’s University 

You can excuse some of the negligence because of the pandemic. There is currently very little to dive into vis-à-vis university sports (believe me, I know!) since U SPORTS has been shut down since last March. But even pre-pandemic, it was a mostly meagre media rather than a media menagerie. Just look at last year’s truncated University Cup men’s hockey tournament in Halifax., which was cancelled after one day due to the pandemic. The games were held at the Scotiabank Centre, and coverage of the event was scant. In past years, TSN would sometimes air some games on its television platform. However, last year, the tournament was relegated to the lesser watched CBC’s streaming platform Gem. Ditto for the U SPORTS men’s basketball national tournament.

How can we grow the university game(s) if no one can find the sports to begin with? Sure, each U SPORTS conference has its own dedicated streaming site for all sports. It’s the responsibility of the individual schools to provide streaming access when hosting a game or event. The odd event may even make it onto a local cable access channel à la Eastlink Community TV or Rogers TV. But that pales in comparison to the unlimited mainstream coverage that US college sports get in Canada.

Circling back to the hockey example, it’s not an irregular occurrence to see NCAA hockey on TSN. In the US, the Frozen Four tournament featuring the final four men’s hockey teams from around the country is given significant airtime on ESPN. The irony is that Canadian coverage of American collegiate sports often focuses on a handful of Canadian-born athletes – while they completely ignore the thousands of Canadian athletes that compete coast-to-coast at Canadian universities.

I’m not an anti-American jingoist lamenting the Americanization of Canada’s sports coverage. I understand that American sports are a major aspect of Canadian culture. Professional basketball, football, baseball and even hockey, will all have an American angle to them -it’s where the money is. However, that doesn’t mean we have to sweep Canadian student-athletes underneath the red, white, and blue rug, never to be seen by the general Canadian sports fan.

It’s time the sports media industry in Canada takes notice of our student athletics. Show us a highlight pack on SportsCentre. Give us the scores from around the country during intermissions of high-profile American events. Maybe even commit to airing some games. TSN has five different networks, and Sportsnet has seven. Both have wide-reaching streaming platforms – TSN Direct and Sportsnet Now – so don’t tell me they don’t have the airtime.  The Canadian sports fan’s hunger is also insatiable, as seen by the gargantuan viewership numbers for Canadian sports competitions.

One national Canadian sportscaster told me recently that the lack of coverage of our university athletes is “sad.” I agree, it is sad. It’s also disgraceful. There is no reason that Canada’s student-athletes should be left in the dark the way they have been by our own media. It’s time that our sports media companies start giving Canadian student-athletes the platform they deserve.