Once the country's dominant sports broadcaster, in recent years it has lost many of its past signature properties – such as theCanadian Football League,Toronto Blue Jays baseball,Canadian Curling Association championships, theOlympic Games for a period, theFIFA World Cup, and theNational Hockey League – to the cable specialty channelsTSN andSportsnet. The CBC has maintained partial rights to the NHL as part of a sub-licensing agreement with current rightsholderRogers Media (maintaining the Saturday-nightHockey Night in Canada and playoff coverage), although this coverage is produced by Sportsnet, as opposed to the CBC itself as was the case in the past.
As a result of funding reductions from the federal government, increased costs for licensing, and decreased revenues, in April 2014, the CBC announced it would no longer bid for professional sports broadcasting rights.[1] The CBC has since used its digital platforms to provide overflow coverage of events not on television, and simulcasts of television coverage. Since then, the CBC's in-house sports coverage has been largely focused onOlympic sports, other domesticamateur and semi-professional competitions such as theCanadian Hockey League (CHL), along with coverage ofSpruce Meadows'show jumping competitions.
The majority of CBC Television's sports coverage is broadcast on weekend afternoons, under the blanket titleCBC Sports Presents (formerlyRoad to the Olympic Games from 2015 to 2022, andCBC Sports Weekend prior to 2015).[2][3] CBC Sports also streams all of its programming, as well as other event coverage not shown on television, via its website and digital platforms.
Former CEO of Curling CanadaGreg Stremlaw was the head of CBC Sports from April 10, 2015[4][2] to January 2019.[5]
CBC Sports Hall of Fame recognizes those broadcasters of CBC Sports who have made a unique and lasting contribution to CBC and to the sports broadcasting industry.[32]
In 2008, the CBC received CRTC approval for a sportsspecialty channel, "CBC SportsPlus", which would have aired a mix of amateur and professional sports. Commercial broadcasters, includingCTVglobemedia, Rogers Media, andThe Score filed petitons against the channel for being unduly competitive with existing sports channels (therefore violating the CRTC's then-policy of genre protection among specialty channels). They showed particular concern for the CBC stating that it planned to devote 75% of its programming to professional sports. The CRTC approved the license application, but restricted it to only devoting 30% of its schedule per-week to professional sports, with only 10% of this quota allowed to be devoted specifically to "professional stick and/or ball sports", which placed major restrictions on the network's intended remit, including hockey and lacrosse coverage.[33][34] The restrictions effectively made the application and license non-viable, and paired with the CBC's budgetary restrictions, the network never commenced operations.
