There’s been a large-scale hostage-taking in every corner of the country, and even though police teams with tear gas have not yet been called in to resolve it, the time to do so is fast approaching.
Being held for ransom is the ability of millions of Toronto Blue Jays fans to watch their favourite team play baseball. Media behemoth Rogers — the owner of the team — will be airing 25 Jays games over the regular season exclusively on their new channel, Sportsnet One. Other cable and satellite providers will have to pay for the rights if they want to broadcast coverage.
Rogers has tried to slither out of trouble by claiming that they’re offering the new channel, which launched mid-August, for free (even to other providers) in its first three months.
Rogers has been mercilessly greedy in tightening its grip over baseball fans as it tries to squeeze every penny out of the media side of the business.
Rogers’ public relations department has worked overtime trying to persuade consumers that they should fault their non-Rogers cable provider for refusing to pick up Sportsnet One. Thankfully, it hasn’t worked, and as the blame lands squarely back at Rogers’ collective corporate feet, baseball fans are speaking out with increasing force — and in many cases, with colourful language.
It is missteps like the Sportsnet One debacle that illustrate the deep divide between the corporate camp and baseball camp within Rogers. They may both fall under Rogers’ massive umbrella, but for all that goes on between them they may as well be owned by separate companies on opposite sides of the universe.
The corporate folks’ bottomline-driven lunge for the fiscal jugular is going to have profoundly damaging — maybe even devastating — effects on the baseball guys.
The net result of Sportsnet One is a massive constituency of otherwise loyal fans who feel disenfranchised, cheated, deceived, pawned, and manipulated. They are missing out on crucial games against top-notch teams, when many of those teams are playing to kill with playoff spots on the line. The young and very promising Blue Jays are playing pitch for pitch with these solid teams but the fans, who need to be seeing these games, are not.
Will these fans come to fewer games next year? Will they simply not care, making the baseball buzz that can consume a city that much harder to find when the time comes for the Jays to contend?
The only reason we even need to consider these questions is because Rogers booted a routine ground ball with the bases loaded. Great job, guys.
