THE CANADIAN PRESS
TORONTO — The way Ted Rogers appreciated sports was very different from the love fans have for the team he owned and the events he sponsored.
To him, the game wasn’t in wins and losses as much as it was in improving community status and capitalizing on branding opportunities.
That outlook led an influential man of means with little personal interest in what happens on the field to buy the Toronto Blue Jays, pursue an NFL team and sponsor the country’s ATP and WTA tennis stops. All were successfully incorporated into his media empire, bringing both civic pride and bottom-line benefit.
“He wasn’t much of an athlete, that wasn’t very important to him,” said Phil Lind, vice-chairman of Rogers Communications Inc. “Let’s put it this way, he didn’t know much about sports, but he knew a hell of a lot about the business of sports.”
There are few other Canadians with Rogers’ wealth willing or able to snap up sports ventures, which is why his death Tuesday leaves a void at the top of the country’s sporting landscape.
It’s unclear if the looming succession at Rogers Communications might alter the company’s outlook on ownership of the Blue Jays, or how efforts to bring the NFL to Toronto will be affected.
Rogers teamed up with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chairman Larry Tanenbaum to bring eight Buffalo Bills games over five years to Toronto — the first regular-season game at the Rogers Centre is Sunday — and they were also seeking a team for the city permanently.
Since only individuals, not corporations, are allowed to own NFL teams, the torch would seemingly fall to Tanenbaum, as it’s doubtful any one person at Rogers now has the money to make it happen.
Lind insisted nothing will change on those fronts, and added that bringing the NFL to Toronto and buying the Blue Jays were both strong points of pride for Rogers.
“As a Canadian, he believed that we didn’t play second fiddle to anyone, especially Americans. This was a very, very strong tenet with him,” said Lind. “He’s looking at Toronto in the North American setting, he sees Toronto as sort of the fourth- or fifth-largest population centre and says, Why can’t we have an NFL presence as well?’ …
“He didn’t know very much about baseball but he loved the fact that he had kept the team in Canada.”
Rogers’ death comes at a critical time for the Blue Jays, who are trying to decide in which direction they go in future years.
Depending on whether or not they re-sign free agent pitcher A.J. Burnett, the team may or may not scale back its payroll for 2009, potentially making an uphill battle in the super-competitive American League East even steeper.
Without Rogers’ commitment to the club, there are also suggestions that new leadership at Rogers Communications could opt to sell. There would be few possible suitors for the team, particularly in these worrisome economic times, which could leave the Blue Jays in a similar position they were in back in 2000 when Rogers first bought them.
“There were a lot of people who were kicking the tires then but when it really came down to putting cash up, there was no buyers for a team that had a sale price of US$140 million,” said outgoing Blue Jays president Paul Godfrey.
“Ted really rode in to the rescue.”
Rogers ended up buying 80 per cent of the club from a desperate-to-sell Interbrew S.A., for US$112 million. An option to purchase the remaining 20 per cent of the team for an undisclosed sum in January 2004 was exercised and, in part thanks to Godfrey’s restructuring of the club’s business-side, the Blue Jays are now worth triple that, valued at US$352 million by Forbes last spring.
The new regime might be intrigued by taking the profit from a team that is said to lose $10-$20 million annually.
In his recently-published autobiography “Relentless,” Rogers estimated that he had lost C$300 million on the Blue Jays since 2000 but that the cost was well worth it.
“Don’t get me wrong, $300 million is a lot of money. But I take a broader view,” he wrote. “We would have paid the same money just for the equivalent branding opportunity.”
Even if that number is as inflated as some believe it is, anyone who wouldn’t gain from the club’s residual benefits would have little reason to sink that kind of money into the Blue Jays.
Rogers Media gains content for Rogers Sportsnet and all-sports radio station The Fan 590, plus market recognition for owning the Blue Jays.
“I’m not saying every Blue Jays fan would select a Rogers phone over a Bell phone,” he wrote, “but I think they’d give it a little more thought than they would have before we owned the team.”
All of which is why, if they went on sale, there’s concern that the team might fall out of Canadian hands.
“That’s one of the great unknowns,” said Godfrey. “The Blue Jays went unsold for a number of years at a bargain basement price. …
“If the team was put up for sale, would there be a Canadian buyer? In this economy, I imagine it would very rough. In a better economy, I’m sure there’d be possibilities, but does one jump to the forefront? It’s pretty tough to pick one out.”
Rogers’ purchase of the Blue Jays came amid the background of the Montreal Expos’ imminent departure and his desire to keep that from happening.
“It was entirely typical of Ted,” said Lind, who was instrumental in getting Rogers to consider buying the Blue Jays. “He was a Canadian through and through and when it appeared that the last Major League Baseball team could be moved out of Canada, he stepped in said, This is nonsense. Toronto is a world-class city and Toronto should have world-class entertainment.’ And so he stepped in and purchased the team.”
Rogers rarely came to games but attended some of the club’s recent big announcements, including the US$126-million, seven-year contract extension for Vernon Wells in 2006.
At that news conference, he explained his rationale for the massive investment.
“Whether it’s a manufacturing plant or a services firm,” said Rogers, “if we’re going to avoid going back to being hewers of wood and drawers of water, we’ve got to make these kinds of investments.”
He later added: “This is something we believe in. There were Americans looking at buying it and moving the team to the United States. We thought at Rogers that would be a terrible thing for our community. …
“Yes sports in Canada are very difficult, very expensive, but we have done our very best to keep improving the team and ensure Toronto has a stake in being a winner in the future.”
Now, we’ll see what happens.
There are fewer questions in regards to sponsorship of the annual Rogers Cup tennis events in Toronto and Montreal. Those deals have already been renewed through 2011 and Tennis Canada intends to ensure the company receives value in return.
Their relationship began in 2000.
“It’s a very important agreement and is obviously our largest agreement,” said Michael S. Downey, president and chief executive officer of Tennis Canada. “It gives the organization what I would call a security, that we can go out and help develop the sport. And we have seen, over the last three or four years, our spending in development has gone up and a big part of that has been the title sponsorship and the other benefits it provides.”
Regardless of what happens to his sporting endeavours in the future, Rogers has left a substantial mark.
“Ted loved the challenge of making a deal as much as he enjoyed the success of his efforts,” Tanenbaum, MLSE’s chairman, said in a statement.
“As an owner of the Toronto Blue Jays, he brought his media and sports businesses together. Earlier this year, he and I enjoyed the pursuit of bringing the NFL’s Buffalo Bills to Toronto to play eight home games. In the 1990’s, he also served with distinction on the Board of Directors of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd. Ted understood the power of both communications and sports to unite a nation and to provide a common focus for our community.”