As for the Jays, and any sale of the franchise — Rogers opened the door last week, talking about “surfacing value” — would be a much, much bigger thing, both strategically and financially. If you want to sell interest in a franchise valued at $1.3 billion (U.S.) by Forbes, that’s different than a little piece of a CFL team. It might make some sense for the Jays to be folded into MLSE, dispersing the future costs of renovating the Rogers Centre, estimated in the range of $200 million to $300 million, and creating a sports powerhouse unlike anything else in North America.
But you have to at least run the numbers, and it doesn’t sound like they have. Meanwhile, the Jays may seem crazy to be attempting to extend their competitive window in the face of a newly revitalized American League East. But if it came to that, would you rather try to sell a team with 40,000 people in the seats, or 20,000? Monster TV ratings, or merely decent ones? Team president Mark Shapiro told The Fan 590 on Wednesday, “If we were just running our teams without fans, and it was just an intellectual exercise, we probably would have hit a reset over a year ago.”
Which is another way of saying, it’s past logical to do what we figured we would do when we first got here, but someone figured out the money is great. This is probably not the ideal way to run a franchise, but here we are.
So while this might extinguish the final embers of Rogers’ dream of an NFL team in Toronto, it doesn’t necessarily pave the way for Bell to give Rogers a billion dollars to expand MLSE, and divide up the rest of the pie.
But here’s what it does do. It shows a little good faith. Maybe it’s the recent championships, the winning, new leadership at Rogers. But now Ambrosie is taking about his meetings with Sportsnet’s Scott Moore, and maybe more of a partnership there; you could even imagine a future CFL game on Sportsnet, especially if they expand to Halifax. You can see a more equitable approach to coverage from the two media superpowers. Where the Argos are concerned, you can see co-operation where there used to be a little war. As one MLSE source described it, if anything, this is like bringing flowers to a first date. It’s a nice, safe neighbourhood. And a little nicer today.
