Ontario University Athletics (OUA) and the CBC reached a two-year deal on Oct. 1, 2021 for the CBC to broadcast 13 OUA championships on the CBC Sports website, app and CBC Gem. This makes CBC the exclusive English-language broadcaster for OUA championships.
The deal came less than two weeks after CBC and U Sports, the national governing body of university sports in Canada, announced a four-year partnership to broadcast national championships.
The partnerships come at a time when university sport in Canada lags significantly behind its American counterpart and the OUA is seeking to develop a larger media presence.
One of the OUA’s current media projects to grow reach is the OUA: In Conversation podcast, launched in October 2021 and co-hosted by Griffin Porter and Justine Jones.
According to Porter, student athletes are not well-known in the same way professional athletes are and this podcast helps viewers get to know the athletes they watch.
“Whether they have an athlete who they like to follow from team to team, or favourite players on their favourite teams, when fans feel a connection with a player, that’s when they’re more likely to form a real bond with that sport,” Porter said.
Porter said the partnerships with CBC present an opportunity for the OUA to grow its audience, benefitting student athletes and the universities it spotlights.
“If the CBC can get good ratings on their U Sports programming, then the next deal will earn the OUA and U Sports more money, which gets passed on to the schools,” Porter said in an email to the Charlatan.
More funding for sports programs would benefit student athletes, Porter said.
“[It] leads to more money, which leads to more funding for the things student athletes need, like physiotherapy, facilities and more,” he added.
In turn, more money leads to better programs and a better product, potentially leading to an even larger audience, Porter said.
“If you look at most North American sports, the vast majority of their profits come from their TV deals,” he said. “If U Sports can take off with the help of this larger audience, it will help universities across Canada improve their teams and therefore improve the product.”
The first test of the broadcast rights for national championships came during the fall 2021 championship schedule, which included the U Sports men’s soccer national championship hosted at Carleton. The broadcasts set viewership records, with video views increasing by more than 643 per cent compared to the same period in 2019-20.
Being showcased on CBC gives exposure to a university’s sports programs and could help them build their reputation and recruit more athletes, according to Jeremy Whalen, assistant manager of communications and marketing for Carleton Athletics.
In comparison to U Sports, the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) in the United States draws significant media attention, with some sports and conferences earning TV deals worth tens of billions of dollars.
CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting signed a broadcast rights deal in 2010 with the NCAA worth $10.8 billion over 14 years. In 2016, that deal was extended by $8.8 billion to 2032.
The NCAA also pulls high ratings, with the 2021 March Madness basketball final four averaging 16.9 million viewers. By comparison, U Sports’ average viewership in 2015-16, when its events were broadcast by Sportsnet, was less than 1.1 million.
At the time, Sportsnet president Scott Moore said the broadcaster had invested millions of dollars in coverage but the response from viewers was “somewhat underwhelming.”
Whether the CBC broadcasting deal will succeed where Sportsnet failed has yet to be seen. Still, Whalen is optimistic about the deal’s impact on Carleton.
“The increased audience will only help to further grow Carleton’s reputation as the place where champions play,” Whalen said in an email to the Charlatan.
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.
