If you hear Bell Media talk about it, it’s a “landmark” deal that “solidifies” its “position as Canada’s Home of the CFL.”
The reality is that while it’s a big deal for the CFL, it’s a big change for CFL fans, who will now have to subscribe to a new service to get their games, after many years of TSN having 100% exclusive rights to CFL games within Canada.
The six-year deal, which starts in 2027, is as follows:
- TSN keeps about 3/4 of regular-season games (60 games total), including Thursday and Friday night games. It also keeps seven of nine playoff games (in an expanded playoff format that also begins that year), including the Grey Cup.
- DAZN gets an exclusive window for Saturday 7pm ET games (21 games total), and one preseason game. It also gets two playoff games in the first two rounds. DAZN also becomes the exclusive broadcaster for all CFL games outside Canada and the United States.
- YouTube gets some preseason games not carried by TSN or DAZN, as well as some non-game content including “enhanced” CFL Combine coverage.
- RDS remains the exclusive French-language broadcaster with all Alouettes games and all playoff games. (It presumably can show non-Alouettes games on Saturday nights as well, though it’s not clear if there are any limitations on this.)
The CFL doesn’t mention U.S. rights in this announcement. Those rights are held by CBS Sports, but are apparently in their final year, so we’ll probably get another announcement about that later. It also doesn’t include radio broadcast rights, which are unaffected.
DAZN costs $35 a month for its basic plan, $25 a month if you subscribe for a year or $250 a year if you pay upfront. That’s a high price to pay if you just want to watch the once a month on average your team will play on a Saturday night.
The deal makes sense for DAZN, which also has NFL games, but I remember the hype when that deal was first announced in 2017, how DAZN was going to be the “home of football” in Canada. The reality is that while it remains the only place you can stream every game, Bell Media still has rights to Thursday, Sunday and Monday night NFL games and at least half a dozen Sunday afternoon games.
I also remember when DAZN got the English Premier League exclusively, and how much of a pain that was not just for viewers but for bars and pubs wanting to show them as well.
The good news is that the CFL is getting a lot of money out of this. How much isn’t public but CP’s Dan Ralph and reporter Arash Madani put the figure at a cool half-billion dollars. That works out to almost $10 million per team per year, or more than 65% more than the current deal. The CFL would only confirm that it’s the biggest rights deal it has ever signed.
This also puts the CFL in the same league as major U.S. leagues like the NFL and MLB who have carved out rights for streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV despite the inconvenience to fans.
The bad news is that you’re the one paying in the end. TSN is already one of the most expensive TV channels you can buy, and deals like this just push its costs up more, forcing it to seek higher wholesale fees from cable companies.
The big risk is that fans just stop watching. That for every die-hard CFL fan willing to plunk hundreds of dollars a year to watch a handful of games on a streaming service, 10 or 20 casual fans will decide they can live without, and a significant chunk of those people might decide they don’t need TSN either.
Or maybe RDS just gets a bunch more viewers on Saturday nights during the summer.
Will they regret this?
There’s some precedent for regret with live sports streaming deals. Apple TV acquired exclusive access to most Major League Soccer games in a 10-year deal announced in 2023. But that deal was restructured to make it shorter, and Apple stopped selling its MLS Season Pass at the end of 2025, making all games free for Apple TV subscribers. Some MLS executives have said the Apple deal was bad for the league, limiting its audience as it tries to grow.
Meanwhile, there’s the OneSoccer service in Canada, which is still fighting to get on cable services but has been the home of Canadian Premier League and Canadian national team games since 2019. The service has signed a bunch of deals with TSN so major competitions can still be watched by Canadian viewers.
And even DAZN has had to backtrack on football. When it signed on as a Canadian rights holder with the NFL in 2017, it had exclusive rights to NFL RedZone. But in 2022, Bell acquired those rights in a new NFL deal.
Anglophones will watch the games on RDS instead of paying for DAZN
I subscribed to Dazn when they took over Premier League streaming. But then they lost the rights on the next renewal to FUBO. Dazn was the better platform, and I hate FUBO’s platform. My EPL team was relegated this season so I don’t need FUBO next year. The Balkanization of sports tv to streaming services sucks though.
I’m a CFL and Alouettes fan living in TOR, so I’m happy I have RDS and won’t miss any games.
PKP can’t be too happy with the extension and the new steamer though. TVA Sports could have used the content.
DAZN has a lot of complaints over cancelations. That’s because of how it structures its package. The $25 a month plan is an annual plan that you pay monthly. That means you have signed up for a year and you can’t cancel until the year is up.
They do have monthly subscription plans, but these plans are more expensive and you have to give 30 days notice in order to cancel. That means you will pay for an extra month when you cancel.
OneSoccer has won their case against Rogers. They’ll have a linear tv channel after the World Cup – maybe during.
Both MLS and CPL put all their inventory on 1 streaming platform. TSN/SN weren’t going to pay CPL and haven’t paid rights to Canada Soccer for over 30 years. Production was costing Canada Soccer $1m/yr.
DAZN has about 25%of the game for 66% boost in CFL revenues. Given drop in subs and ad dollars moving online, Bell wasn’t going to pay more than $50m, let alone 66% higher. CFL coverage also needs a refresh as being this long on TSN has made it stale.
Very few u35 sub to linear TSN channels. They only sub to TSN+ if there is something relevant for them to watch like Euros/World Cup. And then churn out.
So CFL needs to be relevant rather than worrying about which platform is showing the games. 25% gone from TSN hurts the over 55 crowd.
The only sport that DAZN would have that’s worth while is CFL. It’s not enough to subscribe. If they had all CFL and all NFL that might make a huge difference.
Saturday night games won’t have the viewers they are hoping for. The only people who would watch are the ones who subscribe to DAZN for multiple leagues. For the average viewer it’s not worth a dollar.
In the end they are just hurting the fans who watch every game via TSN. I’m one of those who would watch all TSN games for my team. This will just be one way I can’t support my team on a Saturday night.
I’m sure the CFL is very happy. That extra money coming into the league is probably going to help out.
But, they have to understand that fans may not have the money to subscribe to DAZN, let alone TSN.
I remember what happened to the Montreal Expos. Their games use to be easily available on over the air TV. One of the many missteps the Expos took was taking all their games onto cable speciality sports channel. That took away the general access the Expos had. Not all homes could afford the Sports Speciality channels. Slowly with time, the fan base slipped away as other sports took up the empty space.
There is enough sports on over the air TV to take up the sports fans attention.
Just in the past two months, the metro Montreal area has had the following sports available to them via OTA.
– NHL ( CBC, CBMT 6.1)
– NBA (NBC, WPTZ 5.1)
– UFL (FOX, WFFF 44.1 and ABC, WVNY 22.1)
– MLB (Fox, WFFF 44.1)
– WNBA (ION, WCAX 3.5)
– NWSL (ION, WCAX 3.5)
– PWSL (ION, WCAX 3.5)
– NASCAR (CW, WNNE 31.1)
And that’s only what I spotted simply by channel surfing.
Expos games used to be available on over-the-air TV. But not all games. Same with the NHL. Sports channels like RDS meant people had to pay, but they also meant they had access to an entire season on TV for the first time.
You are correct that not all Expos games were available on over-the-air TV. But there where plenty of games available to people. The sports speciality channels kicked in in the 1980’s. RDS didn’t exist until 1989. TSN was launched in 1984. The Expos began in 1969. In the 1970’s we had Expos games available to us for free. Not all. But plenty enough to keep people’s interest in the team. Plenty enough, that as kids we would get together and play Baseball.
My point was that there are a lot of other sports to take up peoples attention if the CFL hides behind these pay walls..
I think that sports teams that hide behind these pay walls risk loosing a future fan base. Can you imagine if we had no access to the Montreal Canadians games. Yes, for the francophone market that has happened. It’s all behind a pay wall. But they still have access to Montreal Canadians games in English on the CBC (CBMT 6.1), and CITY (CJNT 62.1). Now, I can’t prove it, and it would probably require somebody to do some research into this. And even look at other teams in leagues that have gone full behind paywalls if this has crippled them with fans in the long run.
Now, what is done is done. But, I would hate to loose the Montreal Allouettes like we did with the Montreal Expos. Or even worse, loose the CFL.
Dazn 6 months $99. $16.50 per month.
Typically 2 games on Saturdays in the CFL. Approximetly $8.25 per game.
Only Saturday night games will be shown on Dazn.
Als games with be available (including Saturday night games) on RDS.
Do not see CFL losing too many Quebec viewers.