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Wikipedia / CBC Sports

CBC Sports is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for English-language sports broadcasting. The CBC's sports programming primarily airs on CBC Television, CBCSports.ca, and CBC Radio One. (The CBC's French-language Radio-Canada network also produces sports programming.)

Once the country's dominant sports broadcaster, in recent years it has lost many of its past signature properties – such as the Canadian Football League, Toronto Blue Jays baseball, Canadian Curling Association championships, the Olympic Games for a period, the FIFA World Cup, and the National Hockey League – to the cable specialty channels TSN and Sportsnet. The CBC maintained partial rights to the NHL through 2026 as part of a sub-licensing agreement with current rightsholder Rogers Media (maintaining the Saturday-night Hockey Night in Canada and playoff coverage), although this coverage was produced by Sportsnet, as opposed to the CBC itself as was the case in the past.

As a result of funding reductions from the federal government, increased costs for licensing, and decreased revenues, in April 2014, the CBC announced it would no longer bid for professional sports broadcasting rights. The CBC has since used its digital platforms to provide overflow coverage of events not on television, and simulcasts of television coverage. Since then, the CBC's in-house sports coverage has been largely focused on Olympic sports, other domestic amateur and semi-professional competitions.

The majority of CBC Television's sports coverage is broadcast on weekend afternoons, under the blanket title CBC Sports Presents (formerly Road to the Olympic Games from 2015 to 2022, and CBC Sports Weekend prior to 2015). CBC Sports also streams all of its programming, as well as other event coverage not shown on television, via its website and digital platforms (including the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem).

Former CEO of Curling Canada Greg Stremlaw was the head of CBC Sports from April 10, 2015 to January 2019.

Sports properties

Current

Alpine Skiing

  • FIS World Cup races

Athletics

Baseball

Basketball

Curling

Figure Skating

Gridiron Football

Hockey

Professional Women's Hockey League (2023–present).

  • Produced in-house by the league.

  • Weekly Saturday afternoon game of the week on CBC Television

  • Additional streaming games.

Canadian Hockey League (2021–present)

  • Early-season weekend games across its constituent leagues.

  • Additional streaming regular-season games.

  • U Sports Hockey

Multi-sports competitions

Soccer

Volleyball

Previous

Canoe Sprint

Curling

Baseball

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball on CBC (1953–2008)

Basketball

National Basketball Association

NBA on CBC (2007–2010)

Canadian Elite Basketball League

  • All games streaming (2019–2022), 7 regular-season games and the championship game on CBC Television (2020–2022)

Cricket

Global T20 Canada (2023–2024)

  • All matches streaming (championship match on CBC Television)

Equine sports

Gridiron Football

Hockey

National Hockey League - Hockey Night in Canada (1952–2026)

Horse racing

Multi-sports competitions

Olympics on CBC

Rugby

Soccer

Tennis

Notable personalities (past and present)

Directors

Hall of Fame

CBC Sports Hall of Fame recognizes those broadcasters of CBC Sports who have made a unique and lasting contribution to CBC and to the sports broadcasting industry.

Proposed CBC SportsPlus channel

In 2008, the CBC received CRTC approval for a sports specialty channel, "CBC SportsPlus", which would have aired a mix of amateur and professional sports. Commercial broadcasters, including CTVglobemedia, Rogers Media, and The Score filed petitons against the channel for being unduly competitive with existing sports channels (therefore violating the CRTC's then-policy of genre protection among specialty channels). They showed particular concern for the CBC stating that it planned to devote 75% of its programming to professional sports. The CRTC approved the license application, but restricted it to only devoting 30% of its schedule per-week to professional sports, with only 10% of this quota allowed to be devoted specifically to "professional stick and/or ball sports", which placed major restrictions on the network's intended remit, including hockey and lacrosse coverage. The restrictions effectively made the application and license non-viable, and paired with the CBC's budgetary restrictions, the network never commenced operations.

References