Dark TV days ahead for amateur sports in Canada

It really was more a matter of when than if.

When Rogers invested $5.2 billion in the NHL and the CBC began gutting its sports department thanks to reduced funding, it really was only a matter of time before this country's amateur sports began to pay the price.

The start of those dark days came last week when Rogers Sportsnet decided against airing Ontario Universities Association football and basketball games this season.

In the big scheme of things, OUA football games were small potatoes to broadcasters. But getting TV coverage is big stuff for those involved.

"It's significant," Western University athletics director Therese Quigley told The Hamilton Spectator's Scott Radley. "It's a major setback."

"It certainly hurts our branding and getting our product (out there)," OUA executive director Bryan Crawford said.

And here's the real bad news: this is only the beginning. Other shoes will begin to drop with a thud as the Canadian sports television landscape reconfigures itself over the next year.

Rogers has dedicated so much money and so many resources to the NHL, it has little left for others beyond the big stuff like Blue Jays baseball. CBC is rapidly becoming the basket case of Canadian sports broadcasting and is in no position to pump up amateur sports -- even if that was once a big part of its mandate.

As for TSN, it mentions mainly pro sports in its potential lineup for the five national feeds it will launch next week.

Sportsnet tried to put a happy face on what will soon become a very unhappy period for amateur sports.

"We're focused on building a national CIS presence and supporting CIS athletes across the country through our partnership with the CIS, which includes providing coverage of the Mitchell Bowl, Uteck Bowl and Vanier Cup, as well as the national championships for men's and women's hockey, and men's and women's basketball," Sportsnet communications director Jennifer Neziol told Radley.

That's all well and good, but the fact is this will become the new face of televised amateur sports in this country. The big events will continue to be covered, but anything less than national championships will likely get scant if any camera time.

The fact is that OUA games draw small audiences, like most amateur sports outside of the Olympics or world junior hockey championships. But there should be room for those types of events to help build sports and foster the viewers of tomorrow.

Sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Crawford said that attempts to find another broadcaster to carry football games produced nothing.

CBC has said that it won't air sports unless they turn a profit and the fact is that few amateur events can do that. The OUA tried to interest TSN in the games, hoping that its big investment in the CFL might make a nice package.

But with the Vanier Cup package now on Sportsnet, TSN has little incentive to air games that draw small audiences and serve to promote the opposition's product.

That lack of interest will be repeated more and more often. The international competitions in skiing, track and field and winter sports that aired on CBC for years are now in jeopardy. The public broadcaster no longer has the financial resources to keep those going in their current form.

It's possible that TSN might eventually pick up some of those as fodder for its new feeds, but TSN is a private network with a mandate to make profits. Amateur sports don't really fit in.

Where amateur sports did fit in was CBC. But with the federal government apparently bound and determined to kill the public broadcaster, that is no longer the case.

Expect reduced coverage and, eventually, no coverage.