In unique role, President\/CEO Mark Shapiro guides Blue Jays with steady handOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nDesiring to build a culture that attracts players and create a fan-experience that is second-to-none, Rogers has invested significantly in the Blue Jays. The team did a combined $400M in renovations of Rogers Centre ($300M) and TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Fla. ($100M). Toronto also locked up franchise cornerstone Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on a long-term contract extension (14 years, $500M). The Blue Jays ranked fifth in total payroll in 2025 ($266M). <\/p>\n
Their ballpark has been packed throughout the postseason, with its 10th sellout of 44,000-plus coming Saturday. The Blue Jays drew 85,000 fans combined to watch Games 3-5 on the Rogers Centre jumbotron. Their attendance has ranked ninth in MLB for consecutive seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing it like this (sold out in October with the renovations) is more of a showcase,\u201d Blue Jays President and CEO Mark Shapiro told SBJ. \u201cSeeing it packed in July or August is almost more meaningful. \u2026 In the past, it\u2019s been maybe a little bit slow. Now, the gates open and people are rushing to the standing spaces, and you look down at the premium clubs and they\u2019re packed, and we recognize what that means to our ability to kind of sustain a higher payroll.\u201d <\/p>\n
On the business side, Toronto benefited from its postseason run by selling out the remaining 30% of its 1,100-seat, 200-level TD Clubhouse premium space set to open next season. Full-season ticket equivalents are expected to climb from roughly 9,000 to as many as 13,000. Sponsorships are projected to rise by approximately 20% range, though that number could change during the offseason. Meanwhile, merchandise lines seemed to keep growing throughout October, driven by demand for Guerrero\u2019s No. 27 jersey and team gear. <\/p>\n
While no one is going to feel sorry for Rogers Communications, which has a market cap of $21B, the Blue Jays do have to deal with 70% of their expenses being in U.S. dollars and 70% of their revenue in Canadian dollars. <\/p>\n
Through Game 5, Canadian World Series viewership averaged 6.4 million on Rogers Sportsnet. Forbes valued Toronto at $2.15B in March, 14th in the majors. Rogers Communications president and CEO Tony Staffieri valued the conglomerate\u2019s sports and media assets at more than $15B during an Oct. 23 earnings call. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad started in the content business \u2026 and we like to think of ourselves as a media company first because of that,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cAnd sports is the best content that there is. So in our view, it\u2019s always been part of what Rogers is.\u201d <\/p>\n
As for this being a showcase for future free agents, Shapiro responded: \u201cI think the word is already out. \u2026 Our recruiting pitch is no longer a challenge.\u201d <\/p>\n
An extension is expected for Shapiro, who is in the last year of his deal. <\/p>\n
Asked if expected Shapiro to be running the Blue Jays for a long time, Rogers responded: \u201cI do. He\u2019s great, and we\u2019re lucky to have him.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2013 The Blue Jays are hoping to wrap up a fairytale season Saturday night in Game 7,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,4034,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-255810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}