“It’s just the way things have evolved and either the league aligns with the way things have evolved or they stay here.”
Count Luc Mullinder among those offering full-fledged support for the Canadian Football League’s new broadcast and content rights setup.
The league announced Thursday a six-year multi-platform package of agreements with Bell Media cable networks TSN and RDS, digital streaming service DAZN, and YouTube, beginning in 2027.
The deals collectively are reportedly worth $83 million per season, a 66 per cent increase from the $50 million the CFL was getting annually under its current agreement with Bell Media, which expires at the end of this season.
“I think that (CFL commissioner) Stewart Johnston deserves a lot of credit here,” the Saskatchewan Roughriders colour analyst told SportsCage radio host Barney Shynkaruk on Friday’s show. “When he first got in here his mandate was easy, right? It was grow the game, get the CFL out of neutral and just sort of bring it into the lens in which people consume entertainment in this day and age.
“And I think that it’s obviously the most significant media deal that the Canadian Football League’s had. You’re talking about revenue but more importantly you’re actually repositioning the league to be consumed by the way audiences consume sports these days.
“The way we consume sports and media and everything has changed completely. So for us now as a league to be aligned with sort of a modern content system is fantastic news. It’s a step towards the growth and sustained revenue and partnership that Stewart Johnston was brought in to do.”
Mullinder emphasized that, importantly, the incoming rights deals retain TSN as the centrepiece while adding partners that will help the game reach new and younger audiences.
“You’ve got streaming through DAZN. You’ve got TSN, which is the backbone of Canadian football, which will always be important … but YouTube really sort of ties it in together because now you have content, now you have creators getting involved in the game. Now you have different sort of shows popping up,” he said.
“Like nobody watched F1 before the F1 show came out on Netflix. Now you got these kids running around wearing Ferrari hats so I think that it’s great for the league because again it’s just a step in the in the right direction in terms of the way people consume our game or want to consume sports these days, but also obviously building into the league revenue-wise.”
It’s exposure and revenue Mullinder says he hopes will benefit the league in multiple other ways as well. That could include everything from attracting increased investment in the league and an enhanced viewer experience on Replay Centre reviews, to the possible elimination of the league’s football operations salary cap, and a substantial increase in player salaries.
“I just hope that this will raise the league minimum (salary), not just the maximum of which our superstar players like Kenny Lawler are getting,” said Mullinder, who played 112 games for the Roughriders over eight seasons from 2004-11.
“And I’m glad Kenny Lawler got paid. But the point is there’s a lot of guys that are out there grinding. I really hope that this gives them a bump in salary versus just our top-end players.”
It all adds up to what Mullinder sees as a long-overdue modernization of how the CFL presents itself.
“I completely get in today’s economy folks not wanting to invest in another streaming service, but … unfortunately it’s just the way things have evolved and either the league aligns with the way things have evolved or they stay here,” he said.
“Like we have to understand we’re now going from a very unique, although mom-and-pop organization or shop, — like we only had one broadcast partner and you’ve got a gate driven revenue, so we’re a small scale league — to now completely modern.
“How can you argue with that, right?”