OneSoccer and Rogers going at each other in years-long Canadian TV rights battle
Canadian soccer broadcaster OneSoccer and Rogers are deep in an ongoing battle over TV rights.
Over the weekend, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) issued a decision based on the ”review of the ownership and effective control of the English-language exempt discretionary service OneSoccer,” as requested by Rogers.
The CRTC opted in favour of OneSoccer, stating that they continued to be owned by the Canadian company Timeless Inc., leading to the possibility that they could end up as a linear television channel on the popular Canadian TV carrier Rogers.
OneSoccer fired back at Rogers in a public statement on Wednesday, saying, “Rogers’ continued refusal to make OneSoccer widely available has caused significant harm — not only to our company, but to Canadian soccer fans and the goals of the Broadcasting Act.
“With the single largest global sporting event, the 2026 FIFA World Cup, being co-hosted in Canada and fast approaching, and qualifying for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup on the horizon, it is more important than ever for OneSoccer to be a permanent and significant presence on linear television in support of… content distributed by OneSoccer,” the OneSoccer statement continued.
A statement regarding Broadcast Decision CRTC 2025-187 from Timeless, Inc. owner and CEO Scott Mitchell 🇨🇦#CanMNT | #CanWNT | #CanPL pic.twitter.com/PGN1tFVk1J
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) July 30, 2025
But Rogers has a rebuttal, calling this a “dangerous precedent.”
“We offer our customers a wide variety of popular and premium sports programming from multiple leading content providers. The CRTC has set a dangerous precedent by preventing Canadian broadcast distributors from deciding how to best serve their customers. We are reviewing the decision,” Rogers wrote in a statement to Offside.
Despite pleas dating back to at least 2022 for it to become a linear television channel to even more subscribers, Rogers has not yet made that option available. In 2023, the CRTC ruled that Rogers had “given an undue preference to itself and to other services comparable to OneSoccer, and has subjected OneSoccer to a disadvantage,” but no progress has been made to get it on Rogers television packages.
What does the recent decision mean?
OneSoccer, which has existed since 2019, is listed as owned by Timeless, Inc., a company affiliated with Canadian Soccer Business and the Canadian Premier League. Scott Mitchell (who is the Chairman of Canadian Premier League and Canadian Soccer Business, as well as the CEO of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats) and Annette Mitchell serve as two of the board members of the affiliated holding company JRB Holdings, as outlined by the CRTC decision.
Rogers did not address the reason for their initial request to the CRTC, though prior reporting from The Canadian Press’ Neil Davidson stated that they believed OneSoccer was “under the control of a non-Canadian entity”, the Spanish corporation Mediapro that was a former production partner before the two parted ways.
The CRTC are directing both Rogers and OneSoccer’s parent company, Timeless, to submit “updated proposed remedies for resolving the finding of undue preference and disadvantage” by Aug. 11, with replies by both parties sent back by Aug. 19.
Offside has reached out to OneSoccer for further comment on JRB Holdings, which does not appear to have much of a public footprint past this ruling. They appear to have been incorporated in October 2020 in Burlington, Ontario, one month after the creation of Timeless, Inc. in the same city. The launch of Timeless came approximately a year and a half after OneSoccer initially launched.
What exactly is OneSoccer?
OneSoccer currently has rights to the majority of Canadian national men’s and women’s team matches outside of the FIFA World Cup, as well as the Canadian Premier League, the Canadian Championship and both club and international Concacaf tournaments such as the Champions Cup and the Gold Cup.
OneSoccer was first introduced to the general Canadian public during the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying run, when many fans realized they wouldn’t be able to watch the matches without signing up for the service. Deals were eventually brokered to broadcast the OneSoccer production on Sportsnet for 13 of the 14 final qualifying matches.
FIFA World Cup rights, meanwhile, belong to the Bell Media-owned TSN.
OneSoccer is currently available as a standalone subscription streaming service, available through the larger FuboTV package that also includes the English Premier League, Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1, or to Western Canadian subscribers on Telus as a linear television channel. It is not available on Rogers or other providers such as Bell, Cogeco, Videotron, Eastlink, and SaskTel.
In a previous statement to the Canadian Press, Rogers had outlined that consumers  “have the option to subscribe to OneSoccer as a stand-alone streaming service” if they want to access the product.
The standalone streaming package is currently available for $119.99 annually, or $12.99 per month.