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The Sports Network (TSN) is a Canadian English language sports specialty channel established by the Labatt Brewing Company in 1984 as part of the first group of Canadian specialty cable channels. Since 2001, it has been majority-owned by communications conglomerate BCE Inc. (presently through its broadcasting subsidiary Bell Media), with a minority stake held by ESPN Inc. via a 30% share in the Bell Media subsidiary CTV Specialty Television. TSN is the largest specialty channel in Canada in terms of gross revenue, with a total of in revenue in 2013.

TSN's networks focus on sports-related programming, including live and recorded event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming. TSN was the first national cable broadcaster of the National Hockey League in Canada. Its stint has been interrupted twice by rival network Sportsnet, most recently as of the 2014–15 season under an exclusive 12-year rights deal. TSN holds regional television rights to four of the NHL's seven Canadian franchises.

As of 2015, major programming rights held by TSN include exclusive coverage of the Canadian Football League and Curling Canada's national championships, coverage of the NBA and the Toronto Raptors, coverage of Major League Soccer and exclusive rights to Toronto FC and Vancouver Whitecaps FC, along with Canadian rights to the tournaments of FIFA (soccer) and the IIHF (ice hockey), the NFL (American football) (shared with sister network CTV), Formula One, NASCAR, Ultimate Fighting Championship, and the Grand Slam tennis tournaments, among others. TSN also receives programming through its minority partner, ESPN.

The TSN licence currently comprises five 24-hour programming services; from its launch until 2006, TSN operated as a single, national service. In 2006, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ruled that TSN could operate multiple feeds with a limited amount of alternative national programming—this was followed by the launch of TSN2—a second 24-hour network under the TSN licence that was legally considered a west coast feed of TSN. As of 2010, TSN has been subject to deregulated Category C licensing by the CRTC, which allows multiple feeds to be operated under the TSN licence without restrictions on alternate programming; TSN used this new ability to operate an autonomous TSN2, along with part-time feeds for regional NHL coverage.

On August 25, 2014, the primary TSN service was restructured into four 24-hour feeds—TSN1, TSN3, TSN4, and TSN5—with each designated as the primary TSN network for each region of Canada. TSN now essentially operates as a group of regional sports networks similarly to Sportsnet; the regional feeds air some common programming and simulcast major events, while all five channels can air programming autonomously—including alternative national events and studio shows, supplemental coverage of larger events, and regional programming (such as NHL games, restricted to the home team's market).

History

Early history

Licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on April 2, 1984, as the ''Action Canada Sports Network'', the channel was launched by the Labatt Brewing Company on September 1 of the same year as The Sports Network, or TSN. The network was founded under the leadership of Gordon Craig, a former employee of CBC Sports; alongside coverage of the then co-owned Toronto Blue Jays, TSN also reached a deal with ESPN (itself only 5 years old) shortly before launch to provide additional programs. Although reaching around 400,000 subscribers, TSN's early years were hindered by its initial status as a premium service, bundled in a high-cost package with movie channels such as First Choice and Superchannel, alongside competition with free-to-air sports broadcasts by CBC Television among others.

To improve the prominence of the network, TSN sought to obtain the national cable rights to the National Hockey League—rights that, according to the league, were not sold under the current arrangement with CBC. However, the task was complicated by claims by CBC that it owned the cable rights to the NHL, along with the involvement of competing beer company Molson in Canadian NHL rights at the time. With the help of a Molson employee who was a friend of Gordon, a deal was reached between TSN, Molson, and the NHL to allow the network to broadcast games on cable.

By December 1987, TSN had reached one million subscribers, but the network's staff sought wider distribution for the channel as part of basic cable service; the CRTC approved the network's request for permission to allow TSN to be carried as part of a basic cable lineup. Mike Day, producer of TSN's daily sports news program ''SportsDesk'' lamented about the shift to basic cable and the larger audience it would bring, commenting that "one night you're doing a news show that potentially has an audience of one million people, and the next day the potential is five million people."
In 1991, TSN acquired rights to the IIHF World Junior Championship, otherwise known as the "World Juniors", which were previously broadcast by CBC. TSN's coverage, along with the recent "Punch-up in Piestany" incident and a strong performance by Canada at the tournament in the mid-1990s, helped to significantly heighten the profile of the tournament in the country (even more so than in other participating countries), to the point that it is, alongside U.S. college football bowl games, regarded as a traditional sporting event of the holiday season in Canada.

Due to CRTC regulations on the foreign ownership of broadcasters, Labatt was forced to sell TSN and RDS upon its acquisition by Interbrew in 1995. Labatt's broadcasting assets were sold to a privately held consortium named NetStar Communications, the investors of which included a number of Canadian firms as well as ESPN Inc., which held an interest of about 30 percent. The same CRTC regulations prevented ESPN from establishing its own separate Canadian sports network outright, so acquiring a minority stake in TSN became ESPN's alternative plan to get into the Canadian market. The Sports Network launched its websit
TSN.ca
on October 1, 1995.

In 1997, the CRTC began permitting TSN to offer an "alternate feed", which could be used to provide a regional opt-out of the main TSN service for programming that must be blacked out in the rest of the country. Alternate programming could make up a maximum of 10% of the TSN schedule—an average of 2.4 hours a day.

Acquisition by CTV, expansion

In 2000, after ESPN blocked two attempts by the Canadian partners to sell NetStar to Canwest, CTV Inc. acquired the Canadian partners' shares. CTV Inc. was acquired by Bell Canada and The Woodbridge Company (publisher of ''The Globe and Mail'' newspaper) as part of the joint venture Bell Globemedia in 2001. As a result of its purchase of TSN, CTV would be forced to sell its regional sports network CTV Sportsnet, eventually selling it to minority shareholder Rogers Media. Following the acquisition, TSN would move its operations to CTV's Agincourt complex in the Toronto district of Scarborough. This oddity would become an inside joke between personalities on both networks, who commonly referred to jumping between the two networks as "crossing the parking lot."

Following the sale, TSN began to closer align its on-air imaging with that of ESPN; the most prominent effect of these changes came with the introduction of a new logo similar to that of ESPN, and the re-branding of TSN's flagship sports news program ''SportsDesk'' as '' SportsCentre''—a Canadian version (in both format and spelling) of ESPN's '' SportsCenter''. The CRTC, however, objected to plans to rename TSN as "ESPN Canada", citing concerns that it would make it appear that ESPN had ''de facto'' majority control, or at the very least that TSN was ESPN's Canadian affiliate.

TSN also launched a number of digital specialty channels in 2001; including a local version of ESPN Classic, the NHL Network— a network devoted to ice hockey and the National Hockey League, and WTSN—a channel dedicated to women's sports On August 15, 2003, TSN became one of the first two specialty television services in Canada (the other being fellow Bell property Discovery Channel) to be available in high definition. TSN's first live HD broadcast was of a Canadian Football League game between the Montreal Alouettes and Hamilton Tiger-Cats—it was to occur on the same day, but was delayed to August 16 due to a major electrical power failure that occurred the day prior.

Beginning in 2006, the CRTC officially allowed TSN to operate national secondary digital feeds with limited amounts of alternative programming. Following this development, TSN began to use such a feed to broadcast additional programming that could not be aired on TSN due to scheduling conflicts or other events. On August 29, 2008, the feed evolved into a new 24-hour channel, similar to ESPN2, known as TSN2. Upon its launch, TSN2 was legally considered a west coast timeshift feed of TSN, although soon after TSN2 was launched, the CRTC announced a proposal to remove genre exclusivity protections for "mainstream sports" and "national news" channels in the near future. As a byproduct of the decision, TSN would be allowed to use streamlined conditions of licence (legally referred to as a Category C license as of September 2011), which state that the service may offer " multiple feeds" consistent with their licensed programming format, without any restrictions on alternate programming. TSN was officially permitted to use these streamlined conditions of licence on February 1, 2010.

Acquisition by Bell, TSN Radio

On September 10, 2010, Bell Canada announced plans to re-acquire 100% of CTVglobemedia's broadcasting arm, including its majority control of TSN. Under the deal, Woodbridge Company Limited, Torstar, and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan would together receive $1.3 billion in either cash or equity in BCE, while BCE would also assume $1.7 billion in debt (BCE's existing equity interest is $200 million, for a total transaction value of $3.2 billion). Woodbridge has since simultaneously regained majority control of ''The Globe and Mail'', with Bell retaining a 15% interest in December 2010. The deal closed on April 1, 2011, after the CRTC approved the sale on March 7, 2011 – the new company became known as Bell Media.

After a longstanding speculation about TSN's interest in launching its own TSN-branded radio network (similarly to its U.S. counterpart), TSN entered radio broadcasting with the launch of the first TSN Radio