Mediapro Group, a Spanish television producer and broadcaster, bought the media rights to the Canadian national team matches as part of a larger, 10-year deal in early 2019. At the time, the senior men’s team had a long history of failure. As a television property, it was a non-entity; domestic broadcasters didn’t want to pay anything for it since the typically paltry audience didn’t even justify the production costs.
In just a few months — from the moment at which Alphonso Davies scored his goal for the ages against Panama in October in a World Cup qualifying match, thrusting his team into must-watch status — that Canadian group has grown, from a media-property standpoint, from an afterthought to a huge deal. Mediapro’s Canadian soccer bet could not have worked out better.
Mediapro Canada created OneSoccer to be the home of Canadian soccer, including the Canadian Premier League, which begins its fourth season next month, the Canadian domestic championship, the national team matches and CONCACAF’s regional tournaments. It has largely been available as a direct-to-consumer service, with subscribers accessing it on computers, smart TVs, mobile devices and the like. But it has not been able to crack the channel lineup at the big cable giants like Rogers and Bell.
OneSoccer could have tried to funnel all those potential viewers to its subscription service, but Lopez says they are pragmatic about the ways in which different people want to access the product. The soccer die-hards have already found OneSoccer on their device of choice, but many viewers just want to turn on their television and find the channel somewhere on their guide.