Summary

  • The CRTC set OneSoccer’s linear rate and denied Rogers’s request to dismiss Timeless’s separate packaging application on 30 October 2026.
  • The Commission says the parties can proceed with standalone carriage or a temporary package while it considers the separate issue; it has not ruled on that application’s merits.

Analysis

OneSoccer now has a rate and an unresolved package fight. The CRTC set the linear-carriage rate in Broadcasting Decision 2026-284 after Rogers Communications Canada Inc. and Timeless Inc. both agreed that Rogers’s offer should be selected. In a separate letter dated the same day, the Commission refused Rogers’s request to reject or summarily dismiss Timeless’s application about packaging the service.

The split goes back to the remedy for an earlier ruling. In 2023, the CRTC found that Rogers’s refusal to carry OneSoccer gave Rogers an undue preference and put Timeless at an undue disadvantage. The Commission directed both sides to propose remedies. A later final-offer arbitration was scoped to the linear rate. Once the parties agreed on Rogers’s offer, the Commission selected it without assessing the fair-market-value factors or broadcasting-policy objectives listed in its rules.

Packaging sat outside that narrow assignment. Rogers argued that Timeless’s separate Part 1 application raised no genuine issue, amounted to an abuse of process and would delay the carriage agreement. Timeless said the application raised a distinct question under the Wholesale Code and that it was prepared to implement the selected rate while the CRTC considered packaging separately.

The Commission sided with the separate proceeding. It said the packaging question had not been considered in either the 2023 undue-preference decision or the rate arbitration, and that nothing in those proceedings barred a parallel review. The CRTC denied Rogers’s request and said it would consider Timeless’s application.

The letter also gives the parties a route around a complete package settlement: the rate is an essential term for distribution, so they could launch OneSoccer on a standalone basis or use a temporary package while the application proceeds. The letter sets no date for a packaging decision and reports no launch or interim agreement. The new boundary is procedural: the price track is settled; the placement question remains live.

Sources