Rogers Communications has agreed to buy the final 25% of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment it did not already control, paying CA$4.35 billion to Kilmer Sports Inc., the holding company of longtime MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum. The deal, announced July 6, makes Rogers the sole owner of a conglomerate that runs the Toronto Maple Leafs of the NHL, the Toronto Raptors of the NBA, Toronto FC of MLS and the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL, along with Scotiabank Arena and the group’s practice facilities. Rogers confirmed the terms in a corporate release, and the transaction still needs sign-off from the leagues involved before it can close, which the company expects in the fourth quarter.
The price tag matters beyond the headline number. Splitting CA$4.35 billion across a 25% stake implies a total MLSE valuation of roughly CA$17.4 billion (about US$12.2 billion), a figure that puts Canada’s biggest multi-league sports holding company ahead of any single North American franchise sold in the past year. It also marks a sharp jump from the last time a stake in MLSE changed hands: when Rogers bought BCE’s 37.5% share in 2024, in a deal that closed in mid-2025, the CA$4.7 billion price tag valued the whole group at about CA$12.5 billion. That is a roughly 39% climb in implied value in about two years, even before this latest deal has formally closed.
That trajectory lines up with what has happened elsewhere in team sports ownership. The Los Angeles Lakers changed hands last year at a valuation near US$10 billion, and the Boston Celtics sold months earlier at roughly US$6.1 billion, both records for their respective transactions at the time. Average NHL franchise values have climbed to about US$2.1 billion, up 17% from the prior year, with the Tampa Bay Lightning setting a league record sale price near US$1.8 billion. MLSE’s new implied value covers four franchises plus an arena and training facilities rather than one team, but the fact that it now clears what a single NBA superteam like the Lakers fetched shows how much capital is chasing control of major league sports assets on both sides of the border.
The real story for sports business watchers is what full ownership changes operationally. MLSE has functioned for years as a partnership, with Rogers and BCE historically splitting governance and sublicensing broadcast rights back to Bell Media as part of their earlier arrangement. Tanenbaum’s Kilmer Sports had also held a board seat and a say in strategic decisions since MLSE’s founding in the 1998 merger that combined the Maple Leafs with the Raptors and what was then Air Canada Centre. Removing that last minority partner gives Rogers unilateral authority over capital spending, arena upgrades and media rights negotiations across every team in the portfolio, without needing sign-off from an outside shareholder with its own priorities.
Rogers is not planning to hold all of that alone for long. The company has said it intends to finance the purchase with existing committed liquidity and then sell a minority stake in its combined sports, media and entertainment assets, which include the Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers Centre and the Sportsnet broadcast operation, sometime in the next year. That mirrors a broader shift already underway in the NBA, where league rules now permit larger private equity and institutional ownership positions, opening the door for pension funds and outside investors to buy into teams without taking on day-to-day control. For MLSE, that likely means Rogers keeps the vote count but brings in outside capital to help fund the CA$4.35 billion outlay and whatever comes next, whether that is arena renovations or extending the buying power that has already reshaped the basketball side of its business through the Raptors.
For fans in Toronto, the practical effect shows up less in who is on the depth chart and more in who signs off on the checks. A single controlling owner removes the friction that comes with multiple stakeholders weighing in on payroll, arena investment and long-term strategy, the same dynamic that has pushed valuations higher across the NBA and NHL as buyers pay a premium for clean control. Whether that translates into faster spending on the Maple Leafs’ long championship drought or the Raptors’ rebuild remains an open question, but the ownership structure that used to require consensus among three parties is now down to one.
