Canadian telecommunications company Rogers Communications has started offering its top sports channels online today (Friday) to viewers who do not have a cable-television subscription.
Rogers has started offering a streaming package of six Sportsnet channels for C$24.99 (€16.90/$19.28) per month.
Rogers, which also operates the Toronto Blue Jays and broadcasts coverage of the Major League Baseball team, said that it is the first mainstream sports television channel provider in North America to sell directly to consumers without requiring them to have a pay-television subscription.
“We're targeting the cord-nevers, the kids, the millennials, the university students who just don't have that subscription and still want to have access to sports,” Sportsnet president Bart Yabsley told the Reuters news agency.
The head of Rogers' media unit, Rick Brace, said that the package is priced as a premium service in order to create “a distance between what you can get in the all-you-can-eat package on cable or the smaller packages.”