CASN-RSAC

Millions of Canadians are involved in amateur sport at some level whether it be by competing, officiating or volunteering their time and/or services. No other single activity cuts across the cultural, regional and socio-economic barriers in Canada as effectively as amateur sport yet it continues to be an area with very little television exposure.

CONSUMER RESEARCH

An authoritative consumer survey conducted of over 1,200 households by TNS Canadian Facts in 2007 confirmed that Canadians consider amateur sport to be an integral element of Canada’s social and cultural well-being.

• 96% of the respondents confirmed that no matter who you are in Canada, you feel pride when Canadian athletes do well;
• 90% of Canadians think it is “very or somewhat important” that Canada has strong sports television programming at the amateur level;
• 90% of Canadians believe that amateur sport has a positive effect on the health and welfare of Canadian youth and that more exposure to amateur sport would encourage more young Canadians to participate in these events;
• 89% of Canadians who are “not interested at all” in sports, still think that the proposed mandatory subscription is a good method of financially supporting amateur sport;
• 61% of Canadians would pay an additional subscriber fee of 60 cents per month for an amateur sports network given that it will directly fund Canada’s amateur sport communities.

The survey results have a +/- 2.8% margin of error..

ANALYSIS OF EXISTING TV COVERAGE OF AMATEUR SPORT

An extensive marketing study was conducted by Magi Communications Inc. in 2007 utilizing source data from Nielsen Media statistics (2005/2006). The analysis confirmed how little amateur sport is currently broadcast. Incumbent conventional and specialty broadcasters who air sports programming limit their coverage to only a select few major multi-sport events.
The vast majority of amateur sports receives virtually no independent coverage with only a select few sports receiving any meaningful or consistent coverage:

• Curling, hockey, skating, martial arts and university sport as a group enjoyed 80% of the coverage;
• In fact, two sports alone (curling and hockey) received 56% of the total individual English language amateur sport coverage;
• Hockey received 67% of the individual sport coverage on the French networks;
• Only six sports averaged 11.5 hours or more on the French networks.

SPORT SURVEY CONFIRMS CANADIAN PARTICIPATION IN AMATEUR SPORT AND THE NUMBER OF NON-TELEVISED EVENTS

An extensive survey was conducted in 2007 across 62 amateur sport federations and associations. The study concluded that because of the minimal broadcast hours allocated by the existing networks to amateur sport, there are hundreds of national and international amateur sports events staged across the country in which elite Canadian athletes compete without any exposure to the rest of their country..

• 37.3 million Canadians are registered as participants or volunteers in amateur sport; this number is very high because many Canadians are involved in more than one capacity or more than one sport;
• There were 298 national or international events that the survey respondents either hosted or participated in;
• 45.5% of their revenue was generated from dues, donations or fundraising activities;
• 41% of the federation/association funding was generated from government support;
• 13.1% of their revenue was generated from sponsorships; and
• 0.4% of their revenue was generated from broadcast rights fees.

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