From the moment it happened in 2011, the partnership seemed like a lower-stakes, modern-day version of mutually assured destruction: Bell Canada Enterprises and Rogers Communications, each other’s primary competitors, coming together to buy a majority share of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE).
There was a bizarre logic to it: In an era in which live sports rights were getting more valuable as nearly all other television programming was becoming less valuable, neither company felt like it could do without airing games played by the Toronto Maple Leafs and, likely to a lesser extent given the ratings, the Toronto Raptors. They bought the teams and split the television and radio rights. And hey, if it ended up being a savvy investment, that would be swell.
It worked out OK. In 2011, both companies paid the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan $533 million for twin 37.5 percent stakes in MLSE. On Wednesday, Rogers announced it had…
