The Canadian Football League is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a city in Canada. They are divided into two divisions: four teams in the East Division and five teams in the West Division. As of 2024, it features a 21-week regular season in which each team plays 18 games with three bye weeks. This season traditionally runs from mid-June to early November. Following the regular season, six teams compete in the league's three-week playoffs, which culminate in the Grey Cup championship game in late November. The Grey Cup is one of Canada's largest annual sports and television events. The CFL was officially named on January 19, 1958, upon the merger between the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union or "Big Four" and the Western Interprovincial Football Union.
The Sports Network (TSN) is a Canadian English language discretionary sports specialty channel owned by CTV Specialty Television, owned jointly by Bell Media (70%) and ESPN Inc. (30%), itself a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. TSN was established by the Labatt Brewing Company in 1984 as part of the first group of Canadian specialty cable channels. In 2013, TSN was the largest specialty channel in Canada in terms of gross revenue, with a total of CA$400.4 million in revenue.
ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications.
ESPNews is an American multinational digital cable and satellite television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications.
Henry Armand Burris Jr. is an American former professional football quarterback, and a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. He is currently the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for Florida A&M. Burris played in the Canadian Football League (CFL) from 1998 to 2016. He won three Grey Cup championships, two with the Calgary Stampeders, in 1998 and 2008, having spent 10 years of his career with them, and one with the Ottawa Redblacks in 2016. He was also a sports broadcaster and football analyst at TSN, appearing as a panel member on the network's CFL on TSN broadcasts.
Matt Dunigan is an American broadcaster and former professional football player and executive. He is a Canadian Football League (CFL) sportscaster for Canadian sports television channel TSN. Dunigan is a former quarterback, coach, and executive in the CFL. In 2006, Dunigan joined the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, and was voted one of the CFL's Top 50 players (#39) of the league's modern era by Canadian sports network TSN.
Milton Eugene Stegall is a former professional gridiron football player who played 17 years of professional football, three years in the National Football League (NFL) with the Cincinnati Bengals and 14 years in the Canadian Football League (CFL) with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He is currently an analyst on the CFL on TSN studio panel.
College football on television includes the broad- and cablecasting of college football games, as well as pre- and post-game reports, analysis, and human-interest stories. Within the United States, the college version of American football annually garners high television ratings.
The 2008 CFL season was the 55th season of modern-day Canadian football, the 51st season for the Canadian Football League. It was also the first CFL season in which all of the league's regular season and post-season games, including the Grey Cup game, were aired on TSN. This meant the CFL was no longer aired on broadcast television in Canada. As of 2008, TSN was available in approximately 8.8 million of Canada's 13 million households. Montreal hosted the 96th Grey Cup at Olympic Stadium on November 23, when the championship was won by the Calgary Stampeders.
ESPN Megacast, formerly known as ESPN Full Circle, is a multi-network simulcast of a single sporting event across multiple ESPN networks and services—with each feed providing a different version of the telecast making use of different features, functions or perspectives. These simulcasts typically involve ESPN's linear television channels and internet streaming platforms, and may occasionally incorporate other Walt Disney Television networks at once.
Rod Smith is a Canadian sports commentator and host of TSN's SportsCentre. He formerly hosted the CFL on TSN before being replaced by Kate Beirness in 2021. He is currently the lead play-by-play announcer for the CFL on TSN.
ESPN Australia is the Australian division of ESPN, part of the ESPN International grouping. It is offered in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands.
James Barker is a football executive and coach. He is currently employed by TSN as a CFL panelist. His most recent employment in Canadian football was a senior advisor for the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League (CFL). Barker has been the general manager of the Calgary Stampeders from 2005–07, and the Argonauts from 2011-2016. He was also the head coach of the Argonauts in 1999, with the Stampeders in 2003, and then again with the Argos in 2010-11. He has also been a sports analyst for the CFL on TSN. Barker has also served as a football operations consultant and assistant coach for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He is a four-time Grey Cup champion having won twice as an assistant coach and twice as a football administrator.
In the United States, sports are televised on various broadcast networks, national and specialty sports cable channels, and regional sports networks. U.S. sports rights are estimated to be worth a total of $22.42 billion in 2019, about 44 percent of the total worldwide sports media market. U.S. networks are willing to pay a significant amount of money for television sports contracts because it attracts large amounts of viewership; live sport broadcasts accounted for 44 of the 50 list of most watched television broadcasts in the United States in 2016.
Chris Cuthbert is a Canadian sportscaster. He currently serves as the lead play-by-play commentator with CBC Sports/Sportsnet for Hockey Night in Canada, and calls most national and regional games for the Toronto Maple Leafs on the network. Formerly, he worked for TSN, NBC, and CBC Sports in a multitude of roles. He and Glen Suitor were the lead broadcast team for the CFL on TSN from 2008 to 2019 before Cuthbert gave that lead play-by-play role to Rod Smith.
Sara Orlesky is a Canadian sports reporter, currently a senior host and producer for the Winnipeg Jets. She was formerly the Winnipeg Bureau Reporter for TSN's SportsCentre. In 2008, The Globe and Mail described her as "among the top young female sports broadcasters in Canada."
CFL on NBC is a de facto branding for the Canadian Football League (CFL) games that have been carried on American broadcaster NBC or its sports network, NBCSN.
