Reflections on helping connect strategy, brand, media and investment in Canadian soccer.
How does football turn a major tournament into lasting growth? How do national team audiences become domestic league supporters? And how do you attract investment that gives the game time to develop?
Those questions were central to my experience working in Canadian soccer.
Between November 2025 and June 2026, I contributed through a strategic advisory engagement with Canadian Soccer Media & Entertainment, or CSME.
Working again with James Johnson, alongside colleagues across the Canadian soccer environment, brought together many of the areas that have shaped my career: strategy, brand, commercial growth, professional clubs, media, major events and stakeholder relationships.
Canada was preparing to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup. There was an extraordinary opportunity to capture attention. The challenge was to build the commercial capability, audience relationships and domestic football experiences that could sustain it.
For someone with my background in Australian sport, it was a valuable opportunity to contribute — and to examine familiar challenges from a different perspective.
Helping shape the direction and bring stakeholders together
James Johnson and the Board were driving an ambitious vision for the business and its contribution to Canadian soccer.
My role was to help finalise, articulate and amplify that vision, contribute to shaping the future direction, and build stakeholder understanding and alignment around it.
The work spanned CSME’s corporate positioning, the Canadian Premier League’s brand and marketing direction, expansion strategy, investor propositions, and media and digital development.
Working alongside James, the Board and management, I helped bring the vision into a clearer strategic and brand narrative, expressed through “One Identity, One Story, One Collective.”
An important part of that contribution was explaining how the different properties could advance a shared ambition while retaining their distinct roles and identities.
That meant connecting the strategy to propositions that would resonate with clubs, commercial partners, prospective investors and the wider football community.
It also meant helping build alignment around what the business was seeking to achieve, how its different parts could contribute, and where collaboration could create greater value.
I led work on CSME’s rebrand and positioning, helping translate that direction into a clearer identity and story.
Alongside this, I contributed to repositioning the Canadian Premier League ahead of the World Cup: strengthening its place in the national football story as a competition developing Canadian talent, providing professional opportunities and giving communities a local team to support.
Expansion was another important part of the engagement. I helped develop the league’s expansion strategy and investor proposition, connecting football ambition with the commercial questions prospective owners and capital partners need answered.
Across OneSoccer and the wider media business, I contributed to content and rights partnership development, marketing and digital growth opportunities. I also contributed to World Cup legacy thinking, considering how increased attention could support stronger domestic football and enduring audience relationships.
These were collaborative efforts. James and the Board provided the leadership and ambition; my contribution was to help sharpen the direction, amplify the story and connect stakeholders around the opportunity.
Understanding Canadian soccer’s commercial engine
To understand the Canadian approach, it helps to understand CSME.
Previously known as Canadian Soccer Business, its predecessor was established by Canadian Premier League club owners. The model brought together the sale of national team sponsorship and broadcast rights with those of the domestic league, seeking to create commercial scale and support professional soccer’s development.
Canada Soccer remains the governing body. CSME is an independent commercial business providing representation services across sponsorship, partnerships and media rights, within a wider operation connecting competitions, content and audiences.
The commercial logic starts with the different strengths of the properties.
National teams generate national attention and emotional investment. Domestic clubs provide regular fixtures, local identity and community relationships. Development competitions create pathways. Media makes those stories accessible and keeps them in circulation.
Coordinating those assets can give commercial partners a broader proposition.
Consider a hypothetical national brand. It might seek national team association to build awareness, domestic league activity to engage customers throughout the season, and content to maintain that relationship between matches.
The opportunity is to understand the partner’s objectives and assemble the right response, while properly recognising the value contributed by each property.
That is where strategy and brand become commercially useful. They help explain what each asset offers, who it reaches and why the combination might be valuable.
How commercial growth supports the game
Under the renewed agreement announced in February 2026, CSME represents Canada Soccer’s sponsorship, media and licensing rights.
The framework combines revenue sharing with guaranteed annual minimum payments, joint governance and reviews every three years.
In practical terms, the commercial business develops and sells the rights covered by the agreement. Canada Soccer receives its contractual share, supported by a minimum financial guarantee.
The agreement also addresses how value is allocated when a deal includes several properties. It provides for Canada Soccer’s approval of the value attributed to its assets in bundled agreements, alongside audit rights.
National team competition prize money and participation revenues remain separate and flow to Canada Soccer.
The intended incentive is straightforward: commercial growth should increase the return to the governing body while supporting a viable commercial operation.
Canada Soccer has said incremental revenues will primarily support national team programs, coaching, referee development, and grassroots and community initiatives.
That is the connection the model seeks to create between commercial performance and football development.
OneSoccer and the opportunity to build a wider audience
Media adds another dimension.
During my engagement, CSME’s portfolio brought together Canadian properties and international football, including Concacaf competitions, Bundesliga and NWSL content, with rights licensed to OneSoccer.
The strategic opportunity, as I see it, is to bring different football audiences into the same environment.
Someone might arrive to watch Canada’s national teams, follow a Canadian playing overseas or watch an international competition. Programming, promotion and storytelling can then introduce that person to more of the domestic game.
That conversion requires deliberate work.
Sharing a platform creates an opportunity. The experience must give people a reason to explore, return and care.
Commercially, subscriptions, advertising, sponsored programming and distribution arrangements offer potential revenue streams. Rights acquisition, production, technology and audience development carry substantial costs.
Each investment therefore needs a credible role in attracting audiences, retaining them or increasing commercial value.
This was one of the most engaging aspects of the work: considering how media could generate income while helping build demand for Canadian football.
A deeper market for long-term sports investment
The Canadian experience also sits within the broader North American capital landscape.
My impression was of a deeper and more established market for sports investment than we are accustomed to in Australia.
Institutional investors, specialist funds, family capital and major corporations are familiar with sport as a business capable of building value over many years.
Canada offers a longstanding example. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan first invested in the business that became Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment in 1994 and sold its ownership interest in 2012.
That investment extended across almost two decades of expansion and diversification.
This history matters. It establishes a precedent for assessing sport through its operating businesses, underlying assets and potential for long-term returns.
Patient capital can give an organisation room to invest in people, facilities, technology, audience development and commercial capability before those investments fully mature.
It still expects performance. Investors need governance, milestones and a credible explanation of how value will grow.
An emerging football competition also presents a different proposition from an established major league team. It must demonstrate demand, develop its economics and earn confidence in its durability.
Access to a more vibrant capital market creates opportunities to make that case. It does not guarantee the outcome.
Helping shape an investor proposition reinforced that distinction for me. Passion opens conversations. A sound business case sustains them.
What Rogers shows about the business of sport
Rogers provides a striking example of how sport, media, venues and communications can sit within one commercial strategy.
Since my engagement concluded, Rogers completed its acquisition of 100 per cent of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment on 1 October 2026.
Through MLSE, its portfolio includes the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC and Toronto Argonauts, alongside Scotiabank Arena.
Rogers already owned the Toronto Blue Jays, Rogers Centre and Sportsnet.
That brings many of Toronto’s leading sporting properties under one corporate owner.
The significance lies in the combination.
Teams attract loyal audiences. Venues host matches, concerts and other events. Media distributes content and sells advertising. Communications services provide another way to reach and retain customers.
Rogers has explicitly linked its sports investment to long-term growth across its communications, sports and entertainment businesses.
My reading is that the investment case extends beyond an individual team’s annual operating result. It includes the contribution that team can make to the wider business through content, customer relationships, partnerships and asset growth.
Rogers and CSME are separate businesses with different structures and scales. Both illustrate the commercial possibilities of connecting sporting properties with media and audiences.
Commercial ambition needs trust
Any reflection on the Canadian model also needs to acknowledge its history.
Canada Soccer publicly recognised concerns about the earlier agreement’s fairness, valuation, duration and national team broadcast reach. Those questions formed important context for the renewed relationship.
Commercial coordination needs transparent arrangements and a clear account of who benefits.
Partners need confidence in what they are buying. Rights owners need fair value. Supporters need access. Players and communities need to understand how increased income strengthens the game.
Stakeholder alignment is central to making that work.
People need to understand the direction, see their place within it and have confidence in the decisions being made. Building that understanding requires listening, clear communication and a willingness to work through competing interests.
My time in Canada sharpened my appreciation of both the opportunity created by commercial alignment and the relationships and governance required to sustain it.
What Australian football can take from the experience
I arrived with experience from Australian football, professional clubs, venues and major events. Applying it usefully required listening, understanding the Canadian context and respecting the knowledge of the people working within it.
I came away with a stronger appreciation of how strategy, brand, media and investment need to work together.
A compelling brand needs a credible product. A growing audience needs an accessible experience. An investor needs a business case. A governing body needs resources and public trust. A shared vision needs people willing to advance it together.
For Australia, there is value in examining where stronger cooperation between national teams, leagues, clubs, media and investors could create a more compelling proposition.
We also need to explain what investment will build, how progress will be measured and why the opportunity deserves a long-term commitment.
I am grateful to James, the Board and the colleagues with whom I worked for the opportunity to contribute during such an important period for Canadian soccer.
The experience reinforced a conviction that has shaped much of my career: football’s potential becomes more valuable when we give it a clear direction, connect the people and assets behind it, and commit to the work for long enough to see it grow.
Peter Filopoulos is a sports executive and founder of Intrepid Fox Group, advising organisations on growth strategy, transformation, commercial development and major projects.
Further reading
- Canada Soccer’s commercial rights update
- Canadian Soccer Media & Entertainment
- Canada Soccer and CSME’s renewed partnership
- Concacaf’s Canadian media rights agreement with CSME
- Rogers completes its acquisition of MLSE
