Masai Ujiri's future with Toronto Raptors dicier than ever after Rogers buys out Bell
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 $533 million for twin 37.5 percent stakes in MLSE. Recently, one company announced it had bought the other’s stake for $4.7 billion, or $3.46 billion US. Yes, that outpaces inflation.
According to the announcement, the selling company will have the right to keep its current broadcasting agreement in place for the long term at ‘fair market value.’ Onlookers will look forward to the two best buds coming to an agreement on what that constitutes. There will be countless other repercussions on the Toronto and Canadian sports scene from this news that will play out over the next months and years.
For the Raptors, the news shifts the focus to two key figures: the chairman of the buying company and the Raptors president and vice-chairman. They have had a strained relationship in the past, and now the chairman is undeniably the most powerful person in the company that owns the team. Before the sale, it was already a relationship that had required monitoring. Now, it must be observed intently.
When asked for comment, the Raptors president declined, expressing no concern about the sale.
It stands to reason there will be increased tension. With one company stepping away, a minority owner, who has been the Raptors president’s mentor within MLSE and is the chairman of the company, will likely become just another stakeholder rather than someone who holds significant sway because the two communications giants had equal power. This minority owner isn’t going anywhere imminently; he was recently re-elected as the chair of the NBA’s board of governors. The Raptors president is the team’s alternate governor, a symbol of his relationship with the minority owner.
However, the minority owner sold a fifth of his company’s stake in MLSE last year. His other company purchased an expansion team in the WNBA earlier this year. That team will begin play in 2026. As it happens, it was reported earlier this year that the two original companies would have the right to buy out the minority owner’s stake in the team in 2026. Now, that right should belong solely to the buying company, which also owns another major sports team in Toronto.
Accordingly, the onus will be on the Raptors president to find a way to co-exist with the buying company’s chairman, and less on the chairman himself. It was reportedly the chairman who was the most skeptical about paying the Raptors president like a top-of-market executive in 2021, two years after the Raptors won the NBA Finals. It was also the chairman who was most acutely against MLSE going after a WNBA expansion team, with reports suggesting that the chairman’s relationship with the Raptors president was a factor in MLSE not going down that road. (To be clear, it was not the determining factor.) That is what led the minority owner to start the company that purchased the expansion team.
In other words, the Raptors president has had to deal with the chairman for his entire tenure running the Raptors, which dates to 2013. He has not, though, had to deal with the chairman as the ultimate authority within MLSE and, therefore, the Raptors. The nature of the relationship changes. The chairman isn’t a boss within MLSE now; he is the boss.
Does the Raptors president, who has largely had carte blanche to run the Raptors as he has seen fit, have the stomach to deal with the chairman? Looking at the other sports team owned by the company, the chairman hasn’t appeared to interfere too closely in day-to-day matters. That team spent into the competitive balance tax in 2023 and was poised to do so again this year before the season went comically awry.
However, the chairman hired that team’s president in 2015. The Raptors president was not the chairman’s hire — at least not solely the chairman’s hire — and his new contract certainly wasn’t the chairman’s idea. The Raptors president is admired throughout the NBA and could surely find a new gig of his choosing in short order if he left the Raptors.
Meanwhile, as we enter the final two seasons of the Raptors president’s contract, will the chairman want to commit to continue paying him as an elite executive, especially if the Raptors’ retooling outside of real competitive contention continues over the next few years? It has never been easier to pick apart the job the president has done in Toronto. It would be easy enough to allow his deal to expire, save money on the next Raptors president and allow someone else to continue to build the team.
There is even recent precedent for that working in the NBA. In 2022, another team allowed their former president to leave for a different team. The former president’s top lieutenant remained as the lead decision-maker, with the team winning the title in 2023 — albeit with a team largely built by the former president.
Why would these two men who have a sub-optimal relationship, who should have other options, continue to work together? Even without the relationship, the Raptors president will have been in charge of the team for 13 years after the 2025-26 season. That is a long time to do the same thing.
The Raptors president has frequently expressed his love for Toronto and the Raptors during his tenure, even joking that the media would have to run him out of town for him to leave. With the recent deal, a more serious threat to end the president’s time in Toronto became obvious.