BlackBerry and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment announced today that the Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL, the Raptors in the NBA, and the Marlies (another hockey team) are all adopting BlackBerry as their official smartphone. Obviously this means that we’ll see a bunch of marketing around the teams, but it will also mean plenty of apps for fans and some BBM Channels. It looks like the Channels are already live – C000E8336 for the Raptors and C000A8B9C for the Leafs.
It’s worth noting that major service providers Rogers and Bell jointly own MLSE, so this is a pretty solid fit. The funny thing is, Rogers also owns the Blue Jays, who are already very comfortable with their BlackBerry sponsorship. After talking with BlackBerry, it sounds like the arrangement was made more directly with MLSE and that the Rogers/Bell connection was really just the icing on the cake. That said, don’t expect TELUS to be shouldered out of anything because of vertical integration issues. Likewise, the kind of content we’re expecting, like being able to hear from players in between periods, likely won’t have any geographic restrictions. The agreement is for the next three years, and we should start seeing the content from the partnership becoming available in the late summer.
The full press release is below. Any Raptors or Leafs fans in the house?
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