The FAN 590 morning show was discussing this announcement to be made at 2:30, but to be no more than Rogers and MLSE partnering up for a marketing endeavour. Rogers is larger and more powerful than MLSE, so my educated guess is that it's Rogers diving into MLSE more than MLSE getting involved with Rogers and the Jays.

Why wouldn't we want MLSE to get involved with us?

MLSE like Rogers, is in there for the profits, but in their situation, their priority to maximize pofits is much more emphasized as a result of the fact that the ACC will always be sold out for Leaf games. Rogers had realized that the only way to increase profits was to commit to payroll, to better the team. For MLSE, this motivation doesn't exist.

There's also been alot of stories about the MLSE Board of Directors basically running a crazy regime where everything they say goes, and anybody who stands in their way gets the axe.

The bottom line is that MLSE's best interests are to maximize profits as much as possible while putting the worst team you can get away with on the field. Essentially, they're the anti-Steinbrenner (Defn of Steinbrenner: accepts financial loss to ensure he has the best players on the field).

Blame the teachers union! :)

I know very little of competition law, but wouldn't the regulator be interested if one corporation owned all three major sports franchises in Canada's largest city?  Perhaps not.

On  a smaller scale, if Eugene Melnyk can buy a second OHL team, own their facilities and basically destroy them, all while following laws and having board after board pass such a deal (which is what he did to the IceDogs), then I'd have to think this would be a cakewalk for Rogers.

There is a reason why the Leafs and Raptors never spend a ton of money.

The notion that MLSE is not willing to spend money is getting really tiresome.  Before the salary cap era the Leafs were in the top 5 in payroll in the NHL and were regularly going after high-priced FA's.  Now with a hard cap the Leafs spend the max that they can.  The only way for them to make more money is to go deep in to the playoffs where they can gross an extra $2M+ a night, thus they have a real motivation to ice a good team.  As for the Raptors they were 20th in payroll last year ahead of the Spurs and the Suns and 700K behind the Pistons.  There were a lot of empty seats last year for the Raptors that need to be filled and they spent the money necessary to bring Colangelo in.  Hell, they paid Lenny Wilkins $4M a year.

Any merger between the Jays and MLSE would be difficult considering that I believe Bell owns a piece of the Leafs.

There is a reason why the Leafs and Raptors never spend a ton of money.

yeah....it's called a salary cap.

If there were to be a merger, it would be the Teachers relinquising control.  They'd probably end up with shares in Rogers, which wouldn't amount to a significant interest.