A minority partner in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. is about to sell shares in a deal that values the Canadian sports company at $8 billion, according to Sportico.
Larry Tanenbaum, who owns 25% of MLSE, has agreed to sell at least a portion of his stake to the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, the news outlet reported, citing people familiar with the situation that it didn’t identify.
The company’s most valuable assets are the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey club and the Toronto Raptors, Canada’s only National Basketball Association team. The Leafs alone are worth $2 billion, making it the second-most valuable team in the National Hockey League, according to a Forbes valuation last year.
Sportico said it wasn’t clear how much of his stake Tanenbaum is prepared to unload. Maple Leaf Sports operates with an unusual ownership structure that has Canada’s two biggest rivals in the telecommunications industry — BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. — as equal partners, with 37.5% each. The two companies’ sports cable channels share the broadcasting rights for MLSE teams.
The Rogers-BCE arrangement dates back to 2011, when another Canadian pension fund, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, decided to sell its majority stake in MLSE. At that time, Tanenbaum’s stake increased to 25% from about 20%.
A spokesperson for Omers, which is one of Canada’s largest defined-benefit pension plans, declined to comment.
