Champ Car Canadian TV broadcaster on the block

Having watched a multibillion-dollar buying spree sweep through the broadcast sector, John Levy is betting his cable sports channel, Champ Car Canadian TV broadcaster The Score (except for the Canadian races, which are shown on Global), is worth at least $280-million – and that a major network will pay a premium to own it.

Mr. Levy, whose family owns a controlling stake in the third-largest sports channel in Canada, after TSN and SportsNet, effectively put his company up for sale yesterday by publicly announcing an asking price for the assets.

For $2.90 a share, Mr. Levy will sell Score Media Inc., owner of the sports channel that began more than a decade ago on cable offering only scores and statistics, then branched out into sports highlights and live games.

At that price, the channel would be valued at $283.5-million. The asking price represents an 81-per-cent premium over the price the shares traded at before the announcement was made. "The way we came up with the $2.90 was basically to try to establish a price that – if it was hit – we thought was a fair and reasonable price," Mr. Levy said. More at Globe and Mail