Quebecor Media and the Montreal Impact, who are slated to make their MLS debut in '12, announced a five-year agreement Thursday that gives the team a "wide-ranging relationship covering sponsorship, media, technology and positioning in the sports marketplace," according to Randy Phillips of the Montreal GAZETTE. Impact President Joey Saputo said, "It's a great deal for us in that it allows us to utilize Quebecor Media from a total standpoint. If you were to take the deal and split it up between telecommunications and TV, maybe we could have got a better one. But in Quebecor, everything is combined and it's all in one." Phillips reports the "key component of the agreement, of which no financial figures were given, is that TVA Sports, a property of Quebecor's TVA Group Inc. division, becomes the Impact's official broadcaster and will carry the bulk of the team's regular-season games and playoffs in MLS." All games "will be televised in high definition and the broadcasts will not conflict with Impact games aired by TSN or French-language RDS as part of an existing agreement with MLS." Meanwhile, Quebecor Media division Videotron will be a "founding member of the Impact's move to MLS by providing a more hi-tech experience at Saputo Stadium." Saputo: "Videotron is going to better the technological experience in the stadium because they will create apps for the stadium and through their full network, TV, the Web and mobile." Saputo added that a "number of other companies expressed interest in forming a similar partnership, including Bell Globemedia" (Montreal GAZETTE, 7/15).
