The Rogers Communications main office in Toronto in January. The media and sports company finished 2025 with 25,000 employees, up 1,000 from the year prior.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T increased its total employee count in 2025, with new roles from the sports franchise company it now controls helping offset reductions in other parts of the business.
The Toronto-based media and sports company finished 2025 with 25,000 full- and part-time employees, up 1,000 from the year prior, according to the company’s annual report, filed Friday afternoon.
This figure includes a group of employees that were not counted in previous years. In 2025, for the first time, Rogers added employees of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment to its count, as it became MLSE’s majority shareholder last summer when it acquired BCE Inc.’s BCE-T 37.5-per-cent stake for $4.7-billion.
MLSE, the parent company to the Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors teams, said in a report that as of the end of 2024, it had approximately 3,000 full- and part-time employees. The company’s current LinkedIn page shows a similar number of employees.
This suggests that Rogers’ 2025 job increase would have been a decline without the inclusion of the MLSE employees this year.
The overall increase in employees reflects the company’s investment in its sports portfolio, which also includes the Toronto Blue Jays. Rogers hopes to monetize these assets soon after acquiring the remaining stake in MLSE, which it plans to do this summer. The company has suggested it could spin out the sports portfolio, which it estimates will be worth $20-billion when complete, or sell a minority stake.
In an e-mail, Rogers said the changes to its 2025 job count include natural attrition, with some employees leaving for other opportunities and retirement. The telecom said it hires thousands of people each year to support its operations, and continues to invest in its business, including its sports properties.
In 2025, Rogers laid off customer support staff in multiple provinces and told about 400 technicians and managers they had the option either to accept severance packages or sign employment contracts with telecom company Ericsson, which it said would then act as a contractor for Rogers.
It also ended its customer service contract with third-party firm Foundever, affecting hundreds of jobs. Rogers does not include vendors in its total job count.
In 2023, in order to secure federal approval for its takeover of Shaw, Rogers vowed to create 3,000 new jobs in Western Canada within five years. As of March, 2025, at the time of its last report on its commitments, the company had created 1,828 jobs in that region.
Bell Canada parent company BCE also filed its annual report Friday morning. That telecom dropped 1,700 net jobs in 2025, the second year in a row of major losses, as it and other telecoms aim to streamline operations as they contend with slow growth, price competition and stagnant population size.