New leadership is coming to Canadian football.
The CFL hired TSN president Stewart Johnston to be its next commissioner, the league announced on Wednesday.
Johnston, a 54-year-old Toronto native, has served as TSN’s president since 2010. He began working at the sports television broadcaster in 1997 as an intern and eventually was promoted to vice-president of programming in 2006.
In January, Johnston was ranked No. 57 on The Hockey News’ top-100 people of power and influence in hockey.
The hiring of Johnston would be an interesting one given the CFL’s current broadcast agreement with TSN goes through the 2026 season. The deal is reportedly worth $50 million annually.
The CFL also has an American broadcast contract with CBS Sports Network. It, too, is slated to expire following the ’26 season.
Ambrosie, 62, announced in October his intention to retire as commissioner sometime in 2025 once his successor was found. The Winnipeg native, who played nine seasons (1985-93) as an offensive lineman with Calgary, Toronto and Edmonton, was named the league’s 14th commissioner July 5, 2017, succeeding Jeffrey Orridge.
Ambrosie’s seven-plus year tenure is the second-longest behind the late Jake Gaudaur (1968-84).
The timing of Ambrosie’s decision to retire was surprising, given he said he had no immediate plans to step down in his 2023 Grey Cup address. Conventional thinking suggested Ambrosie would remain on the job at least through the ’26 season, when the broadcast deals expired.
But by retiring sometime in 2025, Ambrosie felt he was giving his successor time to get acclimated with the job and prepare for negotiations on new TV deals. In May 2022, the CFL and CFL Players’ Association agreed to a seven-year collective bargaining agreement, but that deal can be reopened once the new broadcast contracts deals are signed.
Something Johnston wouldn’t have to deal with, at least not immediately, would be any CFL ownership fires. During Ambrosie’s tenure the league solidified ownership situations with the B.C. Lions (Amar Doman), Montreal Alouettes (Pierre Karl Peladeau) and Edmonton Elks (Larry Thompson).
Currently, all nine franchises appear to be on solid footing. And the 2025 and 2026 Grey Cup games will be held in Winnipeg and Calgary, respectively.
–with files from The Canadian Press