In 1979, Global, which was then an Ontario regional network, purchased the Toronto Blizzard soccer team and produced and aired coverage of the team's games in-house. The team was not a success on the field, in attendance or ratings and Global sold the franchise in 1981 but continued to broadcast seven games a year until 1983.
Aside from its brief experiment with soccer, the Global network has never had an in-house sports production division as do CBC and CTV/TSN. Network sports broadcasts are either simulcast with American networks or outsourced to independent producers such as Molstar. Global was the longtime broadcaster of National Football League football games in Canada, an association that ended in 2007 when CTV outbid Global for the NFL broadcast package. The network continues to air coverage of The Masters and, on most stations, various PGA Tour events.
Nevertheless, many Global stations were well-known for local late-night sports highlights shows, such as Sportsline in Ontario, Sports Page in Vancouver (later moved to sister station CHEK), and Sports Night in Edmonton. Most of these programs were later unified under the Global Sports brand. However, due to declining audiences, by fall 2005 all but the Ontario program had been cancelled, although stations continued to cover sports in their local newscasts.
In January 2007, Global Ontario not only cancelled its nightly sportscast but closed its sports department entirely, outsourcing sports news coverage to Rogers Sportsnet. This production deal ended on February 1, 2008, due to Rogers' acquisition of the competing Citytv system. CityNews in Toronto began using Rogers Sportsnet for portions of its sports coverage when the deal ended. A similar deal between Global Ontario and The Score began shortly thereafter — Canwest had recently acquired a minority interest in Score Media from Alliance Atlantis.
Some of Global's stations outside Ontario continue to produce their own in-house sports coverage such as Global BC and Global Edmonton. Global Maritimes and Global Quebec use the sports anchors from Global BC to fill their newscast sports programming time.
Global Winnipeg produces Fox Soccer Report for Fox Sports World Canada and Fox Soccer Channel in the United States, as well as other countries.
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