Interbrew S.A.

Interbrew S.A. is a Belgian beer conglomerate that (almost) accidentally became the owner of the Toronto Blue Jays from 1995 to 2000. The years of its ownership are considered a low point in the franchise's history.

The name of the company stands for "international breweries", the initials S.A. standing for the French terms "Société anonyme", the European equivalent of "Limited" after a company name. The conglomerate took advantage of changes in Canadian legislation that allowed for the foreign purchase of Canadian breweries to buy out the struggling Labatt Breweries, which happened to own 90% of the Blue Jays. Interbrew was not interested in sports, except as a vehicle to advertise its brands; instead, it wanted to build a global presence by purchasing well-known brands in various markets, such as the Belgian Stella Artois and the German Beck's. Labatt was its first big international purchase, but it would not stop there, as it eventually would merge with Anheuser-Busch. Its plan was to make these flagship brands global, a plan which was largely successful although it took over a decade for it to come to full fruition.

In the meantime, the Belgian brewery found itself the owner of a major North American sports property (in addition to less important ones, such as the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League, and the Skydome, the home of the Jays, and the cable sports channel TSN). The Jays were coming off a very successful run that had culminated in back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, so the new owners decided to let the existing management team continue to run things without involving themselves personally in running the business. These were troublesome times for baseball, however, with 1994 strike having left gaping wounds and Major League Baseball being polarized between large-market and small-market owners bitterly fighting each other. The new owners were completely absent from the turmoil, and progressively let the team's fan base fritter away as they avoided spending on the on-field product, content in simply taking in a profit, which shrank every year given the lack of corporate direction in a challenging business environment. The shareholders did not take kindly to this distraction from the group's main line of business, and in 2000 the group sold the team to Toronto billionaire Ted Rogers for a bargain-basement price of $137 million (the company retained 20% of the team's shares until 2004, when Rogers bought them out).

Ironically, Ted Rogers was interested in buying the team because, when Interbrew had acquired TSN along with the Jays in 1991, they were forced to sell the network to abide by Canadian laws preventing the foreign ownership of media companies. The network had been bought by Bell Globemedia, who had in turned been forced to sell its own fledgling cable sports network, CTV Sportsnet, to Rogers, who renamed it Rogers Sportsnet. The Blue Jays' acquisition was simply a means to have a marquee property to fill Sportsnet's programming needs.