Rodger Brulotte became the network's second broadcasting star with his enthusiastic colour commentary of Expos games.

While the Machine, Roadrunners, and Express folded, the partnership between RDS and the Impact and Alouettes helped both the network and the teams to become popular.

Due to CRTC regulations on the foreign ownership of broadcasters, Labatt was forced to sell both RDS and TSN upon its acquisition by Interbrew in 1995.

In 2002, the Montreal Canadiens announced a deal to license its French-language broadcast rights for all of its preseason, season, and playoff games to RDS.

This was controversial as it threatened the longest-running television show in Quebec, Radio-Canada's La Soirée du hockey.

Days later, an agreement was reached whereby RDS and Radio-Canada would simultaneously broadcast Canadiens games on Saturday nights, saving the show.

Within the province of Quebec, this arrangement stopped after the 2003–04 NHL season, and French-language Canadiens broadcasts now air exclusively on RDS.

[1] On September 10, 2010, Bell Canada announced plans to re-acquire 100% of CTVglobemedia's broadcasting arm, including its majority control of TSN.

The planned language and format change was intended to take advantage of CKAC's recent switch from French sports talk to traffic information, and to satisfy the CRTC's ownership caps for Bell's planned acquisition of Astral Media—since Astral already owned the maximum number of English-language stations that one company can own in the market.

[6] On November 26, 2013, Rogers announced that it had reached a 12-year, $5.2 billion deal to become the exclusive national rightsholder for the National Hockey League, beginning in the 2014–15 season, and would sub-license exclusive French-language rights to TVA Sports (which Rogers has previously partnered with to hold French-language rights to Sportsnet properties), replacing RDS.

[12][13][10] In December 2014, as part of deals with Bell, RDS acquired French-language rights to the UEFA Champions League and UFC mixed martial arts, both beginning in 2015.

Even when another French-language broadcaster is carrying the event (e.g., the French Open or soccer matches involving teams from France), RDS will usually use its own commentators.

On June 15, 2011, Bell Media announced the launch of RDS2, a multiplex channel of RDS similar to TSN's equivalent TSN2, in the fall of 2011.

Since then, most major sporting events have been broadcast in HD; including Formula One, NASCAR, Montreal Alouettes CFL Football, NFL, MLB, PGA Golf and the Euro 2008 soccer tournament amongst others.