NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman speaks to the media at the NHL 4 Nations Face-Off in Montreal in … More
As negotiations begin with the NHL Players’ Association on a new collective bargaining agreement, the NHL Canadian media rights deal has locked in an important source of revenue for the next 13 years.
On Wednesday, the NHL and Rogers Communications announced that they’ve come to an agreement on a new 12-year national media rights deal. The pact takes effect in the 2026-27 season, after the league’s current 12-year agreement with Rogers concludes, and will run through the 2037-38 season. It carries a price tag of $11 billion Canadian (approximately US$7.7 billion, or an average of US$642 million per season). That’s more than double the C$5.2 billion cost of the current deal, which was announced in November of 2013.
“The value of live sports content just continues to appreciate,” said Tony Staffieri, the president and CEO of Rogers, at a press conference in Toronto on Wednesday. “It’s really rooted in viewership continuing to grow. If you’re to look at our NHL deal over the last decade, viewership grew by 50 percent. With that kind of growth, what you see is revenue growing at a very steady and healthy pace in terms of advertising revenue, subscription revenue, and in the deal, we have now sub-licensing revenue.”
According to Staffieri, subscriptions to Rogers’ Sportsnet+ streaming platform have also tripled.
“There is nothing more valuable in this country, from a media standpoint, than having the rights to the NHL,” added league commissioner Gary Bettman.
Under the terms of the agreement, Rogers will continue to hold the TV, digital and streaming rights for all Canadian national games, all Stanley Cup playoff games, and all special events and tentpole events, in all languages. They’ll also hold out-of-market rights for all regional games, and be the exclusive category sponsor for the NHL and all NHL tentpole events held in Canada.
The new agreement also loosens blackout restrictions on regional-rights games held by Sportsnet, for the Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames and half the games of the Toronto Maple Leafs — as well as select games of the Winnipeg Jets and Ottawa Senators, whose regional rights are held by Sportsnet’s competitor, Bell Media-owned TSN. More of those games will be available from coast to coast to regular Sportsnet subscribers who don’t pay for Sportsnet+.
Under the current agreement, Rogers sub-licensed the rights to French-language national games to the TVA network. Rogers currently runs a weekly ‘Hockey Night in Punjabi’ event on its Omni channel, and also occasionally presents games in Cree.
New this year, Rogers also entered into a sub-licensing agreement with Prime Video in Canada, assigning them the rights to national games on Monday nights. That agreement could be extended. It’s also possible that Rogers could explore additional or alternative partnerships with other streamers such as Netflix or Apple.
When the current agreement took effect in 2014, it ended the NHL’s licensing agreement with CBC, which had historically broadcast ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ on Saturday nights for decades. As Canada’s national public broadcaster, CBC has continued to carry Rogers’ Saturday night ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ broadcasts, and that may continue.
“We like our partnership with and we value our partnership with the CBC,” said Colette Watson, president of Rogers Sports & Media. “Over the next 18 months, we’ll look to see if there’s a continued partnership there.”
The league’s U.S. rights are currently split between ESPN and Warner Brothers Discovery (TNT), on seven-year agreements. Those agreements run through 2027-28 and are valued at about US$625 million per season in total.
According to Wednesday’s press release, the financial terms of the NHL Canadian media rights agreement are comprised of escalating annual payments that will total C$11 billion paid to the NHL over the 12-year term.
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