On Wednesday, Rogers officially confirmed what had first been reported by the specialty publication Sportico: It has renewed its national television rights deal with the National Hockey League for 12 years, from 2026 to 2038, at a cost of $11 billion Canadian ($7.7 billion U.S.).
The deal is similar to the existing one: National rights to NHL television broadcasts in Canada, in all languages and on all platforms, including special events and all playoff games, and out-of-market rights. Like it did in 2013, Rogers promises more national games and fewer regional blackouts, though exactly how many is still unclear.
It also retains the rights to sublicense its rights to others. Currently all French-language TV rights are sublicensed to Quebecor’s TVA Sports, and Monday night national games are sublicensed to Amazon Prime Video. Rogers also has a partnership with CBC to allow Rogers to use CBC Television on Saturday nights and during the playoffs in exchange for Rogers retaining all ad revenue and programming control.
A press conference on Wednesday (which you can see here) clarified a few matters. Based on that, here’s what we know, what we don’t know, what’s likely and what’s possible:
Sublicensing
Asked directly about sublicensing, it’s clear Rogers either hasn’t reached deals on that yet or isn’t ready to announce them. Something similar to the status quo is likely, but we could also see RDS and TVA Sports engaged in a bidding war for French-language rights, assuming Rogers doesn’t try something radical like starting its own French-language sports channel.
RDS is owned by Sportsnet’s direct rival, TSN owner Bell Media, so it makes sense for Rogers to stick with TVA if only to keep rights away from its direct competitor, but they could change their mind if RDS is willing to put up a lot more money. RDS’s regional deal with the Canadiens also ends in 2026.
RDS can’t afford to lose the Canadiens, and I’m sure would love to get national rights back, but may have to settle for the status quo. TVA wants a piece of the Canadiens, even if it’s only 22 regular-season games a year plus the playoffs, and the NHL represents a big part of TVA Sports’s schedule. But does it have deep enough pockets to pay double the price for the rights?
National/regional split
Currently the 82-game season is split between national and regional games for all seven Canadian teams. The number of national games varies, from a low of 22 to a high of 32. Rogers has regional rights to the Canucks, Oilers and Flames, TSN has regional rights to the Jets, Senators and Canadiens, and the Leafs’s regional rights are split 50/50. (In French, RDS has regional rights to the Canadiens and Senators, and the other teams don’t have French-language regional rights deals.)
Rogers also has the ability to upgrade up to 10 of its regional games per team to national, which is why there 42 national Leafs games (including the six sublicensed to Amazon) this season.
Rogers Sports and Media President Colette Watson said they have secured the rights to “up to 10 more games for certain teams” nationally but it was unclear if she was referring to a new right in this contract or that existing ability that they use on the Leafs and western teams. She said this would be decided on a season-by-season basis.
Watson also said Rogers will be able to convert all of its regional games to national — which could mean 82 national games for the Canucks, Oilers and Flames, though possibly not for regional games against the Jets, Sens or Canadiens — and get “a few extra” Senators and Jets games (Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman says 10 more of each, possibly referencing the number Watson gave above). Currently only 22 Jets games and 25 Senators games every season are national, with the rest on TSN3 and TSN5, respectively.
National games in English are generally set through “windows” — currently Saturday, Monday and Wednesday evenings, with Mondays sublicensed to Amazon. Presumably Saturday will remain national, and Wednesday has been national since TSN had those rights, but it’s still unclear. When the previous Rogers/NHL contract was signed, the third national window was originally Sunday for its Hometown Hockey project, so these things can be moved.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman added that the new deal gives Rogers national rights to all games involving only U.S. teams, which they can broadcast “to your heart’s content.”
CBC
“We like our partnership, and we value our partnership with the CBC,” Watson said, adding they would see if the partnership continues beyond 2026. This suggests it may be more CBC’s call than Rogers’s whether this partnership continues.
Considering it has lasted this long, I don’t see why it wouldn’t. While CBC doesn’t get ad revenue from NHL games, it does get promotional space to promote its other programming. And outside some special events, it doesn’t get this kind of mass audience often.
Some sports leagues understand that exposure on free-to-air TV is essential to growing their game and so structure their contracts accordingly. I don’t know if the NHL has such a clause, but even if it did, Rogers still has Citytv at its disposal. Bettman said he trusted Rogers to make the best decision.
Out-of-market games
The new deal includes out-of-market games (like watching the Canadiens from Vancouver), so don’t expect many changes there. Sportsnet Plus Premium includes out-of-market games for streaming, and NHL Centre Ice is still around. There may be rebranding or repackaging, but in the end it’s still owned by Rogers.
Regional games
Now that the national rights are settled, it’ll be up to the teams to sign regional deals. The Canucks, Oilers and Flames have already extended their regional rights through more than half of this new national deal.
The Senators deal with TSN and Canadiens deal with RDS were 12-year deals that coincide with the Rogers deal, so those will be up in 2026. The Jets signed a “multi-year” deal with TSN in 2020, so it’s unclear when that is up. Same story for the Canadiens’ English deal with TSN.
As for the Leafs, the agreement when Rogers bought Bell’s stake in Leafs owner MLSE is that regional TV rights would continue to be split 50/50 for the next 20 years, so don’t expect a change there either.
Other languages
Rogers has expanded the reach of the game by partnering with APTN to offer some games in Cree, and starting this season in Inuktitut as well. Rogers-owned OMNI also offers some games in Punjabi. Since the new deal is for all languages, these third-language arrangements can continue.
I’d like to know why CBC only has partial rights to air NHL games. In the playoffs, the games are accessible with a cable and satellite subscription, or over the air (OTA).
However, for those who want a “free-to-air” access but don’t live anywhere within range of one of CBC’s OTA broadcast transmitters, they are out of luck. CBC gem no longer streams NHL playoff games like in years past.
It’s unfair that a taxpayer corporation is providing a two-tiered service to Canadians.
CBC should either restore the broadcast transmitters they removed from service years ago, or provide access to NHL games in the Gem platform for the rest of us.
CBC’s deal essentially hands over the network to Rogers on Saturday nights and during the playoffs. Rogers schedules games on CBC like it’s another Rogers channel. So Rogers makes the decision.
Saturday night games also air on Citytv, which is free-to-air in Canada’s largest cities.
The CBC has about a dozen over the air TV stations across the country. It would be nice if they would make sure that those stations were at their max possible power output. Or to even move some of them to better RF channel frequencies if available. Example is CBAT-DT (4.1) in Fredericton, NB. I’m sure they can do a power increase, or better yet look for a HI-VHF RF channel.
Here is a map to locate the CBC stations closest to you.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frequency
The Rogers owned CityTV network also has stations across the country. They are usually Owned and Operated by Rogers in most major cities across the country. But, they also have CityTV affiliated stations is some smaller markets. Such as Medicine Hat, AB & Lloydmister, AB.
CityTV stations also should look to increasing their power output. Example CJNT-DT (62.1) in Montreal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citytv
Since most people are watching regular TV when its live events. I hope CityTV adds more NHL games to their broadcast schedule.
I have noticed that the CW has added more live sports games to their schedule since Nexstar Media Group bought a majority stake in that network.
WNNE-TV (31.1) is available over the air in the Montreal area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNNE
Rogers, like Bell have become way Too powerful in the Telecasting & Broadcasting space, the reason being is that the CRTC are not doing there job by preventing these powerhouses dominating this media space. These giants will be paying Big Bucks to the NHL and increase the cost to us the consumer,
What I find silly is thee we blackouts. Last night I wanted to watch Vancouver vs Seattle. Blacked out.
I live in Ottawa.
To what purpose does that blackout fulfil?
Besides drive me to Sports Surge.
D
The blackouts are meant to protect the regional rights deals and maximize their value. There’s an argument that it doesn’t make that much sense in today’s world, but it remains in place because the teams want it that way.
If I may
I don’t see how blacking out a Van game, 5000 miles
West of Ottawa, helps anyone
Just saying
Dan Shields
Ottawa
In theory, it helps to maximize the value of the Ottawa Senators’ regional TV deal. Whether it actually does is debatable, but this is why regional broadcasting deals exist.
I’m shocked that Rogers signed this deal now.
The US is being overrun by a pandemic of stupidity that will cause companies worldwide to cut back on advertising and consumers to reduce discretionary spending on items like cable TV and streaming subscriptions.
Furthermore, there is a lot of uncertainty about the CBC. It could be defunded, it could go ad free, or it could grow a backbone and demand that Rogers actually pay it to air Hockey Night in Leafland on the CBC network.
This is a 12-year deal that will far outlive the Trump administration. As for CBC, it’s not essential to this deal. We don’t know if NHL games will keep airing on CBC after 2026.
Maybe you could ask Rogers if they are ever going to fix the problems with the Sportsnet app. It has a rating of 1.8 on the Play Store because of continuing problems with buffering, crashing, freezing, casting not working, and having to repeatedly sign in.
TSN isn’t much better. It has a rating of 2.4 and the same problems.
How come Canadian Viewers no longer have access to the NHL Network ? I get it when in the USA and find it strange that Canada ( which has MLB, NBA, NFL Networks ) has no access to the only hockey network formally available in here ?
Because the Canadian version of the NHL Network shut down. There isn’t much demand for such a network here if it can’t air any games.
I think that the NHL is making a big mistake in signing a deal for such a long period of time and giving away such wide ranging rights in light of what is a rapidly changing playing field.
Simply put, the digital world doesn’t suddenly stop at a border. The ability to stream to everyone in the world is now fairly simple and straightforward. It is also becoming very much cost competitive with other options. Imagine where we might be 10 years from now.
No, but the content licensing world does.