While the NHL’s new 12-year, $7.7 billion extension with Rogers locks in national media rights across all platforms, including TV, digital and streaming, the owner of Canada’s Sportsnet will likely continue to share the road with a prominent third party via a sublicensing agreement.
Amazon Prime Video is in the front half of a two-season deal to stream Monday night NHL games in Canada, and Rogers president and CEO Tony Staffieri said there is a “strong possibility” that a similar arrangement will be reached in due course.
“Today we sublicense French content as well as streaming with Amazon and those have been terrific partnerships,” Staffieri said Wednesday, during a press huddle staged on the set of the Sportsnet studio show Hockey Tonight. “As we look to the next 12 years, the agreement with the NHL is that we’ll look to opportunities to continue to sublicense where it makes sense.”
A sublicense is the only way a rival streamer or TV outlet will have a shot at aligning themselves with the NHL in the Canadian market, and the outsized popularity of hockey would make a rights rental hard to pass up for a deep-pocketed interloper. As NHL commissioner Gary Bettman observed, the league accounts for more than half of the top 100 most-watched programs every year in Canada, and 37 of the top 50. (In that respect, the NHL rules the roost Up North in much the same way that the NFL owns the airwaves here in the U.S.)
During each night of the two-month playoff run, the NHL is Canada’s top-rated program.
While interest in the NHL package was piqued by the national obsession with all things hockey, Rogers’ alliance with the league effectively shut out any would-be bidders. As Bettman noted, the two parties extended their exclusive negotiating period once it became apparent that “Rogers’ resolve to retain” the NHL matched the league’s desire to re-up with its partner of 11 years’ standing.
The negotiation “wasn’t what I would describe as contentious in the least,” Bettman said. “I think we were pretty much on the same page, so we had to work a little bit on the money, but that came together as well, but in the final analysis we wanted to be together—and that’s how it came together as quickly as it did.”
When asked if Sportsnet subscribers could expect to foot the bill for the pricey extension—the new deal will cost Rogers more than twice what it pays the NHL under the legacy contract— Staffieri said the revenues associated with hockey’s ratings boom should go a long way toward paying the freight.
“If you look at our NHL deal over the last decade, viewership grew by 50%, and with that kind of growth … revenue is growing at a very steady and healthy pace,” Staffieri said, before adding that the three pillars of hockey income are advertising, subscriptions and sublicensing fees.
“The focus for us on this is growing the viewership, and if we do that well—which is what we’ve done over the last 10 years—then the revenues follow,” Staffieri said. “So, the economics of this stand on their own.”
When asked if the blockbuster extension would knock hockey off the over-the-air network CBC, which has aired its weekly Hockey Night in Canada showcase since 1952, Rogers Sports and Media president Colette Watson said the public broadcaster would continue to be in the mix through the end of the current rights deal (2025-26). “We value our partnership with the CBC, and over the next 18 months we’ll look to see if there’s a continued partnership there,” Watson said.
Bettman weighed in, noting that Hockey Night is the longest-running program in the history of Canadian TV. “I’m certain that our friends at Rogers will make the right decisions and have the right discussions with the people at the CBC,” Bettman said.
When asked about mounting tensions between the U.S. and Canada, Bettman said that while he didn’t want to venture out into political waters, he acknowledged there were concerns about the impact the ever-evolving tariffs situation may have on the Canadian dollar. Bettman went on to say that he hoped that this was merely a bump in the road for the longstanding allies and neighbors, a stance Staffieri echoed.
“I’m optimistic that we’ll get through these tariff issues,” Staffieri said. “This is a deal for the next 12 years, and it’s about bringing Canada’s national sport to the largest audience possible. We are fully aligned in our mission. … The economics have been, for us, solid and the economics that we foresee for the next 12 years are going to be solid. And so, this is something that is going to work financially.”
