MONTREAL, QC. — It was an historic day for the NHL and Rogers Communications as they stunned the hockey world with a deal for Canadian media rights.
“The National Hockey League has reached a 12-year, $5.232 billion (Canadian) agreement with Rogers Communications for broadcast and multimedia rights, the League announced jointly with Rogers Communications on Tuesday.
The agreement is the largest media rights deal in NHL history and one of the largest media rights deals in Canadian history, including the largest-ever sports-media rights agreement.
The partnership between the NHL and Rogers begins with the 2014-15 season and runs through the 2025-26 season.
The deal gives Rogers national rights to all NHL games, including the Stanley Cup Playoffs and Stanley Cup Final, on all of its platforms in all languages.”
Rogers Media President Keith Pelley summed up the deal this way, “Never before has a premium sports league offered its content to one media entity. We now have control of the most-coveted national sports content. It’s truly transformational.”
It will take some time to sort out the details but the folks at TSN/CTV/Bell are spending the day asking themselves, “What went wrong?” Put simply, they were outbid.
Josh Gold-Smith from the Score
Text from a TSN source on losing the NHL rights: "It's like a funeral here."
— Josh Gold-Smith (@GoldAndOrSmith) November 26, 2013
Tweets from TSN’s Bob McKenzie and James Duthie were written with a stiff upper lip vowing to forge on but barely covered a thinly-veiled disappointment.
“If my bosses at TSN/CTV/Bell want to take a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars they offered for NHL rights and invest it…We’ve got a boatload of gifted, hard-working people at TSN who are up for challenge of keeping TSN as THE source for all things hockey. Much work to be done. Guess I’ll have more time to do it. Proud to be associated with all my NHL on TSN colleagues. They’re the best! G’nite.” — TSN’s Bob McKenzie
Been a privilege being a part of The NHL on TSN the past 12 years. Congrats and best of luck to Rogers/HNIC.
— James Duthie (@tsnjamesduthie) November 26, 2013
So what do we know?
Rogers will be the single NHL rights-holder in Canada for all games on all platforms in all languages for a 12-year period starting in 2014-15.
The NHL decided to package all their rights assets and demand a premium price. Rogers came very close that value paying $5.232 billion.
Hockey Night in Canada will be retained as a brand with CBC operating as a sub-licensee for the next four years. Rogers will have editorial control as well as receive all ad revenue.
Hockey Night in Canada will broadcast the Stanley Cup final.
TVA will be a sub-licensee for French-language broadcasts for 22 national regular season games and have exclusive rights to playoffs.
Quebecor will launch a second sports channel named, TVA Sports 2.
Rogers will have exclusive rights to games involving Canadian teams during three windows: Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday night. There will be no local blackouts or regionalization on these nights. Saturday games will appear in English on Sportsnet, CBC and City TV.
Rogers will take over the sale of Centre Ice and Game Centre.
Rogers already holds regional rights to five of the seven Canadian NHL teams. The exceptions are the Montreal Canadiens and Winnipeg Jets. All local rights are preserved by the new deal.
All NHL events including the Entry Draft, Winter Classic and the All-Star Game are covered by the agreement.
Radio rights are not covered by this deal. TSN 690 (Bell Media) has the English rights until the 2017-18 season with Cogeco holding the French-language rights until 2018-19.
What is still to be determined?
Bill Daly, Deputy Commissioner of the NHL said, “What the Canadiens retain is their regional rights to 60 Montreal Canadiens games.” So what happens to those games? Bill Daly added, “[The Canadiens] are in control whether its RDS, TVA. They would make that determination.”
So, we will watch a bidding process over the next few weeks to see the battle between Bell-RDS and Quebecor-TVA for the rights for 60 Habs games which are determined as ‘regional.’
What does that mean for regional blackouts? At this point, the situation is not clear. Blackouts will be removed for national games on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.
Steve Ladurantaye from the Globe and Mail reported on Twitter, “Scoopage: Rogers will create a pay product that allows subscribers to lift all of their regional Sportsnet blackouts. Rogers says its blackout-free Sportsnet package would cost considerably less than Game Centre etc, and only involve Canadian teams. Any Canadian game broadcast on Sportsnet channels would be available.”
However what this means to cable subscribers on Bell and Videotron is unknown. Rogers has advertised heavily that the channel FX Canada is “NOT AVAILABLE ON BELL.”
What does that mean for TSN-Montreal? We don’t know. Addressing the Jets situation, Daly said, “I expect that Winnipeg will continue to be very successful in their relationship with their partnership with TSN within their regional territory.”
English language broadcasts for Canadiens fans has traditionally been extremely under-serviced and perhaps fair-to-say not on the radar of the Montreal Canadiens so fans remain concerned. Currently Even if fans pay to subscribe to Centre Ice, games are blacked out and fans redirected to RDS. This is unacceptable and has always been an irritant to Habs fans looking for an English broadcast.
Here is what last Saturday broadcasts might have looked like under the new agreement:
As a Habs’ fan living in BC, I’m extremely concerned about this new deal, for a couple of reasons. First, I much, much prefer the TSN hockey panellists than Sportsnet’s but last but not least, most hockey coverages on Sportsnet (and TVA Sports) are regional and are blacked out outside the coverage area (usually the home province). So depending on who lands the rights to the other 60 Habs’ games, I may not get to watch the team that I’ve been following for 4 decades. Hockey is a business, I get it. But be careful NHL that business doesn’t kill your hardcore fans…
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