Welcome to the future, Canadian sports fans. Grab your wallets. And sort out your remote controls, because watching TV is about to get more complicated.
On Thursday, Rogers Communications Inc. announced it had sold off the rights to a chunk of the NHL games it bought in that splashy $5.2-billion 12-season deal it struck a decade ago. For the final two seasons of that contract, starting this October, Amazon’s Prime Video service will produce and broadcast – or, rather, stream – the national Monday night games in Canada, which up to this point have aired exclusively on Sportsnet.
The games, at least 26 of which will be streamed each season, will be available only to those who subscribe to Prime.
The move marks the first time that one of the big four North American leagues will have a meaningful number of games on a streaming service operating only in Canada. (In late 2022, Apple scooped up all of the global streaming rights to Major League Soccer games, in a 10-year, US$2.5-billion pact.) It won’t be the last.
In a news release, David Proper, the NHL’s senior executive vice-president of media and international strategy, suggested the deal would help the league expand its fan base. More likely, its existing fan base will help grow Prime’s subscribers, because hard core hockey fans are now going to have to subscribe to another service.
Just as important, it will also help to boost the value of the NHL’s media rights before bidding for the next deal unfolds next year. That was part of the strategy behind the NFL’s decision to sell its Thursday Night Football franchise to Prime in the United States, as well as a wild-card playoff game in January to NBC’s nascent streaming service, Peacock.
When the NHL and Sportsnet announced its blockbuster deal in November, 2013, it looked as though it might be a model for the future of sports broadcasting. A league could sell off all of its rights in a territory to a single gatekeeper, which could monetize them across any existing and future platforms.
A decade later, that model seems almost ancient in its strategy. None of the big leagues will do that again. (Apple’s MLS tie-up is the exception that proves the rule, with the tech giant’s purchase of the global rights to a league that needed the streamer more than the streamer needed the league.) Certainly, Amazon at least has made it clear it has no interest in becoming the primary-rights holder of any major league. It wants to own just enough games that…
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