NHL on Sportsnet

Rogers Media's Sportsnet networks have historically been a prominent broadcaster of the National Hockey League in Canada. By the time the regional sports network first launched on October 9, 1998, as CTV Sportsnet, the network had already wrestled the national cable rights to the NHL from long-time holder TSN. From 1998–99 until 2001–02, Sportsnet aired Labatt Blue Tuesday Night Hockey weekly during the regular season, and covered first-round playoff series that did not feature Canadian teams. The network's first live event was an opening night match between the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers.[1] Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson served as the lead broadcast team.[2] Kevin Quinn and Ryan Walter served as the secondary team.[3] Darren Dreger as the studio host[2] and Greg Millen (1998–1999),[4] joined by other personalities such as Nick Kypreos (1998–2002),[5] and Mike Keenan (1999–2000).[3]

As reflected by its influence, Fox Sports Net (Fox also held a minority stake in the channel upon its launch),[1] Sportsnet and its four regional feeds also picked up regional broadcast rights to other Canadian NHL teams. As of the 2013–14 NHL season, Sportsnet held regional rights to five of the seven Canadian franchises, including the Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs (which are jointly owned by Rogers and Bell Canada through a majority stake in MLSE), Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames, and Vancouver Canucks. Rights to the remaining two, the Montreal Canadiens and Winnipeg Jets, and national cable rights to the league as a whole, were held by the competing network TSN.[6][7][8][9] National broadcast television rights were held by CBC Television, who used its rights to broadcast the long-running Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights, and share coverage of the post-season with TSN (including exclusive rights to the Stanley Cup Finals).[9]

Logo from 2014 to 2021.

The National Hockey League had aimed for its next round of Canadian broadcast rights deals to total at least $3.2 billion. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman recognized the financial difficulties and budget cuts being faced by the CBC, despite the success of its NHL telecasts (which were responsible for at least half of CBC Television's total advertising revenue),[10] by offering a slightly higher-valued contract that would have preserved a national doubleheader on Saturday nights (as opposed to regional games), along with playoff coverage, allowing the advertising-supported public broadcaster to maintain coverage of marquee games that could attract advertising revenue. Rights to the remaining properties not covered under the CBC's contract (including cable and digital rights) would have been offered to other broadcasters.[11]

CBC Sports' staff, including executive director Jeffrey Orridge, in what was described as a "very aggressive bid", continued to insist that CBC have exclusivity for every Saturday night game involving Canadian teams.[11] The CBC was ultimately unable to reach an agreement,[11] and its exclusive negotiation window expired at the end of August 2013.[12] which led to a bid by Bell Media for sole national rights to the NHL; Bell owns CTV, previous English cable rightsholder TSN, as well as previous French rightsholder RDS.[11] Bell attempted to contact the CBC in regards to forming a partnership, but they did not respond. In turn, Rogers Communications prepared a bid of its own; on November 20, 2013, a group of seven Rogers executives, including then-CEO Nadir Mohamed, Keith Pelley, president of Rogers Media, and Rogers Broadcasting president Scott Moore, travelled to the NHL's offices in New York City to deliver a 90-minute presentation to the league and Commissioner Gary Bettman. Rogers would successfully reach a deal to become the exclusive national rightsholder for the National Hockey League in Canada.[12]

The next day, CBC president Hubert Lacroix, who was in Montreal, was invited to an afternoon conference call with Neil McEneaney, Orridge, deputy commissioner Bill Daly, NHL chief operating officer John Collins, Bettman, and Pelley, in which CBC staff learned of the deal, but also of a proposal by Pelley for them to partner. Pelley, Moore, and senior vice-president of media sales Jack Tomik met with Orridge, McEneany, and CBC lawyer Jacques Gaboury in Toronto to begin negotiating a sub-licensing arrangement for Saturday night games.[11][12] After several additional days of negotiations at a local hotel, a near-final proposal was completed on the Sunday, November 24, for presentation to Lacroix and the CBC's twelve-person board of directors the next day.[12]

On November 26, 2013, Rogers Communications publicly announced its 12-year deal to become the exclusive national rightsholder for the National Hockey League beginning in the 2014–15 season. Valued at $5.2 billion over the length of the contract, and covering television and digital rights to the league (national French rights were sub-licensed to Quebecor Media for TVA Sports), the value of the contract surpasses the league's most recent U.S. rights deal with NBC by more than double. Under the contract, Rogers paid $150 million upfront, and will make annual payments beginning at $300 million, escalating to $500 million over the life of the contract. As part of the deal, Rogers also took over Canadian distribution of the NHL Centre Ice and GameCentre Live services. Rogers Media president Keith Pelley emphasized the increased amount and accessibility of NHL content that Rogers planned to offer under the deal, stating that "Canadians will have more games, more content and more choice than they've ever had before."[9][13][14][15] Also of note was Rogers' plans to maintain the long-running Hockey Night in Canada on CBC through a sub-licensing agreement with the league's previous broadcast television rightsholder, but also extend the brand by airing Hockey Night games across its own networks alongside CBC.[9][10][13][14][15]

Critics considered the deal to be a major coup against Bell Media, showing concerns for how its sports networks, particularly TSN, could sustain themselves without what they considered to be a key sports property in Canada. TSN and RDS still retain some NHL coverage as of the 2014–15 season, including TSN's existing rights to the Winnipeg Jets, an extension of French-language rights to the Montreal Canadiens for RDS, along with newly introduced regional coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs for TSN (which are split with Sportsnet per Bell and Rogers' joint majority ownership of its parent company), and the Ottawa Senators for both TSN and RDS.[7][10][13][16]

On February 4, 2014, at the NHL's upfronts, Rogers unveiled more detailed plans for its NHL coverage.[17][18] In preparation for the transition, Rogers and the NHL sought input from viewers via online surveys and a "listening tour" through locations within Canadian NHL markets, along with Kingston, Sudbury, and Red Deer, Alberta. These efforts focused primarily on gauging how viewers (including "core" fans, younger viewers, and those new to the country) consume NHL content, and help determine how Rogers would present, market, and distribute its overall coverage to these varying demographics.[19] The hiring of George Stroumboulopoulos—the former host of a self-titled CBC talk show and an alumnus of the now-Rogers owned sports radio station CJCL—as the main on-air host of Hockey Night, was intended to help the telecasts appeal to a younger audience.[20] Rogers also announced plans to use its multicultural Omni Television stations to broadcast a doubleheader of Hockey Night in Canada games with commentary in Punjabi (carrying over from CBC's past digital coverage of games in the language), and ancillary hockey content in 22 languages, such as Hockey 101—an instructional series explaining the basic rules and concepts of hockey.[21][22]

As a part of the winning bid success, Rogers decided to host a three-day, pre-season employee seminar at Toronto's exclusive Shangri-La Hotel.[23] It was followed up by a party at the Ritz-Carleton Hotel in September 2014.[24]

Rogers sought to increase the prominence of NHL content on digital platforms by re-launching the NHL's digital out-of-market sports package GameCentre Live as Rogers NHL GameCentre Live, adding the ability to stream all of Rogers' national NHL telecasts, along with in-market streaming of regional games for teams whose regional rights are held by Sportsnet.[25] GamePlus—an additional mode featuring alternate camera angles intended for a second screen experience, such as angles focusing on certain players, net and referee cameras, and a Skycam in selected venues, was also added exclusively for GameCentre Live subscribers who are subscribed to Rogers' cable, internet, or wireless services.[19][26]

In the lead-up to the 2014–15 season, Rogers began to promote its networks as the new home of the NHL through a multi-platform advertising campaign; the campaign featured advertising and cross-promotions across Rogers' properties, such as The Shopping Channel, which began to feature presentations of NHL merchandise, and its parenting magazine Today's Parent, which began to feature hockey-themed stories in its issues.[27] On May 28, 2014, Rogers announced a six-year sponsorship deal with Scotiabank, which saw the bank become the title sponsor for Wednesday Night Hockey and Hockey Day in Canada, and become a sponsor for other segments and initiatives throughout Rogers' NHL coverage.[28]

Promotional banner during its first season.

Sportsnet's coverage premiered on October 8, 2014, with an opening night doubleheader of Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey, featuring the Montreal Canadiens at the Toronto Maple Leafs, followed by the Calgary Flames and the Vancouver Canucks. The inaugural game was the most-watched program of the night in Canada, and the most-watched telecast in Sportsnet's history, with 2.01 million viewers (beating the previous record of 1.44 million set by the Toronto Blue Jays' home opener in 2013, but since surpassed by multiple games of the 2015 American League Division Series involving the Blue Jays, which topped out at 4.38 million viewers for game 4).[29][30] However, viewership was down from 2013's opening night game, which was televised by CBC.[31]

On October 5, 2015, Rogers announced that it planned to produce 101 Sportsnet telecasts in 4K ultra-high-definition format in 2016, including "marquee" NHL games.[32]

Beginning with a January 23, 2016 Toronto Maple Leafs/Montreal Canadiens game as part of Hockey Night in Canada, Sportsnet planned to broadcast 8 regular season games in the 2015–16 season in 4K—all of which were hosted by Toronto, Montreal or Ottawa, as well as two playoff games to be determined. At the time, Bell Media and Rogers Media via the joint venture Dome Productions shared the only 4K-capable production unit operating in Canada, which was being used for Toronto Raptors NBA basketball and NHL games being televised by TSN and Sportsnet. Sportsnet chose to upconvert non-4K content to the format in its telecasts, arguing that using only 4K footage would hinder the telecast's ability to provide storytelling.[33][34][35]

From 2014 to 2022, Sportsnet broadcast Rogers Hometown Hockey as its second national TV game of the week; the games featured a pre-game show and studio segments hosted by Ron MacLean from different Canadian cities, and profiling their local players and hockey communities.[47] Initially on Sunday nights, the games later moved to Monday nights. Hometown Hockey was discontinued after the 2021–22 season and replaced by Rogers Monday Night Hockey; the games place a focus on additional analytics via the NHL's player and puck tracking system, and include an alternate feed for selected games on Sportsnet Now featuring additional on-screen statistics.[48][49]

Don Cherry (until 2019) and Ron MacLean (pictured in 2002) are among the Hockey Night in Canada talent retained by Rogers.

Hockey Night in Canada remains in its traditional Saturday night timeslot, but rather than having games split across CBC Television stations on a regional basis, multiple games are broadcast nationally, split across CBC, Citytv, and the Sportsnet networks. FX Canada was also initially involved, with the channel typically airing an all-U.S. game. Three to five games air during the early, 7 p.m. ET window, and two more air on Sportsnet and CBC for the 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT west coast window. Rogers estimated a 300% increase in the number of Hockey Night games available nationally under the new arrangement.[6][9][17][18] Though split national/regional broadcasts are possible, arrangements will be made to ensure that viewers have on-air access to any games affected, ensuring that no Saturday night game will be unavailable to viewers on a regional basis.[14] Alongside HNIC, CBC also broadcast the NHL Winter Classic and All-Star Game during the 2014–15 season.[50][51] The Winter Classic was removed from CBC's package and moved to Sportsnet for 2016.[52]

CBC's games are no longer produced by CBC Sports and Rogers sells all advertising during the telecasts, but CBC is still provided with advertising time for its own programming.[18] While CBC did not pay a rights fee to either Rogers or the NHL, the public broadcaster does not receive any revenue from the telecasts, aside from payments by Rogers for its use of certain CBC personalities and ancillary staff, and its rent of studio space.[9][10][11] In order to assign responsibility for the content of the telecasts, compliance with regulatory guidelines, and advertising to Rogers, its NHL telecasts on CBC are legally considered to be broadcast by a part-time television network owned by the Sportsnet subsidiary, which is affiliated with CBC's English-language television stations. A license for this arrangement was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in April 2015.[53]

Some of CBC's personalities and production staff were retained for the new Hockey Night in Canada—certain staff members, such as producers Joel Darling and Sherali Najak, remain employed by the CBC, while some jumped to Rogers entirely.[54] From 2014 through the 2015–16 season, Ron MacLean was replaced as host by George Stroumboulopoulos. Ron MacLean and Don Cherry continued to present their traditional Coach's Corner segment during the first intermission of Hockey Night games up until November 9, 2019.[54][55]

CBC President Hubert T. Lacroix, in notifying CBC employees of the deal in an internal memo, noted that the new sub-licensing arrangement with Rogers "may not be the ideal scenario [for the CBC] but, it is the right outcome for Canadian hockey fans", as it allowed the NHL and the Hockey Night in Canada brand to remain on CBC and be made available to a wider audience with minimal cost to the public broadcaster, which has gone through reductions in funding in recent years.[10] Lacroix, in his memo, believed that CBC's non-hockey content would remain well-promoted on the new Hockey Night, and that being shut out of the package entirely would have been a major blow to the CBC's prestige.[56] In turn, CBC announced in April 2014 that it would cut a total of 657 jobs across its divisions, and no longer pursue broadcast rights to professional sporting events. The loss of Hockey Night was cited as a factor to the budget cuts, but was also credited to the performance of CBC's entertainment programming.[57]

The sub-licensing deal was initially announced as lasting for four years; CBC staff described the agreement as a means of providing a "structured exit from hockey" in the event that Rogers does not extend the agreement. The deal was also considered a low-cost means of allowing CBC to maintain a level of major sports output in the lead-up to future Olympic Games and the 2015 Pan-American Games, whose rights are owned outright by CBC. In the case of the Olympics, CBC's coverage is sub-licensed to Rogers and Bell Media networks under a similar time-brokerage and production subsidization arrangement.[14][58][59] In 2017, The Globe and Mail reported that the CBC and Rogers had quietly extended the agreement into a fifth season, while Moore stated that he wished to extend the partnership further.[60] On December 19, 2017, Rogers announced that it had renewed this arrangement through the remainder of its current NHL contract.[61]

As of the 2019–20 season, Sportsnet's regional feeds collectively hold regional broadcast rights to four of the seven Canadian NHL franchises: the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sportsnet Ontario (split with TSN4),[37] the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers on Sportsnet West, and the Vancouver Canucks on Sportsnet Pacific. The Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, and Winnipeg Jets have regional television deals with TSN, and the Buffalo Sabres' Canadian regional rights are held by TSN parent company Bell Canada.[37][62]

Unlike Sportsnet's national games, these games are subject to blackout outside of the teams' home markets. These games can be watched out of market on NHL Centre Ice or Rogers NHL Live.[25] In-market streaming of regional games on Sportsnet is also available on Rogers NHL Live.[25] Due to its ownership of the national contract, Rogers has a monopoly on all English-language telecasts of teams whose regional rights are exclusively owned by Sportsnet.[37]

A select number of regional Sportsnet games may be aired nationally on the network's sister channels (usually Sportsnet One, Sportsnet 360 or an out-of-market Sportsnet channel). With a few exceptions (e.g. NHL opening week), Sportsnet rarely airs nationally televised doubleheaders of Rogers Monday Night Hockey and Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey; some dates feature multiple games broadcast at the same time across different Sportsnet national and regional channels. Instead, Sportsnet uses the late-game national window to air either a team-specific broadcast (e.g. Oilers Hockey on Sportsnet), or a simulcast of an American TV network whenever they schedule all-U.S. matchups. In the case of all-Canadian matchups (e.g. Battle of Alberta, Canucks–Flames rivalry), most markets, including the host city, may receive the home team's broadcast. For instance, if a Canucks–Flames game in Calgary is aired nationally, a majority of the markets would receive the Flames' home broadcast, while only the Vancouver market would receive the Canucks' road broadcast.[63]

In the 2013–14 season, Sportsnet lost the Senators to TSN, but acquired rights to the Canadiens to replace them on Sportsnet East under a three-year deal.[64] The contract expired after the 2016–17 season, and the team moved to TSN2 the following season;[65][62] TSN's owner Bell holds an ownership stake in the Canadiens, as well as its regional French-language rights. Both Rogers and Bell own stakes in the Maple Leafs and split broadcast rights between them.[64]

On January 6, 2021, Rogers announced extended regional rights agreements with both the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames under the terms of a new multi-year deal.[66][67]

The Sportsnet networks and CBC share in coverage of the Stanley Cup playoffs under the Hockey Night in Canada banner. Typically, first and second round series involving Canadian teams and some high-profile all-American series are broadcast on CBC and Sportsnet, with Rogers providing broadcast crews for these series. Other series use the broadcast feed from the American networks. Selected games are simulcast with Punjabi-language commentary on Omni Television.[68][69] All games from the conference finals onward are simulcast with CBC.[13][14][70][71]

Like in the previous national deal with CBC and TSN, the league still gives U.S. rights-holders (ESPN, ABC and TNT hold the national American TV rights as of 2021) the first choice of games and times during the playoffs. As then-rightsholder NBC preferred afternoon playoff games on the weekends, there were at least two Saturdays in May 2015 that did not have a post-season night game.[72]

Sportsnet and TVA Sports held broadcast rights to the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, organized by the NHL and the NHL Players Association. Although it was initially reported that Rogers was allowed to match competing bids for the rights per its NHL rights contract, blocking a competing bid by TSN, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman denied that there was such a stipulation, and that the bidding process was "competitive".[73][74] Similarly to HNIC, CBC aired Sportsnet-produced coverage of the tournament's semi-finals and final series.[75][76]

Ratings for Rogers' inaugural season of NHL broadcasts were mixed in comparison to the previous CBC and TSN arrangements. Rogers had aimed for a 20% increase in overall viewership for national NHL broadcasts during its first season as rightsholder.[107] During the first two months of its inaugural season, Numeris estimated an increase in average viewership for Wednesday night games and east coast games on Hockey Night (with the latter averaging 2.18 million viewers),[50] and a 9% increase in the number of viewers who have watched at least part of a game.[107] However, viewership of west coast games during Hockey Night fell by 17%; Moore argued that this was a side effect of the new format for Hockey Night, as the audience is "splintered" by those who do not switch channels to watch the late games (as opposed to the previous arrangement, in which all games were solely aired by CBC, thus all the early games would lead into the late game). In total, these numbers were behind Rogers' expectations.[107]

Although a 67% improvement over the entertainment programs formerly broadcast by City on Sunday nights, ratings for the first eight Hometown Hockey games were modest and lower than expected by Rogers, with only two games (its debut game, and an Ottawa Senators/Toronto Maple Leafs game on November 9, 2014, which had been rescheduled from a Wednesday night game following the Parliament Hill shootings)[108] surpassing one million viewers.[107][109] Moore admitted that the Sunday primetime games were a new concept that still needed time to establish, again drawing comparisons to Sunday Night Football, but that they were succeeding in their goal of attracting more viewership to City.[109]

By January 2015, average viewership for Hockey Night east-coast games fell to 1.69 million viewers, in comparison to the average 1.8 million that CBC brought at the same point in the previous season; the poor performance of the heavily viewed Toronto Maple Leafs was partially blamed for the decline. Ratings for the 2015 NHL All-Star Game also fell sharply, losing over half its viewers in comparison to the 2012 edition. Moore disputed the accuracy of Numeris's numbers, arguing that they did not properly account for multi-platform viewership, and that its ratings panel did not cover enough sports-oriented demographics. Numeris acknowledged that it would look into Rogers' complaints, but noted that its ratings panels were meant to represent a wide array of Canadian demographics, and that, although they are not yet reported separately, its ratings did account for viewership on digital platforms.[50] The Maple Leafs' ratings would fall as low as 743,000 viewers. Aggregate ratings began to recover by March; the March 21 east coast games (which saw the Maple Leafs' game moved to Sportsnet in favor of a Montreal Canadiens game on CBC) drew aggregate ratings of around 2.2 million viewers across CBC, City, and Sportsnet, with the Canadiens bringing 922,000 viewers.[110]

Viewership rebounded for the 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs, with five Canadian teams involved in the first round; average viewership of first-round games increased over the previous season, with one of the games in the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens' first round series on CBC seen by 3.76 million viewers.[111][112] However, following the elimination of all Canadian teams from contention, ratings dropped significantly, with Numeris estimating an overall decrease of 8% in average viewership on CBC, and a 14% decrease in average viewership for Sportsnet in comparison to TSN's 2014 playoff coverage. With 2.62 million viewers, Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals was the lowest-rated deciding game since Game 7 in 2003; the game competed against a match of the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup involving Team Canada on CTV and TSN (1.8 million), and a Toronto Blue Jays/New York Mets game on Sportsnet (782,000; the team was in the midst of a major winning streak).[113]

The 2015–16 season saw major ratings declines, with Hockey Night in Canada down 18%, Hometown Hockey down 34%,[114] and ratings for the 2016 Stanley Cup playoffs were down by 61% over the first five days of play,[115] as no Canadian team made the playoffs for the first time since 1970.[116][117] The lack of Canadian teams resulted in cuts to coverage; Sportsnet used just three dedicated play-by-play crews during the first round (with a fourth used for select games) and only produced its own coverage for games which aired on the CBC (all other games were simulcast from U.S. broadcasters).[118][117]

In 2017, five Canadian teams qualified for the first round of the playoffs, which was expected to improve ratings. Scott Moore told The New York Times that he was extremely positive over the large number of Canadian teams in contention—this time including the top Canadian media market of Toronto. He warned that "there's going to be a year where Edmonton is playing Montreal in the Stanley Cup Finals, and someone will think I'm a genius."[119]

In 2018, while only two Canadian teams made the playoffs, they once again included the Maple Leafs, as well as the Winnipeg Jets—who ultimately advanced to the Western Conference final, but were defeated by the Vegas Golden Knights in their inaugural season. Sportsnet stated that the Jets' second-round series had an average of 2.2 million viewers.[120][121][122]

The GamePlus features added to the Rogers NHL GameCentre Live service provide additional in-game camera angles for subscribers who also subscribe to Rogers' cable, internet, or wireless services. In October 2014, Bell filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), arguing that the exclusivity of GamePlus to Rogers subscribers was anti-competitive and showed undue preference. Bell felt that the exclusivity violated a CRTC ruling banning vertically integrated telecommunications companies from being the exclusive distributor of television content on internet and mobile television platforms, as footage from these additional angles are occasionally incorporated into the linear telecast.[123][124][125]

Rogers objected, arguing that GamePlus was an interactive second screen experience that is separate from the telecast by nature. Rogers' CEO Guy Lawrence also accused Bell of attempting to "stifle innovation in hockey", and suggested that its actions were in retaliation for TSN's loss of national cable rights to the NHL.[124] On March 17, 2015, the CRTC dismissed the complaint and ruled in favour of Rogers, affirming that the GamePlus content was not "mainly" intended for television, and thus not subject to the non-exclusivity rules.[125]

For the 2018–19 season, Rogers discontinued the free trials, subscriptions, and additional GamePlus features to Rogers' cable, internet, and wireless service users, and required all users to pay the regular fees.[126]