Prime Video to exclusively broadcast Wednesday night national NHL regular-season games in Canada
Amazon’s Prime Video will exclusively broadcast Wednesday night national NHL regular-season games in Canada in English and French beginning next season, as part of a new 12-year sub-licensing agreement with Rogers Communications Inc.
The streaming service will also carry select Stanley Cup playoff series, including two first-round series and one second-round matchup annually, under the deal announced on Tuesday.
A Rogers spokesperson said the playoff allocation will follow a draft format. Prime Video will receive the fourth and fifth selections among the eight first-round series and the third choice among the four second-round matchups.
Prime Video’s lineup will include at least 26 national regular-season games, starting Sept. 30, and will be available to Prime members in Canada at no additional cost, while Rogers-owned Sportsnet retains the majority of national NHL games.
The agreement spans the full length of Rogers’s 12-year deal with the NHL for the national media rights on all platforms in Canada through the 2037-38 season.
“We’re thrilled to expand our partnership with the NHL and Rogers in this landmark agreement, which brings even more premium live sports to Prime members in Canada,” said Jay Marine, head of global sports at Prime Video, in a statement.
No more NHL on free-to-air television
The deal follows last month’s announcement that Rogers and CBC would not renew their sub-licensing agreement, ending Hockey Night in Canada on the public broadcaster after the 2025-26 season. Rogers-owned Citytv will also no longer carry national games, ending NHL broadcasts on free-to-air television.
The CBC will stop showing NHL games after the broadcaster and national rights holder Rogers Sportsnet were unable to come to agreement on a new sublicensing deal. In its place, CBC is launching a new Saturday night primetime show on television and streaming on CBC Gem, featuring Canadian athletes competing at home and at the biggest events around the world.
The CBC previously aired national games on Saturdays, along with all four rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“Our partnership with Prime Video builds on the strong foundation we have established together and reinforces NHL hockey as the most valuable sports content in Canada,” Rogers president and CEO Tony Staffieri said in a statement.
The agreement continues the NHL’s move toward streaming platforms after Prime Video began carrying Monday night games in Canada over the past two NHL seasons. That deal did not include playoff games or French-language broadcasts.
John Shannon, a longtime sportscaster and TV producer in Canada, called the shift toward streaming platforms an “inevitability,” pointing to the CFL’s recent deal to stream Saturday night games on DAZN beginning in 2027 and Major League Soccer’s partnership with Apple TV.
“It speaks to what we’ve witnessed in both Canada and the United States with streaming companies being more involved in sports,” said Shannon, a former panellist on Sportsnet. “They’re learning, as the rest of us learned, that sports is the last bastion of live television, and so from that perspective you can create better sales opportunities.
“And really, how much different is it than paying for TSN or paying for Sportsnet?” he added. “It’s basically on that same platform, on that same level.”
Financial terms of the Prime Video sub-licensing deal were not disclosed.
“Over the past two years, Prime Video has been a valuable addition to the NHL’s media lineup in Canada, joining Rogers in bringing marquee NHL games to Canadian fans,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said.
“We’re excited that Prime Video and Rogers are deepening their relationship through this long-term agreement, reflecting our shared commitment to serving English- and French-language hockey fans across Canada with premium NHL content for years to come.”
Moshe Lander, a sports economist at Concordia University in Montreal, says the deal will help Rogers recoup some of the $11 billion it paid last year to get the rights.
“What we’re finding out in professional sports is that the way that you maximize the take from broadcasting is you try and create as many broadcasting opportunities as possible,” Lander said. “The days where the CBC had a complete stranglehold on hockey is long gone.”
Lander said the 12-year length of the contract also lends itself to labour peace in a league that has had shortened seasons due to bargaining disputes three times since 1995.
“You can say: ‘Listen, I don’t know why you want a three-year, four-year collective bargaining agreement. Here’s revenues as far as the eye can see as long as you help us be a partner in the game.'”
‘Rough time’ for hockey diehards, economist says
As for viewers, Lander says the fracturing of the schedule will mean a “rough time” for diehards bouncing between packages. It also reflects what has been happening in streaming generally.
“The funny part is everybody’s been talking about cord-cutting and everyone’s saying why do I want to pay hundreds of dollars for cable when I can just get almost à la carte on demand what I want?” he said. “And yet if you start to price out everything that you put together with your Crave and Disney and Prime and Netflix and guess what? You’re probably paying close to what you did before.”
Rogers has not officially announced a sub-licensing agreement for the remainder of the national French-language broadcast rights in Canada.
La Presse reported last week that TVA Sports would continue as the French-language national rights holder and air 32 Montreal Canadiens regular-season games, up from 22 last season, while retaining exclusive rights to Canadiens playoff games.
A Rogers spokesperson said the company had nothing to share at this time.
The telecommunications giant first purchased the Canadian NHL broadcast rights in 2013 on a 12-year, $5.2-billion deal that expired last season.
Shannon said that deal, which included the sub-licensing agreement with CBC, set the stage for the evolving NHL broadcast landscape.
“The blow is softened in 2026 than it would have been in 2014, when Rogers originally ventured into this world with the NHL and then did the deal with the CBC,” Shannon said.
“The world has changed. How we watch conventional television, through specialty channels, through streamers, and it’s been coming. The NFL has embraced it, NBA has embraced it, the NHL and Major League Baseball have embraced it as well.”
Source link
