Sportsnet and CBC dropped a bombshell announcement Tuesday, and it is almost certainly bad news for Habs fans. The Canadiens are coming off one of their most exciting playoff runs in ages and the future looks exceedingly bright for the team on the ice. But the irony is that just as the team is booming, the broadcast picture for fans looks gloomy.
In a laconic statement released just before noon, the two broadcasters said that Hockey Night in Canada, a mainstay on CBC-TV since 1952, will not be returning next season. CBC will no longer broadcast NHL hockey.
The result almost certainly will be that you will have to pay more next season to watch the Canadiens. If you want to watch them on Saturday nights — the most important night for hockey in Canada — and during the playoffs, you will likely need a Sportsnet subscription.
Even worse for Canadiens fans, there is still no deal in place for a French broadcaster for nearly half of the Habs games. So it’s unclear where the French-language broadcasts of the Saturday night and Habs playoff games will end up next season. Since 2014, the Saturday-night games and all of the playoffs have been aired on TVA Sports. But the Quebecor-owned network has by all accounts lost significant money on that deal. TVA Sports has lost more than $197 million since 2014, when the NHL deal came into effect.
It is also possible that francophone fans will also have to pay more for Canadiens games beginning next season and it is even possible all of the games will not be available.
The statement read: “After a successful 12-year partnership, Sportsnet and CBC today announced the public broadcaster will no longer carry NHL broadcasts after the current season as it moves forward with a new sports programming strategy following the unprecedented success of the Milano/Cortina Olympic Games. Watching hockey on Saturday night is a time-honoured tradition for Canadians, and Sportsnet is privileged to continue delivering that tradition. This has been a terrific partnership, and both parties look forward to continued opportunities to collaborate in the future.”
Fans watch the Canadiens battle the Buffalo Sabres in Game 4 outside the Bell Centre in Montreal on May 12. Evan Buhler / Montreal Gazette
Translation: Saturday night NHL games and all playoff games will now only be available on Sportsnet, which you will have to subscribe to.
It is the fallout from the new 12-year deal that Rogers struck with the NHL to pay the league $11 billion for rights to all NHL games in Canada beginning with the start of next season. The previous Rogers deal with the NHL ran from 2014 to the end of this season, with Rogers paying $5.2 billion for those rights. As of 2014, Rogers and CBC had a deal in place with the public broadcaster airing the Saturday-night games and four rounds of playoffs. CBC was not paid for it, but the Rogers-produced Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts would regularly promote CBC shows.
The other cloud on the horizon is that you can expect more games in the coming years to appear on different streaming platforms, thus adding yet another cost for hockey fans. Last year, Monday night NHL games in Canada were exclusively on Amazon.
The outlook is just as dire for French-speaking Habs fans. Last October, Rogers and Bell Media, the latter of which owns RDS, announced that they had a deal for RDS going forward to air only 45 games, rather than the 60 it was previously broadcasting. No reason was given, but most believe it’s because RDS couldn’t afford to pay for 60 games.
That leaves 39 Canadiens games still available in French (because the number of overall games is rising from 82 to 84 next season) and it is still not known where those games will end up.
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Reached Tuesday, Louis-Philippe Neveu, vice-president of operations, news and sports for Groupe TVA, said negotiations are ongoing with the NHL and he couldn’t say whether or not TVA Sports would carry Canadiens games next season.
“I cannot comment on negotiations that are still ongoing,” said Neveu. “As (Quebecor CEO) Pierre Karl Péladeau said on TVA a few weeks ago, the discussions are advancing and we’re still at that stage … we’re still in discussions so with the negotiations still happening, anything is possible.”
The future is uncertain, but Neveu did reveal that the Canadiens’ playoff run helped TVA Sports big time.
“We had very good results for this year’s playoffs,” added Neveu. “We saw a real growth in enthusiasm for the Canadiens. So it was a very good period for us. But I can’t reveal any financial details of that. That remains confidential.”
It was indeed a great run for the fans watching this exciting young team make it to within three games of the Stanley Cup final. Now those same fans will likely have to pay more to keep watching the team they love. That just seems unsportsmanlike.