Cont'd - NHL makes 12-year/$5.2 billion Canadian TV deal w/ Sportsnet, CBC, TSN out

[FakeKidPoker*]

TSN looked really focused on the Raps off the top of the broadcast/trying for more "small talk". I just wish there was more than ONE NHL game on the schedule tonight so one could really judge how they handled the news. Kate looked sad when reading it.

My question is will TSN become the home of the NBA which they eventually only show Crosby and the odd Canadian team highlights (kind of like they do with NBA,only Raps and whatever team Lebron is on exists). Will they start to shy away from covering the entire NHL on a nightly basis within the highlight packages? Interesting to follow.

EDIT: Duthie voice was cracking up during Insider Trading segment. It was like when he was talking his mind was realizing it will be end of an era/things will never be the same/some will move on/some will be fired etc...

Yes the Insider trading segment was very awkward.. Mckenzie was yelling at the start.

But in the end their arrogant attitude caused this.

Maybe now with Sportsnet we can get more NHL talk and not a bunch of crap on who will be on the Olympic team... 4 years out!

 

[FakeKidPoker*]

I just watched the sportscenter opening for tonight.

The Rights deal was 4th on the list... they opened with the Raptors.

haha.. bitter much?

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Again, the point is missed. Rogers is not a monopoly. When it comes to cable, they dont even have service across the whole country. And where they do, they have competitors. You can get Bell TV service and not directly pay Rogers a cent. Bell will have to pay Rogers for access to Sportsnet and other Rogers properties, but that's no different than it is today.

This is the key point. Any other cable provider is now subservient to Rogers, because almost nobody is going to subscribe to a cable provider that doesn't televise hockey. Rogers can bend over other providers to pay for the right to air the Sportsnet channels, and those costs will naturally be passed on to their customers.

As for viewing habits, I cant speak to what others do, but I watch my favourite team, and on other days I flip around using Centre Ice. Under the current day, you are guaranteed games on Wed and Sat. Now you are guaranteed decent games on three nights instead of two. And on Sat it looks like you will have afternoon games on top of the standard 7/10 games. Again, dont see a problem.

As a fan, whats the downside?

Yeah its fantastic, you get tons of games. Except you now have to pay more for it. Unless we're going to operate under the assumption that the egalitarians at Rogers will be content with modest profits.

Now you may say nobody has to buy the upper tier channels like 360 and Sportsnet One if they don't want to. Very true. Except there is absolutely nothing that prevents Rogers from sticking 20 (insert your favorite team) games on 360, another 20 on SN One, another 20 on a team's specialty channel, and the other 20 on the basic regional channel.

Rogers has paid a huge sum of money for these rights. It is very clear that they are banking on a lot of people subscribing to all the different channels they operate. The best way to make this happen is to spread each Canadian team's games out onto multiple different stations.

Yeah, it's not unfair that you'll have to pay more to get a whole bunch more games, but this will be set up to ensure that you have to pay that much JUST to get all of your own teams games as well. There is not the slightest chance you're going to be able to get 60+ Oilers/Flames/Sens/Canucks games with a lower tier package. You will need to get high end cable packages. But hey, you'll get to watch a whole bunch of teams you don't care about as well with that high end package.

Basically if you're a hockey junkie that doesn't care who is playing and just wants to see as many games as possible, this is a good deal for you. For the other 95% of consumers, not so much. I know a lot of people that watch every Oilers game but might only watch 10 games all year that don't involve them. These are typical fans/viewers. The people on this forum that closely follow the entire league are exceptions, not the norm.

 

[Jetsfan79]

I'm a little confused on how the first couple of rounds of the playoffs will work., Right now I have SN1, SN west, SN360 and City. Will they put playoff games on SN East, Ontario and Pacific, that will NOT be shown in either SN1, SN west and City?
If so I will be screwed as I don't get those channels. Regular season I'm not as concerned but the playoffs worry me.

 

[Wetcoaster]

I don't want to read through this whole thread, so could someone help me out really quick? I'm a Panthers fan in Canada, and confused as to what this means...Are Panthers games now all on Sportsnet, or is this deal only for Canadian hockey teams?

It deals with national broadcast rights in Canada focusing on Canadian teams but there will be match-ups of US based teams broadcast nationally in Canada.

As an example from last Saturday - here is how it might look with five games between US based teams being broadcast and five games with at least one of the teams based in Canada:

 

[Kyle McMahon]

I'm a little confused on how the first couple of rounds of the playoffs will work., Right now I have SN1, SN west, SN360 and City. Will they put playoff games on SN East, Ontario and Pacific, that will NOT be shown in either SN1, SN west and City?
If so I will be screwed as I don't get those channels. Regular season I'm not as concerned but the playoffs worry me.

Of course they will. Because it will then force you to order up those Sportsnet channels that you don't have, which is the only way they are going to come up with the $400 million per season they will be paying to the NHL.

Not really fair, is it? That's OK, it's a monopoly, they aren't supposed to be fair.

 

[FakeKidPoker*]

I don't see why people are really complaining too much.. TSN just had a long term exclusive window for the rights.. it was pretty much the same thing.

You will still be getting your games on Hockey Night in Canada and City.

 

[PensFanSince1989]

Of course they will. Because it will then force you to order up those Sportsnet channels that you don't have, which is the only way they are going to come up with the $400 million per season they will be paying to the NHL.

Not really fair, is it? That's OK, it's a monopoly, they aren't supposed to be fair.

How is it not fair?

 

[Millpool]

Those people saying that there is no downside to this as a hockey fan are being rather ignorant. Sure, maybe you will be able to watch more hockey than you do now, but for a lot of people this is going to become prohibitively expensive. Believe it or not, there are still loads of people that can't afford to dish out for cable, let along a bunch of speciality channels owned by a monopoly. For an awful lot of people this is terrible news.

CBC has been so central to Canadian hockey culture because as long as you had a tv set you could watch hockey every week and you could watch virtually all of the playoffs. That's amazing! Now the playoffs are gone and Saturdays will be available for only 4 more years, if I'm understanding correctly.

It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the general trend of tv viewership. I know a lot of people who, over the past few years, cancelled their cable packages since they could get all their movies, tv shows, news and sports from speciality platforms like netflix, gamecentre, etc. Rogers would obviously like to reverse that, but I wonder how successful they'll be.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

How is it not fair?

Previously you had competing networks showing NHL playoff games. Half of them on free TV, another large portion on a channel included in most basic cable packages. A few on TSN2. Now you only have one network, and they control it all. And they own a lot of different TV channels. They could decide to put one playoff series each on 8 different channels. Is it fair that you might have to order up 8 different TV stations to watch the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs?

 

[Wetcoaster]

I'm a little confused on how the first couple of rounds of the playoffs will work., Right now I have SN1, SN west, SN360 and City. Will they put playoff games on SN East, Ontario and Pacific, that will NOT be shown in either SN1, SN west and City?
If so I will be screwed as I don't get those channels. Regular season I'm not as concerned but the playoffs worry me.

Unlikely.

CBC will also carry half of the series and the finals.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

I don't see why people are really complaining too much.. TSN just had a long term exclusive window for the rights.. it was pretty much the same thing.

You will still be getting your games on Hockey Night in Canada and City.

The only thing TSN had was exclusivity on Wednesday nights.

Currently, Sportsnet has the bulk of regional coverage, TSN has a little bit of that plus a random slate of games during the week, and CBC has Saturday nights. The playoffs were split between CBC and TSN. Everyone is getting a piece of the pie.

Going forward, one network controls 100% of the coverage. They'll air a small portion of that coverage on CBC for a few years. That is not in any way, shape, or form similar to the current setup.

 

[ucanthanzalthetruth]

Thanks a lot Wetcoaster. One final thing: for a couple games it says not broadcast under current contract...Is that referring to the deal that expires in 2013? If so, I'm gonna hate watching hockey on Sportsnet360, that ticker is distracting lol

 

[saffronleaf]

Watching SC tonight was sad. Hopefully the analysts remain there, SC was and is the best part about TSN.

 

[FuriousSenator]

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, Rogers Communications president and CEO Nadir Mohamed and other executives field questions from the media in regards to acquiring NHL broadcasting rights for the next 12 years.

Video:
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/nhl-rogers-broadcast-deal-qa/

Rogers Media president Keith Pelley outlines the reasons why this is a such a great day for hockey fans: “You’ll be able to watch what you want, when you want, on whatever platform you want.â€

Video:
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/pelley-great-day-for-hockey-fans/

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, deputy commissioner Bill Daly and chief operating officer John Collins join Prime Time Sports to discuss signing a 12-year broadcasting deal with Rogers.

Video:
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/pts-nhl-rogers-shared-same-vision/

Yah for how much?

 

[FuriousSenator]

Those people saying that there is no downside to this as a hockey fan are being rather ignorant. Sure, maybe you will be able to watch more hockey than you do now, but for a lot of people this is going to become prohibitively expensive. Believe it or not, there are still loads of people that can't afford to dish out for cable, let along a bunch of speciality channels owned by a monopoly. For an awful lot of people this is terrible news.

CBC has been so central to Canadian hockey culture because as long as you had a tv set you could watch hockey every week and you could watch virtually all of the playoffs. That's amazing! Now the playoffs are gone and Saturdays will be available for only 4 more years, if I'm understanding correctly.

It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the general trend of tv viewership. I know a lot of people who, over the past few years, cancelled their cable packages since they could get all their movies, tv shows, news and sports from speciality platforms like netflix, gamecentre, etc. Rogers would obviously like to reverse that, but I wonder how successful they'll be.

This exactly. We don't all live off of momma and poppa's dime and many of us cannot afford even basic cable, much less all the stupid specialty channels Rogers will be shifting your favourite team to and from.

Honestly, if it becomes the case I need to buy SN360, World, and One just to catch all the Sens games I would have before; I'm out. I'll stream illegally and stick with Bell services before I have to do that.

 

[Confucius]

What about a team's broadcast territorial rights? It's always been you can't broadcast into a team's home territory. Now with so many options, three times a week it seems the league has taken away the territorial rights. I realize it is better for the fan but what if I'm Melnyk and I don't want the hockey fans in Ottawa watching a Leaf game. I think he'd want them watching the Sens. Won't this deal cut into the money the sens can make selling advertising.

Being a Leaf fan I think it's great that the Leaf owners will now be making more money from all over the country but what about the other teams? I'd think they are pissed.

 

[Cant Kick On 1 Foot]

My take on this situation:

Screw the NHL for giving such IMMENSE pour to one provider in Canada, which basically handcuffs its main supporter, the Canadian fans. And screw Sportsnet for basically having a monopoly on our sport. Undoubtably sportsnet will charge crazy prices for their terrible product now and here is one fan that WILL NOT spend a dime more than I already do on the NHL product, it's already too damn expensive and that goes for the sport itself...

 

[RangerBoy]

Its $4.9B in US dollars

In an agreement that will more than double its Canadian television revenue, the N.H.L. announced a 12-year, $4.9 billion deal Tuesday that gives Rogers Communications the exclusive rights to all national hockey telecasts in Canada beginning next season.

The value far surpasses the league’s expiring six-year agreements with CBC, the cable network TSN and the French-language cable network RDS, which total about $160 million per year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/s...-telecast-deal-in-canada.html?ref=sports&_r=0

Its not $400M per year.

These figures are in US dollars

Rogers will pay the NHL $300 million in the first year and will gradually increase to approximately mid-$500 million in the final year. The deal also includes an upfront payment of $150 million spread over the first two years of the contract.

http://www.cbssports.com/nhl/eye-on...-year-52-billion-canadian-tv-deal-with-rogers

TSN had the right to bid on the package. They didn't value the NHL as much as Rogers did. They will regret it. The agreement is for 12 years. NBC didn't want to pay for the NFL anymore in the late 1990's. FOX outbid CBS for the NFC package. CBS outbid NBC for the AFC package. The NFC package is worth more. NBC had no football. Then NBC got back into the NFL mix by taking the Sunday night game away from ESPN.

Sporsnet should keep Hughson and Simpson together. They were teamed together by Sportsnet when they had the national package for 4-5 years in the late 1990's to early 2000's.

Millard and Kypreos are good. I like MacLean. Shannon is good. Johnston is really good.

Keep Elliotte Freidman. LeBrun also works for ESPN. Would Sportsnet allow him to work for ESPN? He would be a good add. Maybe even bring Dreger back to Sportsnet. Expand the Hotstove.

Get rid of MacLean and Donald S. Cherry.

Hire Ferraro. He is a former Sportsnet analyst on Oilers games. Ferraro has worked for ESPN and NBC. He won't be out of work. NBC should hire Ferraro if Sportsnet doesn't want him.

Healey is OK.

Not a big fan of PJ Stock and Kevin Weekes.

I am an American but I watch all of the Canadian broadcasts. I prefer the Canadian feed over the US feeds on GCL.

 

[Tacos]

It's sunk in now and here are the possible positives:

Increased chance of a Habs or Sens game as the HNIC headliner

TSN going with amazing in-house production like ESPN (30 in 30)

More hockey

 

[Damisoph]

I'm assuming this has been addressed somewhere in these 31 pages, but I'm a little irritated that CBC spent approx $200M of taxpayer money on this bid, assisting a private company in obtaining this contract and get virtually nothing out of it, other than some advertising time during HNIC.

Maybe I'm ignorant and missing something.

 

[Macman]

I'm assuming this has been addressed somewhere in these 31 pages, but I'm a little irritated that CBC spent approx $200M of taxpayer money on this bid, assisting a private company in obtaining this contract and get virtually nothing out of it, other than some advertising time during HNIC.

Maybe I'm ignorant and missing something.

Where does it say they paid $200 mil on the bid? That might be what they offered for the rights but it was rejected.

 

[cbcwpg]

That is framed way too simply. Does Sportsnet not work to improve their Canucks regional content because they are the sole provider?

Of course they do.

I alluded to the slight uneasiness we all have re: monopoly, Rogers, etc but the NHL would not sign a 12 year deal without commitments the content will improve, evolve, innovate and grow.

Yeah.. right. [MOD EDIT]

Let's say for the sake of argument SN does absolutely nothing to improve anything. What will the NHL do? Give the money back and cancel the deal? Not likely.

Hopefully SN does improve, but if they decide not to, this is what we are stuck with for 12 years. But more importantly than the quality of the product is how much more is it going to cost me to watch, because you know it's going to cost more. The consumers are picking up the tab on this.

 

[ResilientBeast]

Its $4.9B in US dollars





http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/s...-telecast-deal-in-canada.html?ref=sports&_r=0

Its not $400M per year.

These figures are in US dollars



http://www.cbssports.com/nhl/eye-on...-year-52-billion-canadian-tv-deal-with-rogers

TSN had the right to bid on the package. They didn't value the NHL as much as Rogers did. They will regret it. The agreement is for 12 years. NBC didn't want to pay for the NFL anymore in the late 1990's. FOX outbid CBS for the NFC package. CBS outbid NBC for the AFC package. The NFC package is worth more. NBC had no football. Then NBC got back into the NFL mix by taking the Sunday night game away from ESPN.

Sporsnet should keep Hughson and Simpson together. They were teamed together by Sportsnet when they had the national package for 4-5 years in the late 1990's to early 2000's.

Millard and Kypreos are good. I like MacLean. Shannon is good. Johnston is really good.

Keep Elliotte Freidman. LeBrun also works for ESPN. Would Sportsnet allow him to work for ESPN? He would be a good add. Maybe even bring Dreger back to Sportsnet. Expand the Hotstove.

Get rid of MacLean and Donald S. Cherry.

Hire Ferraro. He is a former Sportsnet analyst on Oilers games. Ferraro has worked for ESPN and NBC. He won't be out of work. NBC should hire Ferraro if Sportsnet doesn't want him.

Healey is OK.

Not a big fan of PJ Stock and Kevin Weekes.

I am an American but I watch all of the Canadian broadcasts. I prefer the Canadian feed over the US feeds on GCL.

I agree with most of this except the bolded

 

[Faltorvo]

This is the key point. Any other cable provider is now subservient to Rogers, because almost nobody is going to subscribe to a cable provider that doesn't televise hockey. Rogers can bend over other providers to pay for the right to air the Sportsnet channels, and those costs will naturally be passed on to their customers.



Yeah its fantastic, you get tons of games. Except you now have to pay more for it. Unless we're going to operate under the assumption that the egalitarians at Rogers will be content with modest profits.

Now you may say nobody has to buy the upper tier channels like 360 and Sportsnet One if they don't want to. Very true. Except there is absolutely nothing that prevents Rogers from sticking 20 (insert your favorite team) games on 360, another 20 on SN One, another 20 on a team's specialty channel, and the other 20 on the basic regional channel.

Rogers has paid a huge sum of money for these rights. It is very clear that they are banking on a lot of people subscribing to all the different channels they operate. The best way to make this happen is to spread each Canadian team's games out onto multiple different stations.

Yeah, it's not unfair that you'll have to pay more to get a whole bunch more games, but this will be set up to ensure that you have to pay that much JUST to get all of your own teams games as well. There is not the slightest chance you're going to be able to get 60+ Oilers/Flames/Sens/Canucks games with a lower tier package. You will need to get high end cable packages. But hey, you'll get to watch a whole bunch of teams you don't care about as well with that high end package.

Basically if you're a hockey junkie that doesn't care who is playing and just wants to see as many games as possible, this is a good deal for you. For the other 95% of consumers, not so much. I know a lot of people that watch every Oilers game but might only watch 10 games all year that don't involve them. These are typical fans/viewers. The people on this forum that closely follow the entire league are exceptions, not the norm.

Now there is a man who gets it, BRAVO