TORONTO (AP) — The NHL and Rogers Communications announced a new 12-year national media rights deal Wednesday to air games on multiple platforms in Canada.
The agreement, which was first reported Monday, is valued at $11 billion Canadian dollars, or roughly $7.7 billion. The new deal runs through the 2037-38 season.
“Based on how the discussions were going and Rogers’ resolve to retain us and our resolve to try and continue to make the partnership work, we actually extended the exclusive negotiating period so that we could get to a point that we were both comfortable,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said at a news conference about the deal. “It wasn’t what I would describe as contentious in the least. I think we were pretty much on the same page. We had to work a little bit on the money, but that came together as well. But in the final analysis, we wanted to be together. And that’s how it came together, as quickly as it did.”
In Canadian dollars, it is worth more than double the previous contract signed in November 2013 that cost Rogers $5.2 billion in the local currency.
Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri said the finances have worked out and will continue to work out with the new deal. Sportsnet, Rogers’ sports network, said its revenue has more than doubled since 2013.
“The value of live sports content just continues to appreciate, and it’s really rooted in viewership continuing to grow,” Staffieri said. “If you look at our NHL deal over the last decade, viewership grew by 50%. And with that kind of growth, what you see is revenue growing at a very steady and healthy pace in terms of advertising revenue, subscription revenue, and in the deal we have now, sub-licensing revenue. And so as we look to the next 12 years, we were very thoughtful in how we thought about the economics.”
The NBA’s U.S. Rights deal went up 160% from 2016 to 2025 and the NHL’s U.S. Rights deal increased by 213% from 2011 to 2021. Rogers’ deal is a 111% raise from 2014 to 2026.
This is the league’s latest source of revenue after contracting with ESPN and Turner Sports in 2021 for the current U.S. TV and streaming rights deal for $4.5 billion over seven years combined.
The deal includes national rights across all platforms, including TV, digital, and streaming, for all national regular-season games, in all languages, as well as out-of-market rights for all regional games.
It also includes national rights to all playoff games, the Stanley Cup Final and all special events and tentpole events, in all languages.
The agreement allows for strategic sub-licensing for a subset of the rights, including national French-language and a single-night exclusive national package.