NHL And Rogers Sitting In A Tree

N-E-G-O-T-I...uh...ok this was a bad idea to go down this road (JUST LIKE THIS DEAL!)

Just hours after the NHL was given a lawsuit, they got $5.232 billion over 12 years from Rogers. The agreement gives Rogers executive rights to air NHL events in Canada. The deal includes:

• All nationally televised regular season games (Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday) with extended pre- and post-game coverage on the weekend games
• Full rights to playoff games
• Rights to events like the All Star draft /game and the NHL draft
• Out-of-market rights to regional games
• Rights to NHL Centre Ice and Gamecentre Live
• Rights to broadcast over all digital formats

In addition, Rogers has negotiated with the CBC to take control of HNIC's content (including ad revenue) in exchange for keeping the brand alive. CBC will also air the Stanley Cup Final for the next 4 years. The internal CBC memo (which details what their role is) can be seen here.

As Canadians, we can bitch about who is the lesser of the two evils (Bell and Rogers), but when it comes to broadcasting hockey, it goes:

1. TSN (Bell owned)
2. CBC (publicly owned)
3000. Sportsnet (Rogers owned)

I (fortunately?) wasn't able to see Saturday's broadcast, but one thing I did hear about is that the second intermission had Kypreos come one and exclaim (along it Stock?) that the Leafs were losing because they "lacked toughness". The lead-the-league-in-fights Leafs lack toughness. That's some top notch analysis right there! (fun fact: you can't spell analysis without ass).

Obviously panel discussions are going to suffer immensely. Instead of getting the likes of MacKenzie and (insert former player/coach that know their stuff), it's going to be Ron MacLean hosting a panel of complete morons (Friedman got relegated to rinkside reporting? WTF!). Stock and Healy were bad enough, but adding Kypreos and Doug MacLean to this - and you know they will - would take bad to a whole new level. The talk during the deal was the Roger would offer more content. How about offering better content?

The NHL is the niche of the big four sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA being the bigger leagues), and one reason is deals like these. Outside of personal networks, the NFL has 4 national broadcasters, MLB has 3, and the NBA has 2. The NHL has decided to limit itself to 1 per country (NBC in the US, Sportsnet in Canada). They did the opposite in growing and reduce themselves from 2 partners to just 1 that has full control. If they wanted to actually grow, wouldn't the better deal be keeping TSN on Wednesday and CBC on Saturday while giving that new Sunday spot to Sportsnet? Instead they put all their eggs in one basket for 12 years and end up with a reduced product.

The NHL BOG will vote on the deal next week. I doubt they will reject the deal, but there is still a chance (very slim, but still a chance).

One final note: I was watching in Inter-National League (it's rare I had to look up a league but I had to figure out where the teams play. The league is like the AHL of the EBEL in terms of ranking) and I swear watching that broadcast was better than any Sportsnet one I've seen (they show faceoffs! and they had a pretty nice iso-cam for a player stepping out of the box after a penalty).