TORONTO – Rogers’ recent $5.2 billion deal for Canadian broadcast and digital rights to NHL games over the next 12 years could be penalized by regulators should they perceive content distribution plans as working against the Canadian consumer, through either restricted access or high price, says Moody's Investors Service.
Although the plans for distribution are presently unknown, “commercial logic calls for both wide and proprietary distribution”, reads a new report from Moody’s called ‘Rogers' NHL Deal: Uncharted Territory for Content Distribution and Monetization’.
The report says that if Rogers were either a traditional national over-the-air television broadcaster or an approved specialty (cable) channel, broad distribution and universal access to NHL hockey in Canada would be assured. However, Rogers is neither, the report continues, and is therefore not obligated to "televise" NHL content. (Ed note: Cartt.ca begs to differ and was not immediately able to clarify this statement.) Existing regulations never anticipated this outcome.
"We believe that Rogers entered into the deal with designs of being more than a mere digital age reincarnation of a traditional television broadcaster," said Moody's SVP Bill Wolfe, in the report. "Since Rogers owns fixed-line and wireless networks, we think the company plans to combine relatively broad distribution to other broadcast distribution undertakings… with tactics that provide an advantage to its network-based operations in select circumstances."
Since the Canadian government has adapted to new developments with ad hoc regulations, Moody's says it expects that any “adverse developments for consumers to prompt a targeted response rather than a comprehensive re-engineering of regulations”.
