TORONTO – Look for up to seven nationally televised Hockey Night In Canada games on Saturdays next hockey season, expanded content across multiple platforms, other exclusive windows for national broadcasts, and “Hometown Hockey” every Sunday night, adding up to more than 500 NHL games on TV next season.
And that’s before the playoffs begin.
Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet and NHL at Rogers Media, made the announcement Tuesday afternoon at an upfront presentation to media, ad agencies and buyers as the Mattamy Athletic Centre in downtown Toronto (which is housed in what used to be Maple Leaf Gardens). Readers will recall that Rogers signed a $5.2 billion, 12-year rights deal with the NHL last fall and the 2014-15 season will be year one (and one wonders now if there will be any ad dollars left for other programming aimed at young males after all this hockey advertising time is sold…).
The driving force behind all of this, said Moore and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman (pictured)
is to grow the game and to meet fans wherever they are watching – or wanting to watch. “Our driving force will be to give fans the choice of however they want to watch,” said Moore in a press conference after the presentation.
“I would demand that all our games will be available on their smartphone or their iPad, or wherever they want to go. The only real limit is around the national versus regional rights. We have national rights to all games on Saturdays, Wednesdays and Sundays. We don’t have all regional rights across the country but we have the majority of regional rights and we’ll be working with the NHL to make sure that in those regions, as well as with our national broadcasts, those games are available on every platform.”
For example, Rogers has the rights to all 82 games of the Calgary Flames, Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers (of which 22 for each team can be aired nationally), 53 Leafs games (30 national), a selection of Montreal Canadiens national games (but no Ottawa Senators or Winnipeg Jets rights, which belong to Bell Media’s TSN). Montreal Canadiens regional rights are still up for grabs at this point and the mind boggles at the sum that team might be able to reap, given how Rogers desperately wants those Habs rights and how Bell Media simply must hold them. Quebecor’s TVA, TVA Sports and TVA Sports 2 is the French-language partner which will air more than 300 games beginning next season and it will show at least 22 Habs games en francais.
“Your question really goes to choice,” added Bettman at the press conference, “consumer/fan choice and when you think about what Scott described what we are going to be doing on Saturday night, no longer will you be given your assigned game based on geography. You are going to have a choice of everything that’s going on that night.”
Both Moore and Bettman were clearly excited by this new, unprecedented agreement. “We originally went to them and asked ‘do you just want a Sunday night package?’” recalled Bettman. “They said ‘yeah maybe we do, maybe we don’t.’ So we said, while you’re thinking about that, think about this – and that is what got Keith and Scott’s attention and ultimately Edward Rogers and Nadir when he was here.
“We decided to go about this differently and we think we, Rogers and our fans are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of trying a new approach.”
To that end, there will be two conventional networks (Citytv and CBC, which keeps HNIC for four more years) delivering games at the same times Saturday nights – and all the hockey will be hosted from a new, multi-million-dollar 13,000 sq. ft. studio being built in studio 41 at the CBC headquarters in downtown Toronto.
When asked about soothing fans’ fears that Rogers bought all the rights to this content in order to construct new ways to extract fees from hockey fans by building more paywalls, Moore shot down that speculation. “I think by our actions today we’ve proven that’s not going to be the case. There are going to be more hockey games available on free over the air television than ever before,” he explained. “More choice, for more fans on more platforms on networks that are already available and already widely distributed. We’re not going to suddenly start a new network, put it high up in a tier and charge people a lot of money for it. That wouldn’t suit our needs. That wouldn’t suit the fans needs and wouldn’t suit the needs of the NHL.”
In fact, the broadcaster and the league are going to work together on a cross-country search to find Canadians of all ages and walks of life to be a part of a new fan advisory committee, which will help shape the broadcaster’s on air and online production – and even its sales, Rogers Media president Keith Pelley told the crowd Tuesday (pictured).
Saturdays – Hockey Night in Canada
- More than 130 regular season games, with up to seven airing on Citytv, CBC, Sportsnet (and its regionals), Sportsnet One, Sportsnet 360 and FX Canada
- At 7 p.m., there will be 3-5 games on. At 10 p.m., one or two games. There will be some triple headers
- There will be 13 networks airing hockey in English and French on Saturdays – the networks mentioned above, plus Sportsnet Radio, TVA, TVA Sports and TVA Sports 2.
Sundays – Hometown Hockey
- A nationally televised game at 7 p.m. on City, including a half-hour pregame show.
- Games will feature a Canadian team and there will be doubleheaders on occasion
- Each game broadcast will be hosted from a different community rink in Canada and will feature local player profiles, and other grassroots hockey stories.
Wednesdays – NHL on Sportsnet
- Nationally televised games every Wednesday night featuring “superstar matchups” with a focus on storytelling.
- Complemented by a U.S. vs U.S. matchup on Sportsnet One.
More game broadcasts…
- More than 100 U.S. vs. U.S. matchups to air nationally on Sportsnet 360 and Sportsnet One. This will be the regular Thursday night game on Sportsnet 360.
- Rogers will air all 82 games of the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames, and Edmonton Oilers.
- Rogers will also air a minimum 53 Leafs games.
- More than 1250 hours of live game coverage will air during the regular season.
- A maximum of 105 playoff games will air on a combination of Rogers and CBC.
Specials, features and more…
- Seven platforms: TV, print, radio, digital, wireless, cable and social to deliver NHL content.
- Expanded pre-game on Saturdays and Sundays beginning at 5 p.m.
- Sportsnet will showcase the NHL every single night of the week on Connected and Hockey Central.
- 50 features will be produced featuring the game’s top stars
- Hundreds of grassroots community features to air during Hometown Hockey.
