National Hockey League on television
With 25 teams in the U.S. and 7 in Canada, the NHL is the only one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada that maintains separate national broadcasters in each country, each producing separate telecasts of a slate of regular season games, playoff games, and the Stanley Cup Finals.
Individual teams in both countries have contracted to air their games on local channels, primarily on regional sports networks.
CBC proceeded with its first English-language broadcast a month later on November 1, 1952, televising a game featuring the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins.
The current national television and digital rightsholder is Rogers Communications, under a 12-year deal valued at C$5.2 billion which began in the 2014–15 season.
National English-language coverage of the NHL is carried primarily by Rogers' Sportsnet group of specialty channels.
While CBC maintains Rogers-produced NHL coverage during the regular season and playoffs through a time-brokerage agreement with the company, Rogers assumes editorial control and the ownership of any advertising revenue from the telecasts.
[6][7][8][9][10][11] Under a sub-licensing agreement with Rogers, Quebecor Media holds national French-language television rights for the NHL, with all coverage airing on its specialty channel TVA Sports.
Hockey broadcasting on a national scale was particularly spotty prior to 1981; NBC and CBS held rights at various times during that period, with each network carrying weekend-afternoon games during the second half of the regular season and the playoffs, along with some (but not all) of the Stanley Cup Finals.
[14] As in Canada, games not broadcast nationally are aired regionally within a team's home market and are subject to blackout outside of them.
Likewise, a Tuesday night Bruins–Canadiens game may air across the U.S. on ESPN or TNT but only regionally north of the border in the Montreal area.
The Canadian version shut down on September 1, 2015, due to Rogers Communications' acquisition of sole national media rights to the NHL in Canada.
The American version of NHL Network was used as an overflow channel for select first round playoff games when NBC Sports held the U.S. national TV contract from 2012 to 2021.
Per its exclusive national television and digital rights contract, Rogers Communications took over Canadian distribution and marketing of both the out-of-market TV and the internet services in Canada as of the 2014–15 season.
The sky cam are currently only available for Air Canada Centre games, but the remaining Canadian arenas will be equipped for it in the future.
The NHL also gained an equity stake of up to 10% in a spin-off of MLBAM's streaming media business, whose clients include Major League Baseball, WatchESPN, and HBO Now among others.
Fox Sports in Australia,[34] on Viasat Hockey in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark,[35] in the Czech Republic and Slovakia on NovaSport or FandaTV and in Portugal on SportTV.
