Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid tries to elude Montreal Canadiens defenceman Mike Matheson during a matchup at the Bell Centre last season.Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
Prime Video is taking over Wednesday night NHL broadcasts in Canada from Rogers Communications RCI-B-T after the two companies signed a 12-year deal for national rights that will see the Amazon-owned streaming service broadcast games in both English and French for the first time.
The sublicensing agreement, which starts on Sept. 29, includes at least 26 national regular season games annually, as well as two first-round and one second-round Stanley Cup playoff series, which will be determined each spring.
The move comes as Rogers faces a sharp escalation in the rights fees it is paying the National Hockey League under a new long-term contract, squeezing the profitability of its legacy Sportsnet broadcast business.
“Our partnership with Prime Video builds on the strong foundation we have established together and reinforces NHL hockey as the most valuable sports content in Canada,” Tony Staffieri, the president and CEO of Rogers Communications, said in a press release announcing the deal.
Jay Marine, the head of global sports for Prime Video, said the company was “thrilled to expand our partnership with the NHL and Rogers in this landmark agreement, which brings even more premium live sports to Prime members in Canada.”
The companies did not disclose financial terms of the agreement.
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Prime took over Monday night hockey broadcasts under a sublicense with Rogers two years ago in what NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told The Globe and Mail was a “step in understanding the evolution of streaming.” At the time, Rogers was in the final two seasons of its landmark $5.2-billion, 12-year deal with the NHL, which was escalating in price each year.
The league was pleased with the trial. In a presentation last summer to a gambling conference in Toronto, Christopher Walton, the head of streaming video sales for Amazon Canada, said the average viewing time during the first season of its NHL broadcasts, 2024-25, was 73 minutes, up 27 per cent from the average of 58 minutes for Sportsnet’s Monday night NHL broadcasts the previous season.
He also noted that the average age of Prime Monday Night Hockey viewers was 43 years old, compared with 55 for Sportsnet’s previous Monday night hockey broadcasts.
Monday night broadcasts will now revert to Rogers, which will also have exclusive national rights to national games on Saturday nights.
The new Wednesday night broadcasts will be known as The NHL on Prime.
“We’re excited that Prime Video and Rogers are deepening their relationship through this long-term agreement, reflecting our shared commitment to serving English and French-language hockey fans across Canada with premium NHL content for years to come,” Mr. Bettman said in the release.
Gary Bettman hands the Stanley Cup to Carolina Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal on June 14.Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
The new deal makes Prime the first national streaming-only service in Canada to carry NHL games in French. The move comes less than two years after Prime’s parent company, the retail giant Amazon, shut down warehouse operations in Quebec, throwing thousands out of work.
Rogers and the NHL signed a 12-year deal in April, 2025, valued at $11-billion, or an average of $917-million per season. Under its previous deal, priced at an average of $433-million per season, the profit margin for Rogers’s flagship Sportsnet service was shrinking, according to filings released by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
In the 2024 broadcast year, the main Sportsnet service recorded a pre-tax loss of $4.6-million, its first on public record. In the 2025 broadcast year, it recorded a pre-tax loss of $18-million due in part to soaring rights acquisitions costs, even as its total revenue hit a record $759-million.
The figures are only for Sportsnet’s linear TV business. The company does not publicly disclose the finances of its streaming-only business.
Last month, seeking to drive more viewers to its subscription services, Rogers announced it would no longer air its Saturday night games on CBC, ending the 74-year tradition of Hockey Night in Canada and leaving Canadians with no way of watching English-language NHL games without paying for a premium service.
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Rogers informed subscribers to its Sportsnet+ streaming service last week that it is raising the annual fee to $345 from $325 for the Premium tier and to $270 from $250 for its Standard tier.
Rogers’s Sportsnet service has the national rights to more than 500 games each year, which it will broadcast on Saturday and Monday nights and through the playoffs.
The changes announced Tuesday may leave hockey fans confused when the playoffs begin next spring. Rogers and Prime will determine which service gets what playoff matches through a draft format: Sportsnet will get the first three picks of the first round, which has eight matchups; Prime will get the fourth and fifth picks; and Sportsnet will get the remaining three matchups. For the second round, Sportsnet will get the first two picks, Prime will have the third, and Sportsnet will get the fourth.
Sportsnet will be the exclusive broadcaster of the third and fourth rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
If history is any guide, that could leave Prime with few playoff matchups featuring Canadian teams. Over the course of Rogers’s first 12-year deal with the NHL, from 2014-15 to 2025-26, only one season included five matchups with Canadian teams, which would have given Prime two series to carry that year. Two other seasons had four first-round matchups with Canadian teams, which would have given Prime one Canada-based series per season.
Only one of the 12 seasons – 2024-25 – included at least three second-round series with Canadian teams, which would have given Prime a single series to air.
The agreement does not include the hundreds of games each season that air only in local markets. TSN is the regional broadcaster of the Winnipeg Jets, Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators, while Sportsnet holds regional rights to the Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames. The two companies divide the regional broadcast rights of the Toronto Maple Leafs.