Ivan Demidov (r) of the Montréal Canadiens celebrates his goal with teammate Jayden Struble against the Ottawa Senators at Canadian Tire Centre, March 11.Chris Tanouye/Freestyle Photo/Getty Images
Quebecor chief executive officer Pierre Karl Péladeau says the telecom and media company’s sports division is in talks with the National Hockey League and Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T to renew a broadcast deal for French-language hockey games, with the next season just six months away.
But the stakes are higher for both companies going into these negotiations, as Quebecor contends with declining broadcast revenues from its TVA Sports channel, while Rogers is bearing the costs of a more expensive rights deal with the NHL.
It’s the latest case of a sports broadcaster finding itself squeezed as leagues command more for the rights to show their games.
“We’re negotiating to figure out if we can continue the structure that we established 12 years ago,” Mr. Péladeau said in an interview Wednesday, referring to the companies’ previous deal.
Last year, Rogers renewed its deal with the NHL for exclusive national broadcast rights for its games over 12 years, including the right to sublicense French-language rights to other companies. It is paying $11-billion for the rights, more than double what it paid for its previous deal signed in 2013.
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A month after Rogers announced its pricier deal in 2025, Mr. Péladeau told analysts that Quebecor did not “have the means or the business model to pay the exorbitant amount to the NHL” that the league was demanding. He added that Quebecor could not “keep throwing good money after bad,” given that TVA Sports was losing money.
Mr. Péladeau said Wednesday that he feels his company paid “a bit too much” for the rights during those 2013 negotiations. However, he acknowledged that that is “the price that you need to pay if you want to be a sports specialty broadcaster” and compete with Bell Canada’s French-language sports channel, Réseau des sports (RDS).
He declined to provide a target that would make sense for Quebecor, but said, “There’s always a price point somewhere.”
Rogers has yet to announce any sublicences for French-language rights under the new NHL deal. When asked about continuing negotiations, the telecommunications and sports company said it had “no update” to share.
Last year, Mr. Péladeau warned analysts that 'no one should be surprised if TVA Sports goes out of business.'Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
The next NHL regular season starts in the fall. If the companies fail to make a deal, hockey fans could find themselves without French-language coverage of nearly half of the broadcasted games played by the Montreal Canadiens.
As of 2024, TVA Sports was paying $73-million annually for all Canadian programming rights, including NHL hockey, according to filings submitted to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
The channel’s total revenue and its subscriber base have both been declining since 2021, according to the filings. TVA Sports has lost more than $197-million in pretax earnings since it began airing NHL games in the fall of 2014.
These numbers do not reflect the earnings from streaming, only from linear television, according to the company.
Last year, Mr. Péladeau warned analysts that “no one should be surprised if TVA Sports goes out of business.” Speaking on Wednesday, he was more positive about the sports division, in part because his company recently reached a deal with Bell over television carriage fees. As a result, Quebecor recorded a one-time retroactive adjustment of $44-million in its fourth-quarter earnings.
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Mr. Péladeau added that Quebecor has worked in recent years to lower its television-related expenses and find efficiencies, and that the company controls advertising channels through its broadcast and newspaper verticals that make it a good partner for the hockey league.
NHL games are a pillar of programming for TVA Sports, filling the schedule on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday in prime time.
During the 2025-26 season, the network carried more than 300 matchups, including 22 Montreal Canadiens games, 22 Ottawa Senators games and more than 36 Toronto Maple Leafs games. The Canadiens games are particular draws, giving TVA Sports a 20.5-per-cent share of viewership on average, according to Quebecor.
The rights to NHL games in Canada are divided between national broadcasters, who usually carry about 20 to 30 of a team’s 82 regular-season games, and regional broadcasters, who carry the rest of the games but only in a team’s home market. (Those regional games are blacked out for viewers in the rest of the country.)
Bell Canada’s RDS is the exclusive French-language regional broadcaster of the Canadiens, carrying 45 games a season in the team’s local area.
Quebecor is not the only one feeling the squeeze on costly rights. According to CRTC filings, RDS lost more than $20-million in 2024, the most recent year for which records are publicly available.
And though total revenue for Rogers’s main Sportsnet service hit a record $707-million in 2024, expenses were similarly high: $692-million, according to the same filings, which exclude streaming. Once depreciation and other factors were included, the channel suffered a pretax loss of $4.6-million, its first in decades.