Left to right: Rogers Sports and Media president Colette Watson, Rogers Communications president and CEO Tony Staffieri, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly at a press conference in Toronto on April 2. Rogers and the NHL announced an $11-billion deal to broadcast hockey games in Canada.Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press
The last time Rogers signed a blowout broadcast deal with the NHL in 2013, hockey was riding high.
Canada was still glowing after the Vancouver Olympics. Tim Hortons still made ads about it that made you want to cry. There was no hint of irony when someone referred to it as the national game.
The size of the deal suggested that this country-pastime relationship would only become more enmeshed. Instead, things went the other way. Hockey began to drift from the centre of the Canadian identity.
The NHL ditched the Olympics. Hockey Night in Canada became a mess. The Maple Leafs tried to become good and couldn’t. Basketball, tennis and soccer started hogging the patriotic glory. Don Cherry imploded.
Seven or eight years into their 12-year deal, you wouldn’t have gotten many takers for the idea that hockey was the future of Canada. This country was too diverse to remain perpetually tied to a game no one else cared about as much as us.
Nobody was talking about abandoning hockey, but it was time to branch out. Now, as Rogers makes an even bigger bet on hockey and Canada, things are headed back in the opposite direction.
“We broadcast moments that shape us as Canadians,” Rogers president Tony Staffieri said as the new 12-year, $11-billion deal was announced on Wednesday.
The world is shrinking, fast. Were someone to suggest to you that at some point in the near future the current U.S. administration might complain about a critical national resource (ie. sports) being devalued abroad (ie. Canada) and press leagues to bring their teams home, would that seem far-fetched? Probably not. Anything’s possible now.
There are sensible reasons why Rogers would pay so much more to re-up a deal it couldn’t convince anyone was a winner the first time around.
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In that first instance, Rogers did it to pin Bell’s sports arm to the mat. Ten years in, it got its submission. By selling its stake in Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, Bell tapped out.
Meanwhile, Netflix has started broadcasting professional wrestling. Apple has global rights for Major League Soccer. If you want to be all in on the sports business, you have to grab as much real estate as you can, wherever you can.
And while nearly a billion dollars a year to broadcast hockey in this country is an unhinged amount of money, it’s more balanced than other deals out there. Amazon is paying the NFL the same amount in American dollars to broadcast one game a week, and it’s not even on a Sunday.
Still, had this deal been done a year ago, Rogers would be getting laughed out of the shop. No one’s laughing today. A lot of people are gasping, but the first time around, a lot of people were sure Rogers was wrong. Nobody’s sure any more.
That’s mostly because everyone now accepts that they have no clue what the world is going to look like in 10 months, never mind 10 years.
Two things changed in the interim that made the marketing of this deal possible: Donald Trump and the 4 Nations Face-Off.
Trump has dialled this country’s cultural identity back 30 or 40 years. Any time now, everyone will start drinking Black Label.
All saggy, tired Canadian clichés have been refilled and plumped up. Even the I Am Canadian guy – who probably would have been stoned if he’d piped up at a public gathering four years ago – is back.
All of this is being done in service to the idea that Canada has to come together right now, which means reverting to our only agreed-upon personality. The beer-drinking, log-driving, hockey-playing one.
Mark Carney, then a candidate for Liberal Party leader, wore a hockey jersey to a watch party for a 4 Nations hockey tournament game on Feb. 15.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
The guy leading in the polls, a Harvard-Oxford grad who’s a platinum member of the Davos supper club, draws his blue-collar credibility from wearing a hockey jersey. If politicians are doing that, the progressive pushback on hockey is over.
Beginning days after Trump’s threats began, the 4 Nations became the rallying point of Canadian resistance. Things could get worse, but they haven’t felt as scary since hockey stared down our neighbourhood bully.
The two things together have yanked hockey back to the middle of everything. It’s 10 months until the NHL returns to the Olympics and we do it again. Hockey’s Canadian glory days are peaking again.
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Rogers may or may not have made a good deal in terms of absolute dollars in versus dollars out, but it feels like a good deal. This is sports, not resource extraction, so feelings matter.
On the Rogers end, it can tell itself there’s room to improve. It’s been more than a decade, and Sportsnet still hasn’t figured out how to produce a slick hockey broadcast. Tonally, it’s trapped somewhere between homespun and homemade. Amazon showed up on the scene a few months ago and it’s already better at it.
Pick one of the following: the broadcast gets much better; the Leafs make it out of the second round; the Oilers become a dynasty; one or both national teams win at Milan 2026; a hockey player penetrates the international sports consciousness; there is some new reason for Canada to hate the U.S. even more.
If one of those things happen, this new deal is miles better than the old one. If two come to pass, Rogers is in great shape. Three, and $11-billion becomes a bargain.
When Rogers did the last deal, it was a phone company. In 10 years, it could be a sports company.
Sports companies aren’t businesses. They’re gambling syndicates. The right teams win, they do well. The right teams lose, and they still do well. The trick is figuring out when – or if – the wheel is going to stop turning.
During Rogers’s first hockey deal, the wheel slowed. It didn’t stop, but it threatened to do so.
Rogers is gambling that the hockey wheel has been given another great big push, and will spin freely for the foreseeable future. If you and others like you think that’s true, it will end up winning big.