InternationalNHLPoliticsTwitterBy Andrew Bucholtz on

It’s rare, but not unprecedented, to see politicians weigh in on where games should air. What is more unusual, though, is when they do that with strange statements in government settings not accurately portraying who owns the broadcast rights in question. And it’s stranger still when that’s done around calls to defund the public broadcaster, and when it sees a member of a supposedly pro-business party claiming a private corporation’s broadcast rights are actually owned by the public broadcaster. That’s the political hockey puck (not football) that played out in Canada this week.

There are several complicated dimensions here. This donnybrook started with the CBC not airing Games 5 and 6 of the Edmonton Oilers’ Western Conference Final series against the Dallas Stars on Friday, May 31 and Sunday, June 2. Those games aired only on Sportsnet in English (and on Quebecor-owned TVA in French).

On Friday, CBC aired the Canadian Screen Awards (essentially a combined Oscars and Emmys) and a Just For Laughs special re-run. On Sunday, they aired the season finale of the Canada’s Ultimate Challenge reality show. That led to a number of Conservative MPs, including deputy leader Tim Uppal, complaining about that and saying “It’s time to defund the CBC.”

As many things do, that quickly spiraled out of control on X/Twitter. Other Conservatives (who are the opposition party at the moment to a Liberal/NDP coalition) chimed in on the #DefundCBC call (which party leader Pierre Poilievre promised during his leadership campaign).

Critics correctly noted that CBC does not actually own NHL rights, but sublicenses them from Rogers. And they bashed Uppal for blaming the CBC for what would seem likely to be a Rogers decision. We’ll discuss that more later on, but Uppal’s claim this was a CBC move did actually have some merit, as per a CBC spokesperson’s previous statements.

But what doesn’t have merit is what Rachael Thomas (Conservative MP for Lethbridge, Alberta, and shadow minister for Canadian Heritage, which includes the CBC, since 2022) said at a House of Commons Canadian Heritage committee meeting Friday. There, she said the CBC “holds the rights to broadcast the NHL playoffs” (they do not) and called on the CBC “to commit to broadcasting all Stanley Cup Finals games” (they already had announced that they would do that).

First, it’s the Stanley Cup Final, not Finals. Second, CBC spokesperson Chuck Thompson said in a May 31 piece by Simon Houpt of The Globe and Mail they would broadcast all of the Final games. And third, the schedule Sportsnet released last Sunday (almost a full week before Thomas’ House remarks) included all games airing on CBC as well as Sportsnet.

But Thomas then took to X after this vote. There, she complained about the Liberals voting down her nonsense motion to call on the CBC to do something they were already doing. (For the record, this was a 6-5 vote against, with a NDP MP joining Thomas and a Bloc Québécois MP voting against.)

There’s a lot of context here that’s worth exploring more fully before we get to the specific merits of the claims in question. To start with, there’s a long history of NHL hockey broadcasts on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation’s radio and TV networks. That includes the Hockey Night In Canada brand (focused on Saturday nights, but they have broadcast games elsewhere too under that brand), which dates back to 1931 on radio and 1952 on TV.

But since Rogers Communications struck a 13-year, $5.2 billion CAD ($3.8 billion USD) deal for Canadian national NHL rights from the 2014-15 season through the 2025-26 season, they’ve been in charge of that brand. And they’ve generally been in charge of choosing where games will air.

Under that deal, Rogers does sublicense games to air on the CBC airwaves. But they produce those games (so the staff on those broadcasts, even those previously at CBC Sports, now work for Rogers, not CBC), retain editorial control over them, and retain advertising revenues from them. And they typically have been the ones deciding whether individual games air on their Sportsnet cable networks, on their broadcast CityTV networks, or on the CBC.

That’s an interestingly-structured deal, as noted in that above piece from CBC’s Doug Harrison in 2013. It doesn’t involve a rights payment from CBC to Rogers. Instead, it lets Rogers reap advertising revenues from games on CBC (which, as you’d expect for broadcast versus cable, often draw better than games on Sportsnet).

Harrison also notes that there were initial mandates of 320 hours of prime-time hockey on CBC yearly and guaranteed Stanley Cup Final broadcasts for the first four years. It’s unclear if those run for the whole deal, but CBC will be televising all of this year’s Final, as will Sportsnet. But it is very much Rogers in charge of NHL rights in Canada. As we’ll see, though, CBC does seem to have some control over when they provide hockey windows to Rogers.

So, how did we get such all the politicians dropping the gloves in this brouhaha? Well, as noted, CBC did not air those Western Conference Final games featuring the Oilers. That led to Uppal and other Conservative MPs calling to defund the broadcaster, and to others responding by correctly noting that it’s Rogers, not the CBC, that actually owns these rights. (That was not mentioned at all in many Canadian media outlets’ coverage of this, including a piece in The National Post, and other pieces didn’t accurately portray the sublicensing deal.)

However, CBC spokesperson Thompson did say this was the public broadcaster’s call. And he said it was made months ago before the team identities or series dates were known. That’s as noted in that May 31 Houpt Globe and Mail piece that Uppal screenshot (with just the headline) but did not link. But there are some further complications here, including why these broadcasts are now only available on streaming through Rogers’ Sportsnet Now subscription service but not CBC’s free Gem service, a change from last season. Here’s more from Houpt’s piece:

In an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, a CBC spokesperson indicated it was the public broadcaster’s decision to not carry Sportsnet’s broadcast of the two key games. If the Oilers advance, it will be their first time winning the conference since 2006.

“We set our schedule long before the playoffs are determined. And that schedule includes Canada’s Ultimate Challenge on Sunday nights (April 28-June 2) as well as the CSAs gala,” said Chuck Thompson. “With that context, we knew there would be occasions during the playoffs when CBC would not be carrying certain games.”

…In a statement to The Globe and Mail, Sportsnet spokesperson Jason Jackson said: “We have an agreement with CBC that doesn’t include Stanley Cup playoffs broadcasts on Gem.”

Thompson, the CBC spokesperson, told The Globe: “Sportsnet and CBC entered into a new agreement last fall that doesn’t include Stanley Cup playoffs broadcasts on Gem.” In a follow-up e-mail, he added: “Ultimately, it’s a business decision, and through an agreeable negotiation with Sportsnet, we landed on which games will be carried on CBC and on which platforms.”

Thompson’s comments there do indicate this particular decision started with CBC’s pre-playoffs scheduling (which can’t anticipate particular teams) rather than a mandate from Rogers. However, that new agreement last fall and “agreeable negotiation” suggest there have been some changes here that are not necessarily all about the CBC. And CBC very much does not hold the power in this sublicensing deal with Rogers.

The other thing to note is that leagues often take broadcast partners into account on scheduling. If Rogers wanted to ensure that these games could reach the widest possible audience on CBC, and if CBC was definitely not available on the CSAs date in particular, it would not be unprecedented for the NHL to bump games a day later.

And while it would seem unusual for a league to care about its Canadian broadcast partner to that degree, it’s notable that the league used to make more money from its Canadian deal than its U.S. one. This averages to $290 million USD per year; the old NBC one was $200 million a year, while the recent ESPN and Turner deals bring in $400 million and $225 million annually respectively. But it certainly seems like the league and Rogers were both fine with the English-language broadcasts of these  games airing only on Sportsnet in Canada.

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At any rate, the “Defund the CBC” over the conference finals move seemed absurd at first given Rogers’ control of these rights, but the criticisms there have more merits given the CBC’s own comments that they made this call. (And if there is something larger here about the CBC getting less guaranteed playoff games under the latest sublicensing deal, the public broadcaster needs a better PR strategy to clarify that, unless part of that deal includes “Take the bullets for us.”)

Political footballs, or hockey pucks, around broadcasting happen. Politicians calling for games to air on broadcast television certainly isn’t restricted only to Canada, either, with that showing up in the U.S. around Peacock-exclusive NFL games in particular. (Those games do already air on broadcast TV in the local markets, and the politicians’ calls to get games off Peacock have not yet done much.) But it does make some sense that hockey, and a Canadian team’s first appearance in the Cup Final since 2021 (and a chance to break the streak of no Canadian team winning since Montreal did in 1993), got so many politicians to put on the foil and drop the gloves for this dust-up.

And there is some merit to a discussion here. And that can cover everything from why the CBC seemingly decided ahead of the playoffs they wouldn’t be airing some conference final games regardless of who played, why that couldn’t be more flexible once the teams were determined, why games were scheduled on these particular days, and just how the Rogers-CBC sublicensing agreement (including those streaming restrictions from the “new deal” last fall Thompson sites) actually works. And there absolutely could be a reasonable push to call on CBC to commit to airing more playoff games in further years, and on Rogers to allow them to do that.

But this went off the rails with the comments in the House from Thomas (who, again, specifically is the opposition critic for the portfolio including the CBC). There, she misrepresented who owns the Canadian NHL rights, demanded that the CBC do something they were already doing, and then claimed the Liberals were against that because they voted down a motion that didn’t do anything. And that escalated this from a small-scale tilly to something closer to the Punch-up in Piestany.

[The Globe and Mail; image from D-Man Thomas on YouTube]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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