Today, CBC announced they will no longer participate in Rogers Sportsnet’s coverage of the NHL under their renewed 12 year deal beginning in October. This comes after 12 years where Sportsnet received the Hockey Night in Canada brand and air time from CBC in exchange for producing the games, simulcasting them on their own channels, and controlling all ad revenues (except for three total minutes of CBC promotions for their other programs across the seven hour timeslot). This marks the end of the sixth longest running show on television.

For CBC, this will further open their vulnerabilities to right-wing demands to “defund the CBC” as it loses one of its biggest emotional hooks on the Canadian audience. CBC was created in a different era of politics, back when we could imagine that some things were worth doing not purely because of their economic value, but, to use the word hockey loves, “intangibles” that strengthened community bonds. The original plan for CBC was born out of a elite driven and rather skewed view of what Canadian culture should be, but rather than work to refine and democratize that view, the very idea of a public broadcaster has been spun by corporate interests as potentially sinister state propaganda. CBC has already been significantly defunded since 1985. A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study in 2022 found that CBC was, out of 19 comparable countries in GDP and democratic system, the 3rd least funded and 4th more commercial. The Forum for Research and Policy in Communications‘ 2020 report on CBC funding history found that CBC funding had declined on a per-person basis by 54% since 1985. The decline of CBC is the neoliberal playbook to defund something so that people complain the service isn’t good, and then have that service replaced at a higher cost by a private competitor.

And that private competitor isn’t providing quality either. Rogers is part of a triumvirate oligopoly over telecommunications in Canada, resulting in some of the world’s highest prices for internet and mobile data. Rogers had a profit of $5.48 billion in the first quarter of 2026. But private companies have the issue of it really doesn’t matter how much profit they make, it only matters they make more profit every quarter. Keith Pelley, the man who led the original Rogers deal in 2014 is now the CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which is 75% owned by Rogers. In addition to Rogers own vast income, the Toronto Maple Leafs are one of the most profitable sports team in North America, yet Pelley has allegedly introduced austerity measures because Rogers is publicly traded. We’ve seen similar austerity measures in broadcasting and as a result, it’s difficult to think of anything Rogers has improved on in the broadcast experience since they took over. A nationally broadcast game used to be mean something, which higher quality game presentation and legendary play by play callers, but now there is essentially no difference between national broadcasts and what Sportsnet’s regional broadcasts were like before 2014. And I was probably the nation’s biggest critic of Hometown Hockey, but I’d take it back as at least it spent money trying to give communities memorable experiences and connection.

While hopefully Sportsnet continues to broadcast on free over the air CityTV and stream Saturday night games for free, they have not indicated they will do so. Last year, Sportsnet increased the price of Sportsnet+ by 30%, which is the sort of thing you can do when there’s no competition (and that money does not seem to have gone to improving a notoriously buggy app). Hockey Night in Canada represented that hockey was so important to Canadians that it should be available to everyone for free (though admittedly when it was introduced, the upfront cost of a television was a lot more than it is now). But now hockey is just more grist for the content mill, as media companies paywall everything behind their streaming fiefdoms. While hockey fans will seek out their games, this makes it more unlikely for people to get into hockey as engaging with it is now a financial commitment and not something they can stumble across, be casually interested in, and perhaps grow into fandom. The streaming walls weaken communal experiences. For example, yesterday was the UFC’s “Freedom 250” event on the White House lawn. If we take it at face value (which we shouldn’t, but that’s another discussion) that this was supposedly an event to celebrate America, then it should have been available to everyone for free (as was originally planned, to be broadcast on over the air network CBS). It ended up being only available on Paramount+ (not coincidentally the streaming service owned by Trump megadonor Larry Ellison). Thankfully from my perspective, this made it a relatively easy event to ignore, but in terms of sports role in culture, this sort of paywalling an event turns into a niche.

Overall the deal is emblematic of our current media landscape, where costs go up, quality goes down, and sport is pure commodity.