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Amazon Aims to Reshape How Hockey’s Super Fans Watch the NHL

etan vlessing
·7-min read

Amazon is set to start streaming NHL games in Canada on Prime Video in October, a launch that could herald a bigger power play at the bargaining table when the current NHL broadcast rights with Rogers Communications expire in 2026.

On Monday, Magda Grace, the overall head of Prime Video for Canada, Australia and New Zealand, told The Hollywood Reporter her focus is ensuring production and audience success when Prime Monday Night Hockey kicks off Oct. 14 with the Montreal Canadiens and Pittsburgh Penguins taking the ice for a classic game match-up.

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That’s before the 2024-25 and 2025-26 NHL season games in Canada come to Prime Video subscribers exclusively on Monday nights at no extra cost. “We can’t really speculate on future deals and negotiations. We’re really focused on Oct. 14, getting it right and learning as we go,” Grace said.

Of course, Amazon Prime Video already showed it could bring giant live TV audiences to its digital platform by becoming stateside the exclusive home for the NFL’s Thursday Night Football games. But to enlarge its NHL footprint in Canada with more live games on different nights, Amazon will need to compete head-to-head with Rogers Communications, the current Canadian TV rights holder for the NHL.

A spokesperson for the Canadian telecom and cable giant confirmed to THR that Rogers will bid again for local TV rights to NHL games when they come up for renewal after the 2025-26 NHL season. Rogers has also not revealed whether it will go solo to the table with the NHL for negotiations, or enlist a partner to help stay relevant as a traditional TV linear TV provider by continuing to offer NHL games to Canadian fans.

The speculation is Rogers’ plus-one could be Prime Video after Amazon inked an exclusive, two-year deal with Rogers for the right to stream Monday regular-season games north of the border over the next two years.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman kept his cards close the vest when talking with THR about the upcoming 2026 NHL contract renewal negotiations. But Bettman made it clear the NHL is looking for a big payday from the upcoming TV rights renewal talks in two years just as streaming giants like Amazon go hunting for newer and bigger audiences.

“Rogers has been a great partner, but ultimately the marketplace will determine the value for our rights,” he said. Bettman also pointed to the wider TV sports arms race globally where pro league content, including the NHL, is valuable and increasing in value. “For us in Canada, we’re the number one sport. We are the number one media property. So I anticipate a vibrant marketplace,” the NHL boss added.

Bettman would not anticipate who might come to the bargaining table besides Rogers, which has an exclusive negotiating period ahead of its current deal with the NHL expiring in two years. “I don’t want to speculate as to what may happen with the negotiations. We’ll comply with all of our rights and obligations under the current agreement, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.

But the Rogers that will negotiate with the NHL in the next two years will be far different in scale and ambition from the media player that in 2013 that beat out perennial Canadian broadcast TV rival Bell Media to earn the $5.2 billion, 12-year NHL rights package.

In 2026, Rogers is expected to have to compete against U.S. digital giants looking to live TV sports to take on Netflix’s streaming TV dominance, including in Canada. Prime Video’s Grace said her platform, besides featuring live NHL games on Mondays, is also focused on offering Canadian TV sport channels like TSN and Sports domestically, and foreign services like DAZN and Fubo Sports Network, as stand-alone products available through their Prime Video accounts.

“Being a home for sports often means have third party services. But hopefully it’s super easy to watch and discover, which is really what we’re trying to do,” Grace explained. Prime Video will also launch globally from Oct. 4 Faceoff: Inside the NHL, a six-part docuseries produced with NHL Productions and offering access to the league’s biggest teams and players on the ice and behind the scenes.

And Prime Video in Canada will launch on Thursday nights NHL Coast to Coast, a live talk show hosted by Andi Petrillo and rotating analysts where they take a deep dive over six hours into all the NHL game action that evening around the league. “You’re going to be hanging out with the host and guest commentators, former players and coaches, watching and jumping in and out of games and catching the highlights, talking about the big moments that are happening that night,” Grace said of the NHL Coast to Coast series.

Other innovations headed to Canada include Rapid Recap, an artificial intelligence-generated assist already used on Prime Video’s Thursday night NFL games stateside where viewers coming to a game in-progress can catch up on the action before entering the livestream.

Amazon’s Grace added Canadians are very literate when it comes to the NHL, so the Prime Video live streams of games, talk shows and docuseries won’t be talking down to audiences. “Getting a broadcast right, making it the best streaming experience you can have with live sports, is our absolute number one priority,” she said.

The Canadian industry has changed elsewhere too since a decade ago when the last NHL TV rights contract was negotiated. While ice hockey remains a big draw in Canada, the appeal of NHL rights has its own challenges, including no Canadian team having raised the Stanley Cup championship trophy since 1993.

What’s more, the increasing link between TV sports and streaming platforms has played out in Canadian pro team ownerships. Rogers is already the owner of the Toronto Blue Jays and recently raised its 37.5 percent stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which counts the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC and Toronto Argonauts among its properties, to 75 percent.

Canadian phone giant BCE Inc. sold Rogers its 37.5 percent stake in MLSE for CAN$4.7 billion (US$3.46 billion). The deal aimed in part to help Rogers shore up Sportsnet in an increasingly competitive Canadian TV market, and take advantage of wider industry trends where the value of NBA and NHL teams have risen sharply in recent years.

The MLSE deal also came as Rogers, like other North American telecom giants, knows its mobile phone and Internet subscribers use an increasing chunk of their bandwidth to view games involving their favorite pro sport teams. The exclusive deal with Amazon arrives as Rogers, a traditional cable TV provider undermined by cord-cutting and cord-nevers, sees itself moving to where Canadians are increasingly viewing TV sports, online, for additional revenues.

For its part, Amazon Prime is just behind Netflix as a dominant player in the Canadian TV market, where legacy broadcasters are losing share to U.S. digital giants for eyeballs. That’s important as Rogers, like other linear TV broadcasters in Canada, have traditionally not used homegrown scripted and unscripted TV series to drive advertising and subscriber growth, as in the U.S. market.

Instead, Canadian broadcasters have filled their primetime schedules with U.S. series they rent from Hollywood studio and other foreign suppliers. And with the ratings and advertising revenue returns on those mainstream U.S. series in terminal decline as Canadians move online for TV content, Rogers is looking to turn its Canadian TV assets, including Sportsnet and its steady diet of NHL games, into a giant digital sports platform.

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