This morning, on the airwaves of BPM Sports in the station’s morning show, Renaud Lavoie arrived to deliver some very interesting information with a view to the future of sport.
I invite you to listen to his column to get a good picture of the situation.
Basically, there are three elements to remember in all of this. These are elements that will ensure that the NHL will have one of its biggest years in its history, if everything goes as planned.
1. In the coming weeks, the NHL and the Players’ Association will negotiate with the aim of renewing the next collective agreement, which should normally expire in 2026, in the coming months.
The goal? Let everything be in place to be able to think big for the future.
2. Negotiate national TV rights in Canada. Once again, the contract will expire in 2026, which means that negotiations must begin soon to avoid settling everything at the last second.
Renaud Lavoie expects this to be announced in the fall of 2025 with a view to the 2026-2027 season.
3. Once a collective agreement is in place, the NHL could well look to move forward with an expansion process. This way, we would know what to expect when setting a price for the franchises… and that’s why for two years, the expansion project has been slowing down.
Getting that up to 34 teams would be the plan. And by this time next year, the process should be open. And even if Quebec is popular in the eyes of the players, it risks being Atlanta which will join Houston, a city quite certain of having its club.
So you will have understood that the first step would be the collective agreement. Thus, the big issues of expansion and TV rights could get underway more easily.
So much the better.
We are talking about a snowball effect on other major issues. This is the reason why Renaud Lavoie thinks that the convention could be settled before the 2025 Stanley Cup final.
No work stoppage on the horizon, then? Sweet.
But what also interests people a lot is how broadcasting rights will affect viewing habits. Basically, the question is this: how many platforms will you have to subscribe to to watch 82 Canadian games and the series?
And there is a sentence that I remember in Lavoie’s column.
What is being circulated a lot is that there will no longer be exclusivity for a single network, namely Sportsnet in Canada and TVA Sports in Quebec.
We expect TSN to pick up a little, that RDS to pick up a little, TVA Sports same thing too, Sportsnet. But what about streaming? – Renaud Lavoie on national rights in Canada
Amazon, Netflix, Apple TV: these are all players who will fight for their piece of the pie. And even though Lavoie named Apple TV perfunctorily, we sense that it’s not a big possibility.
No surprises here, as my colleague Maxime Truman spoke about recently.
We have to wonder how this would affect broadcasts in French (the Monday matches on Prime AND on RDS show us that Quebec is a different beast), but the fact that there could no longer be exclusives for a single network, that tells me a lot.
In a year, the portrait of the NHL could therefore be different. But will the hockey and Canadian fan benefit?
In burst
– Interesting.
– Sergei Fedotov’s name was circulated to lead the Red Wings before the coaching change. [HF]
– Speaking of the Red Wings: a change had become necessary.
