The National Hockey League season is almost over, yet French-language TV rights to 39 Habs games are still available for next season, a highly unusual state of affairs.<\/p>\n
On the ice, the Canadiens are doing better than at almost any time since the team won the Stanley Cup way back in 1993. Behind the scenes however, there is a storm brewing over the fate of broadcast rights.<\/p>\n
The crazy thing is that just as the team finally exits from years of losing, it\u2019s possible that francophone fans might not be able to watch all the games on conventional TV in the language of Lafleur as of next season. Last October, Bell Media, which owns RDS, announced that the French-language sports network will broadcast 45 regular-season Canadiens games a year as of next season<\/a>. That\u2019s down from 60, which is how many games it\u2019s broadcasting this season and has been the past 11.<\/p>\n This is a disappointment for I would guess the vast majority of Habs fans, both anglophone and francophone, because RDS is our preferred place to watch our team. Even us anglos prefer RDS to TSN or Sportsnet for the simple reason that we like our Montreal guys \u2014 play-by-play man Pierre Houde<\/a> and colour commentator Marc Denis<\/a> \u2014 to call the games. They know the team better than anyone else.<\/p>\n The Bell executives of course aren\u2019t saying it, but the reason they\u2019re broadcasting 15 fewer Habs games is because they cost too much. Habs games are RDS\u2019s bread and butter. At the right price, they\u2019d love to have all of them. But the current price simply doesn\u2019t make sense for French broadcasters here in Quebec.<\/p>\n With RDS taking only 45 games, that leaves another 39 games \u2014\u00a0plus all playoff games \u2014\u00a0not spoken for. The regular season extends to 84 games from 82 starting next season.<\/p>\n In April of 2025, Rogers announced a new 12-year deal with the National Hockey League<\/a>, with the telecom\/broadcaster taking all Canadian rights for $11 billion. Run that figure around your head for a second. $11 billion. It\u2019s nuts. I\u2019m not a finance guy, but I don\u2019t see any way even Rogers with its national reach via Sportsnet can make money on that deal. I think they do it because it helps them sell the Rogers brand. The new deal starts next season and goes through to the end of the 2037-2038 season.<\/p>\n Rogers then set out to sell off the French-language national rights in a side deal. Last time, it sold them to TVA Sports, but TVA could only get 22 regular-season Canadiens games \u2014 essentially the Saturday night games \u2014 plus playoffs out of that deal. The other 60 games a season became regional games<\/a>, which the Canadiens sold to RDS, also for 12 years, at a reported price of about $1 million per game.<\/p>\n The previous deal, which Rogers paid $5.2 billion for, went from 2014 to the end of this season. So imagine the inflation here \u2014 from $5.2 billion to $11 billion.<\/p>\n That previous deal almost destroyed TVA Sports. Don\u2019t take my word for it. Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl P\u00e9ladeau said publicly last year that TVA Sports might go out of business<\/a> and everyone knows the biggest reason for its huge losses was this way-too-expensive deal. TVA Sports has lost close to $200 million in earnings since it began airing NHL games in 2014.<\/p>\n