The Vancouver Canucks traveled to Ottawa on Tuesday and will kick off an eastern road trip on Thursday. They'll play four games in six days against the Senators, New York Rangers, Carolina Hurricanes and Nashville Predators.
All four teams sit below Vancouver in the standings so if the hockey gods have any mercy, the Canucks should have an opportunity to earn some points and start rebuilding their fragile confidence.
Dan Murphy has the line combinations from today's practice in Ottawa. David Booth gets a promotion!
Looking like Twins-Burr / Booth-Kes-Hansen / Higgins-Santo-Weise / Sestito-Dalpe-Welsh-Richardson-Kassian #canucks in Ottawa
— Dan Murphy (@sportsnetmurph) November 27, 2013Impact of the new TV Deal on the Canucks and Their Fans
The business of the Vancouver Canucks—and Canadian hockey in general—is in better shape than ever.
The NHL sent shockwaves from coast to coast on Tuesday when it announced that it had signed a 12-year deal with Rogers for its Canadian broadcast rights, for $5.2 billion. This is a huge jump from the 2007 deal with CBC and will dramatically impact how games are presented going forward.
Rogers is motivated by a need for content across their platforms. Though much of the media focus so far has been on television, expect digital content and coverage to be a huge part of the package going forward. Sports are a valuable property for television because they can't be PVRed—they need to be watched in real time, which means viewers actually see the commercials. The opportunity to offer livestreams of games exclusively on Rogers mobile devices should give them a huge competitive advantage over telecom competition Bell and Telus in selling smartphones, tablets—and service contracts. I'm sure the expectation is that this deal should help Rogers to seriously increase its telecom market share.
TSN and CBC are both big losers—hockey has been a cash cow and central feature of both networks. TSN loses broadcasts completely, while CBC loses both editorial control and advertising revenues. The only benefit they'll receive will be the opportunity to promote other shows from the network on hockey broadcasts across all Rogers channels.
As Rogers takes control of the Hockey Night in Canada name, I'd guess that they'll use it across all the broadcasts as CBC is gradually phased out of the picture.
Will Don Cherry survive the changes? I'd say he'll get a shot. Love him or hate him, people still talk about him. That ability to draw attention is what's valuable to media providers.
The new deal will mean cash-in-pocket for both Canadian teams and U.S teams that are part of the NHL's revenue-sharing plan. It will also drive up Hockey Related Revenues, pushing up the salary cap and earning players larger salaries than ever.
That should be good news on for the Canucks on the ice, allowing them more flexibility going forward with player personnel. James Mirtle of The Globe and Mail correctly points out that it will take a couple of years for the true impact of the TV deal to be felt, but adds that the salary cap ceiling could be as high as $100 million when the current CBA expires in 2022—which is also the last year of Roberto Luongo's contract.
I've long believed that this cap increase is what will allow the Canucks to keep Luongo's salary on the books until the end of its term. By the time the contract reaches its late stages, the cap hit and/or recapture penalties will be relatively small in terms of the cap total.
Who ultimately foots the bill for this deal? That will be the advertisers and us—the consumers.
It's easy to assume that our cable bills will go up, but the industry is at a bit of a crossroads right now. The CRTC is considering unbundling channels and allowing us to choose an a la carte menu of only the cable channels we want. If that comes to pass, a hockey fan might be able to lower his cable bill by deleting channels he doesn't need—possibly even including TSN—but subscribing to the full Rogers Sportsnet lineup.
Rogers will also need eyeballs to sell to advertisers, so their product needs to be accessible to as many viewers as possible. I suspect they'll offer more livestreaming—probably at a price—but our cable bills will just continue to creep up the way they have been for years.
Canucks Value Doubles in Lockout Year
Forbes.com released its annual list of NHL franchise valuations earlier this week. The Vancouver Canucks showed the largest increase in value of any franchise—105 percent—bringing their estimated value to $700 million, which is good for fourth place. Click here to see the entire list.
Here's the link to the breakdown of Vancouver's valuation. It's interesting to note that this $700 million number came from Francesco Aquilini's divorce trial earlier this year. The real estate value of the arena is also included—I wonder if the new condo towers being built have been factored in?
By means of comparison, here's Forbes' analysis of the Canucks in 2010, when the team's value was estimated at $262 million.
It's pretty astonishing to see that the value of the franchise has nearly tripled in the last three years. On-ice success has certainly been a part of that equation, but there are many other factors also in play on the business end.
Quick Hits:
- I was impressed with Darren Archibald when he spent eight games with the Canucks earlier this season. Last night, he dished out a massive, clean hit for Utica that made it to YouTube. Check it out:
He also mentioned Carolina as a team with some $4 million players they'd like to move, such as forward Tuomo Ruutu or defenseman Tim Gleason. Both have no-trade clauses—and I think the 'Canes are trying to dump salary as well as shaking up their roster. The Canucks play Carolina twice in the next two weeks so we'll get a chance to see what they're shopping.
Thanks, as always, for reading. I'll be back tomorrow with a preview of the Ottawa game.
Follow me on Twitter @pool88.