Being a fan used to be simple. You bought a ticket, you watched the game, you maybe caught the post-game show on the drive home. Nobody needed a spreadsheet to figure out what it cost to follow your team. In Canada, that’s changing — and not in a direction that favors the people who actually fill the seats.
Rogers Sportsnet, the sole national streaming rights holder for NHL games in Canada, has raised the price of its Sportsnet+ Premium package twice in short succession. The annual rate jumped from $249.99 to $324.99 — a 30 percent increase — effective September 9, 2025, as reported by CBC News and The Globe and Mail. A subsequent increase pushed the yearly Premium tier to $344.99 and the monthly rate to $44.99, according to FlamesNation. Since 2024, the annual Premium subscription has risen by $95.
The hikes arrive on the heels of Rogers signing a new 12-year, $11 billion national broadcast deal with the NHL — more than double the $5.2 billion it paid under its previous agreement, which expires after the 2025-26 season.
A Sportsnet spokesperson told CBC News the service “is the most comprehensive live sports streaming experience in Canada” and that the price update “reflects that great value for sports fans.” Rogers did not offer a specific reason for the increase.
The problem for fans isn’t just the price tag. It’s what they’re getting for it. Subscribers have reported buffering, mid-game logouts, feeds running 30 to 45 seconds behind live action, no option to choose between broadcasts, and no Roku app. FlamesNation noted that Google auto-complete suggestions for “Sportsnet Plus” are dominated by complaints about the service not working. One FlamesNation writer pointed out that many of these features — goal bookmarks, on-demand archives, broadcast selection — were standard when the NHL operated its own GameCentre Live streaming product, which was discontinued in 2022.
The reaction has been blunt. Jason Pike, a Bruins fan in Halifax who runs a podcast, told CBC he cancelled immediately: “When I saw the numbers, my jaw dropped.” Austin Harrison, an Oilers content creator in Red Deer, Alberta, said he “burst out laughing” at the email and killed his subscription within two minutes. Lance McNeill of Fredericton told The Globe and Mail his annual Premium cost had risen 80 percent since October 2022, when he first subscribed at $179.99.
“There’s no justification at all,” McNeill said.
Beyond streaming, the infrastructure around Canadian hockey fandom is thinning. Rogers and Bell have shut down all-sports radio stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Hamilton over the past five years. Calgary no longer has a dedicated TSN reporter, an Athletic reporter, or a sports radio station — a pattern repeated across most Canadian markets outside Toronto and Montreal. Newspapers are sending fewer reporters to games. Local TV sports departments have largely disappeared.
Player access has tightened, too. Teams have increasingly limited media to post-game scrums — the standing-room scrums where a dozen reporters fire questions and players deliver what the FlamesNation piece called “hockey clichés.” Long-form interviews and in-depth features, the kind that let fans learn where a player came from and what he does in the community, have grown scarce.
The cost of attending games has climbed in parallel. Tickets, parking, food, and merchandise for a family of four can run into the hundreds of dollars for a single night — at a time when mortgage payments, groceries, and fuel are already consuming disposable income.
Rogers paid $11 billion for the right to broadcast hockey in Canada. The bill for that deal is now showing up on the customer’s invoice, and the product hasn’t improved to match. The film doesn’t lie.
Sources:
- FlamesNation — The experience of being an NHL fan in Canada is slowly declining
- CBC News — Sports fans ‘flabbergasted’ after Sportsnet announces double-digit price hike
- The Globe and Mail — Sportsnet subscription price increase
- FlamesNation — Streaming Flames games will cost more in 2025-26 due to Sportsnet price hike