For all of Kathy Summers’s life, hockey has been a constant. Her father founded the Moss Park Hockey League in Toronto more than 60 years ago after noticing local kids flipping a puck on a patch of ice with a stick.
She played the sport growing up, along with her three brothers, who also coached it. The sound of blades shredding ice constantly emanated from a television speaker in the family home.
“It used to be so easy,” she said. “You turned on the TV and every sport was on CBC or CTV, or you found some American network, and it was there.”
Fifty years later, watching the sport has become a test of endurance.
Ms. Summers pays about $725 a year for a cable package that includes access to regular Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers games, a small chunk of Professional Women’s Hockey League games and her occasional Toronto Blue Jays game.
But to satisfy the bulk of her hockey diet – the World Junior Championship and Monday Night Hockey, for example – she churns through seasonal subscriptions with platforms such as Amazon’s Prime Video at $15 to $20 a month while struggling to keep track of games across multiple platforms.
This is the reality of watching sports in today’s fragmented streaming landscape: juggling multiple subscriptions, signing up and cancelling to cut costs, or missing out on games entirely. Though the process gets more complicated, the price tag only soars, squeezing out some fans entirely.
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Mrs. Summers watches Toronto Maple Leafs highlights on the team’s app. It’s just one of the streaming platforms she uses to keep up with her favourite teams.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
Ms. Summers, for example, finds herself giving up on games and leagues she used to watch regularly, such as the Ontario Hockey League, because of the prep work and fees.
Since the erosion of cable, a growing lineup of streaming platforms – from Netflix, to DAZN, to Amazon – have been vying for the rights to deliver live sports to viewers alongside legacy networks.
“Traditional cable or media providers cannot afford not to carry sports – it’s really the only content that people will tune in to watch live,” said Mike Lorenc, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology.
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Toronto Blue Jays fans watch Game 7 of the World Series on Sportsnet at a bar in Vancouver. Sportsnet, which is owned by Rogers, raised the annual rate for its Premium package by 30 per cent this summer.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
This dynamic has given major leagues enormous leverage and sent the valuation of sports content soaring. Entertainment insights firm Ampere Analysis found that spending on U.S. sports rights grew 122 per cent over the past decade, from US$13.8-billion in 2015 to US$30.5-billion in 2025. In comparison, total U.S. TV industry revenues rose just 24 per cent.
Leagues such as the National Football League increasingly carve up games into new packages to maximize revenue, said Stephen Master, a business professor at New York University whose years in the sports industry included stints at the NFL. Amazon for Thursday nights, Netflix for Christmas games, YouTube for Sunday Ticket and Verizon for mobile in the United States.
The sports streaming industry knows fans are frustrated by the fragmented system. That’s a feature, not a bug
But dedicated fans often need five or six subscriptions to cover major men’s and women’s leagues, said Michael Naraine, an associate professor of Sport Management at Brock University.
He personally juggles about four of them. “I am constantly debating cord-cutting,” he said.
Though each platform seems to have less of what an individual fan needs for their sports diet, prices continue to soar.
Take Sportsnet, owned by Rogers Communications Inc. The platform raised the annual rate for its Premium package this summer by 30 per cent, to $324.99 plus tax from $249.99, and its Standard package by 25 per cent, to $249.99.
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A TV cameraman captures the New York Rangers and the Washington Capitals warming up prior to a NHL game in March, 2023. In today’s fragmented streaming landscape, hockey fans often have to juggle multiple subscriptions on various platforms to see their teams in action.BRUCE BENNETT/Getty Images
Randy Bush in Niagara, Ont., had been a long-time subscriber of NHL GameCentre Live, which later folded into what became Sportsnet+ Premium. He said his costs have jumped 65 per cent in the past four years, while the product has steadily worsened.
“They’ve removed features like multi-game view and the option to choose which team’s feed you want,” he said of the pricier plan. “The app crashes constantly [and] the video quality is inconsistent.”
Despite paying for every out-of-market game for the season, Mr. Bush said teams such as the Buffalo Sabres at one point quietly disappeared from his package. “No e-mail, no warning.”
Sportsnet price hike prompts widespread fan outrage
Kenny Cameron from Ottawa has watched legacy fans such as his mom and dad struggle to keep track of which platforms are telecasting teams and tournaments.
“For my parents and their generation, it’s frustrating,” said Mr. Cameron in a written correspondence. “They don’t know how to navigate the streaming platforms to watch their favourite teams and often stop watching.”
Ms. Summers regularly scans social media and consults family to keep track but still slips up. By the time she figured out where to watch a recent Diamond League track and field competition she’d been anticipating, “they’ve already had the running, they’d already had the track. They moved on to pole vaulting,” she said.
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Fox Sports TV cameras broadcast a NFL football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys on Nov. 23.
Recently ESPN Inc., Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery tried to create a joint venture called Venu Sports, but it was scrapped early this year after Venu was found in violation of U.S. antitrust laws.Matt Patterson/The Associated Press
While juggling multiple subscriptions makes it hard to keep track of games, it’s hard to legally dodge regional blackouts otherwise.
Matthew Yeo, who has fans of the Jays and the Boston Red Sox in his family, used to get all MLB games on the MLB.TV app, which last cost him US$149.99 annually. That’s in addition to paying for Premier League soccer on Fubo, altogether totalling around $800.
“With the Jays being blacked out and only available on Sportsnet, we were forced to spend more money for the Canadian middleman,” he said, “than we did to watch all the other 29 MLB teams combined.”
Regional blackouts mean that sports fans living in a team’s home market must subscribe to their regional broadcaster to watch games that aren’t aired nationally.
To get the MLB games he followed, Mr. Yeo would’ve needed two different streaming platforms and a third after Apple TV+ signed on to show Friday night games.
“We’ve been priced out completely,” he said. “We’re now out of the baseball world altogether – we’ll just have to watch YouTube highlights.” He’s since stopped paying for soccer too, essentially dropping all sports streaming.
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NBC Sunday Night Football commentators broadcast from the field ahead of a NFL game. The NFL and other sports leagues increasingly carve up games into new packages to maximize revenue.Reed Hoffmann/The Associated Press
If broadcasts rely on monetizing the entire game, yet most people don’t care about watching a full game, “that’s a big disconnect,” said Mr. Lorenc. “There’s definitely the risk of a bubble in valuations for professional sports.”
In the long term, Mr. Naraine said Canada’s streaming landscape may reach a “rebundling” phase akin to cable. “Rogers might say, ‘You subscribe to us, we’ll give you Disney+, Apple TV+, Netflix and Amazon Prime.’” Rogers and Bell have both started bundling some of their entertainment and sports offerings together in recent months.
But that might not happen across the board soon. ESPN Inc., Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery recently tried to create a joint venture called Venu Sports. Last year, a U.S. court found Venu to be a violation of antitrust laws after a lawsuit from streamer FuboTV. Venu was eventually scrapped early this year.
Mr. Master believes the limits will ultimately be drawn by fans. “When fans are just like, enough is enough, I’m not watching any more NFL games, I’m sick and tired of subscribing to all these services – that’s the limit.”
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