Rogers Hands Quebec Its Hockey for 12 Years

Rogers has sold off another slice of Canadian hockey it decided it didn't need to keep for itself. Quebecor's TVA Sports has locked up French-language NHL rights through the 2037-38 season under a new 12-year sublicense agreement with Rogers, carrying up to 350 regular-season games a year across TVA Sports, TVA Sports Direct and now illico+. The Canadiens package grows to 32 national games, 10 more than the last deal, plus every Canadiens playoff game, six of the eight first-round series league-wide, three of the four second-round series, both conference finals and the Stanley Cup Final.

Montreal's inventory is now fully accounted for in a three-way split: 32 games on TVA Sports, 45 on RDS and seven on Prime Video, all 84 spoken for. This is the third piece of Rogers restructuring Canadian hockey rights, following its own 12-year national deal and its sublicense to Prime Video. The pattern is now unmistakable.

Rogers isn't running a broadcaster anymore so much as a wholesaler, buying the whole league's rights once and then selling off windows to whoever can monetize them better than Rogers could alone: a French-language specialist for Quebec, a streaming giant for national games. The rights holder doesn't have to be the best operator in every market. It just has to own the asset and know who to sell each piece to.

The length of the deal is doing real work, too. Twelve years carries TVA Sports past 2037, which means Rogers has locked in a Quebec buyer for more than a decade rather than leaving that market to be renegotiated every few seasons while streaming economics keep shifting underneath it. The same logic is playing out at team level.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, in moving their local rights to DAZN, brought production in-house at Rock Entertainment Sports Network and expanded from six cameras to 19. Instead of renewing a broadcast deal and calling it done, the club decided owning the pipeline is worth more than renting someone else's. Once you control production, the broadcast stops being a fixed cost paid to a partner to deliver and becomes a product line you can price in tiers.

Set against those moves, the NFL is doing the opposite on purpose. It could have forced Paramount's hand or signed with someone else months ago; instead the season opens Sept. 9 with nothing signed, because every network is waiting to see the league's number before setting its own, and stillness is its own kind of leverage when everyone else is watching. The businesses coming out ahead treat patience and infrastructure as one strategy rather than two.

They are either building the thing that sets the terms, or patient enough to let someone else move first. Whether it's a 12-year rights wholesale or a studio lease in a rival's city, the aim is the same: claim the position early, while the price of claiming it is still low. The rights holder doesn't have to be the best operator in every market.

no renewal signed, six months after reporting suggested the league wanted everything wrapped before the year began. Talks with Paramount, whose contract the NFL can reopen under a change-of-control provision, are paused while Paramount fights the lawsuit over its $111 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.

Sportico's read: every network is waiting to see the NFL's number first, so holding still keeps the whole market in view.

released NBA 2K27 worldwide on Sept. 4 for PS5, Xbox Series X and S, PC and Switch 2, the first 2K release to drop PS4, Xbox One and the original Switch. Victor Wembanyama fronts the $69.99 Standard Edition, Caitlin Clark the $99.99 Deluxe and Derrick Rose the $149.99 Ultra. Clark is the first WNBA player on her own global cover, and 2K is betting her name sells a paid upgrade on its own.

and Take the Truck With Them Cleveland's multiyear DAZN deal brings production in-house at Rock Entertainment Sports Network, expanding from six cameras to 19, with new overlays, augmented-reality elements, a weekly show and 15 free games. Brad Daugherty and John Michael stay on the call. Pricing runs from $19.99 a month to $139.99 a year, with the top tier selling multiview and alternate angles as the product.

Season-ticket members get it bundled; the first game airs Oct. 24.

and the Coast Guard Academy is renewed on ESPN+ through 2030. The 46th edition kicks off Nov. 14 at Audi Field in Washington, built into programming tied to America's 250th anniversary. Five years for a Division III service-academy game is small by any dollar measure, but the cheapest inventory left is the kind that comes with a story attached, no bidding war required.

rights Undisclosed Sublicense from Rogers; up to 350 games a season, 2026-27 through 2037-38 DAZN → Cleveland Cavaliers local rights Undisclosed Multiyear; production in-house at Rock Entertainment Sports Network ESPN → Secretaries' Cup Undisclosed On ESPN+, each annual game from 2026 through 2030 Kroenke Sports & Entertainment → Los Angeles Angels $4B M&A; caps more than $30B of U.S. control sales in three months TVA Sports, RDS, Prime Video → Montreal Canadiens inventory Undisclosed Three-way split of 32, 45 and 7 games; all 84 accounted for Paramount, Fox, ESPN, NBC, Amazon → NFL renewals Open Nothing signed; Paramount talks paused pending the Warner Bros. Discovery suit

The Jets' single-fixture campaign took the marketing prize, while Monumental's Stanley Pup, a puppy-adoption riff on the Stanley Cup, won Best Specialized Sports Content Storytelling and Fox's IndyCar broadcast of the Indianapolis 500 won Live Coverage of a Sporting Event. Team-owned content continues to beat brand-owned content. Clio Sports 2026

The final entry deadline fell on Sept. 4, open to work from teams, leagues, brands, agencies and media brands. The NASCAR-presented Emerging Creative Award runs separately for students and creators, covering work produced between Jan. 1, 2025, and Sept. 30, 2026.

Small Axe Studio, grown out of 2K's 2023 Sports Lab project, is a triple-A shop in Vancouver led by EA Sports FIFA veterans and briefed on 2K's “next blockbuster sports franchise,” with no sport named. Its logo is a club-style badge on a shirt, and Vancouver is where EA makes FC: a licensing fight signaled through a logo and a lease before either side has said a word. Esports Gets a Medal Hall at the Asian Games The Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games will stage esports Sept. 23 through Oct. 2 at the Aichi International Exhibition Center, with 23 nations entered and the Japan Esports Union co-organizing with the Asian Electronic Sports Federation.

A continental multi-sport body treating console and PC titles as a full medal sport is about the closest thing gaming has to a rights-holder ladder, the structure that turns a hobby into an inventory line.

Rogers wholesaling hockey and the Cavaliers owning their cameras are bets on infrastructure; the NFL sitting still is a bet on patience. The winners treat those as one strategy, claiming position early while it's still cheap.

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