Premier Sports

Previously I wrote about the latest change to NHL coverage in the UK through which Premier Sports has been brought back to life and regained all of the rights that they previously sold to Viaplay.

The expectation was that it would be ‘business-as-usual’, with Premier Sports taking on the broadcasting rights contracts from Viaplay in full. For the NHL, that would mean them taking on the 5-year contract signed in April 2022 that gave UK fans access to every NHL regular season and Stanley Cup Playoff game via the online streaming service.

Alas, when NHL fans accessed Premier Sports after their account was transferred across, it quickly became painfully apparent that this was not the case.

The two Premier Sports channels are listed and some NHL games are part of the schedule, but the key word there is “some” rather than “all”. That, combined with the promotional blurb on the website promising “500 games from the NHL (15 games a week)”, gives the worrying impression that Premier Sports is reverting back to the arrangement under their previous contract.

Premier Sports’ current position

Upon querying this with Premier Sports directly, it turns out that this is not quite the case.

The official position currently being provided by their Customer Support is that “this is still in discussion with NHL to check how we [PS] can arrange to broadcast all NHL matches”.

Encouragingly, that shows the intention is to broadcast all of the games, but that how this will be achieved is still being worked out.

The previous Premier Sports UK streaming model had been built around providing an online subscription version of their TV channels. Implementing a host of online-only content alongside this, both from a technical and presentation standpoint, is something that genuinely would need additional work.

Viaplay already had that in place due to their NHL rights deals in their core Nordic markets where, of course, the NHL content is a prized commodity. Sadly that’s not quite the case on these shores and the fact that it’s something Premier Sports are working on, rather than have made sure is in place from Day One, should not be seen as a surprise.

The question now is whether things will be in place by Saturday and the start of the NHL Playoffs?

The Viaplay UK service will still be available until 21 May, so this should mean that we can still watch the games there in the interim; however it would be a disappointing start to the NHL’s return to Premier Sports if customers find that the NHL playoff games they are expecting to watch are nowhere to be seen on their platform.

It’s been confirmed over the past couple of days that Premier Sports will be returning in the UK and taking over what is currently Viaplay UK.

The switchover will take effect next Tuesday, April 9th, and Premier Sports promises that this will be a seamless process. As per the joint press release, “Current sports customer subscriptions will be automatically transferred to Premier Sports, with the sports content line-up remaining unchanged”.

Back to the Future

Back in December 2022, the UK TV sports market had a new entrant. The Nordic company Viaplay announced that they had bought Premier Sports, reportedly for approximately £30M, and would be rebranding the two TV channels and online streaming service.

From a subscriber’s perspective the change was minimal, other than a different logo and colour scheme and a new app to download. The different subscription offerings and pricing remained similar to what had gone before. The most notable impact came in the form of the investment in some UEFA European Championship Qualification rights and an increase in visibility of the Viaplay brand, principally through sponsorship of competitions they had the rights for, such as the Scottish Cup and the UK’s Elite Ice Hockey League.

Viaplay’s global expansion plans came to a crashing halt in the middle of 2023 when they announced that financial challenges had led them to refocus on their main markets in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands and to end operations elsewhere, including the UK.

Whilst this prompted much speculation about where the various broadcasting rights would go, mainly generated by the Scottish football community and media, the likeliest scenario always was that the previous owner SSBL Limited would strike a deal to buy back the entire rights portfolio and TV channel slots and to relaunch under the old Premier Sports brand.

That’s precisely what has now happened.

The NHL’s home in the UK

It’s relevant to us hockey fans, of course, as Viaplay UK is the current holder of the NHL rights. Premier Sports will now be the place to watch the NHL for us until at least the end of the 2025-26 season.

That consistency means there’s no need to worry about the coverage anytime soon; however, the change in direction may have an impact in the future.

The current UK rights deal was negotiated to be all-inclusive. It doesn’t simply give the rights-holder the ability to broadcast a set number of games on TV per week, it allows them to show all NHL games online.

That was a major improvement for many of us because it took away the dreaded blackouts that we faced on NHL.TV under the old contract. The previous Premier Sports deal meant that any games they chose to broadcast would be blocked on NHL.TV, meaning you had to pay for two streaming services if you wanted to watch all of your chosen team’s games. This was frustrating in itself, but became absolutely maddening in some cases when Premier Sports didn’t broadcast the game as advertised and you were left with no way to watch it.

It’s difficult to know if the NHL would have wanted this to change regardless of who was bidding, but Viaplay’s long established relationship with the NHL might have played a part in expanding the rights deal, especially as the all-inclusive rights approach was something they had already put in place in the Nordic territories.

This is probably one of the situations where the relatively low profile of the NHL on these shores makes things easier. The rights are worth having for a broadcaster, but will not be a particularly costly endeavour (e.g. no direct production costs as they just take the game feeds as supplied etc) so ultimately renewing the deal on the same basis is the most likely option.

Although whether Viaplay and Premier Sports play pass-the-parcel again before then remains to be seen!