Where Canadian Advertisers Can Reach Hockey Fans in 2026-27
Canada's NHL season is a week old, and the broadcast lineup looks nothing like last year's. For the first time since CBC began airing Hockey Night in Canada in 1952, the public broadcaster isn't carrying NHL games. And Wednesday nights now belong to Prime Video, whose English-language debut on September 30 averaged 830,000 viewers. Citing Numeris, Amazon says that's the largest average audience for a streaming NHL broadcast in Canada.
Who carries hockey this season
The change comes with Rogers' new 12-year, $11 billion national rights deal, which started this season. Rogers and CBC didn't renew the sublicence that kept Saturday night games on the public broadcaster. Sportsnet now holds exclusive English-language rights to more than 500 national games a season, including most of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Saturday nights are where the change is most visible. Sportsnet replaced Hockey Night in Canada with Saturday Night Hockey, which debuted October 3 with Ron MacLean still hosting. Each Saturday is a doubleheader with at least one Canadian team in every matchup, airing exclusively on Sportsnet. For advertisers, that moves Saturday hockey off free over-the-air TV and onto a specialty channel. Plenty of fans online weren't happy about the rebrand, though the broadcast itself looked much like recent seasons of Hockey Night. Monday Night Hockey, meanwhile, is now streaming-only on Sportsnet+.
On CBC, Hockey Night in Canada carries on with the PWHL. The league will headline eight Saturday nights this season, with Andi Petrillo anchoring.
Under its 12-season sublicence with Rogers, Prime Video carries national games every Wednesday night of the regular season, in English and French. It also gets two first-round playoff series and one second-round series each year. Every matchup this season includes a Canadian team. Prime hasn't carried playoff hockey before, so those games are new inventory for advertisers.
Prime Video's new ad inventory
At a closed-door event on September 28, Amazon Ads announced its 2026-27 sponsors. DoorDash is the presenting sponsor, joined by Apple, DraftKings, McDonald's, Paramount and P&G across Wednesday games and select playoff series.
If you've caught a Wednesday game, you've probably seen some of this already. When the screen splits, with the game on one side and an ad on the other, that's a double box, and this season both McDonald's and Paramount+ have one. Custom features go a step further and build the brand into the broadcast itself. Last season, a quick LEGO spot led into “Creative Play presented by LEGO," a highlight of a creative play from the game. This year that feature belongs to P&G, which also shares the score clock takeovers with JP Wiser's. Watch for a “Shot on iPhone" segment from Apple too, along with interactive ads that let viewers add products to their cart without leaving the game.
The most extensive integration belongs to DraftKings, the exclusive sportsbook and online casino integration sponsor, with branded moments in pregame coverage, during live play and in intermissions.
Why brands are buying in
The presenting sponsor plans to tie game nights to in-app promotions. “We want to surround that environment, scale our reach, and complement existing channels to speak to households across Canada," said Monica Tam, head of North America brand media at DoorDash. She said the goal is to build a habit over the full season.
Prime's Monday night viewers last season were a valuable crowd. Their median age was 43, and 54% lived in households earning more than $100,000, according to Amazon, citing Numeris data from the 2025-26 season. They also stayed put once the puck dropped. Viewers watched an average of 68 minutes per game, 20 minutes more than the 48-minute average on linear TV.
Brand-lift studies by Dynata across 12 full-season Prime Monday Night Hockey campaigns found sponsorships delivered 3.7 times Dynata's streaming and connected TV benchmark for ad awareness, 5.5 times for sponsorship association and 7.4 times for brand favourability. Those benchmarks cover all streaming campaigns, not only sports.
The broadcast team, in English and French
Leading the English-language broadcast again is John Forslund, with Adnan Virk, Blake Bolden, Chris Pronger and Petrillo, who is also anchoring CBC's PWHL coverage. This is the first season Prime Video has produced separate English and French broadcasts, and Alain Crête leads the French side. Advertisers can buy packages nationally, or in English or French only.
Planning across three broadcasters
Brands that want to reach hockey fans all season now have three broadcasters to plan around: Sportsnet, Prime Video and, for the women's game, CBC.
Category clutter is worth factoring in too. Betting ads have become a regular part of watching hockey in Canada, and a Leger survey of 1,552 Canadian adults, conducted August 28 to 31, found nearly half think there are too many of them. That rises to 55% in Alberta and 53% in Ontario. For brands outside the category, breaking through in those markets may take more than another 30-second spot.
“NHL on Prime lets advertisers pair the reach of a national hockey broadcast with the precision of digital advertising," said Uri Gorodzinsky, managing director for Amazon Ads Canada and Mexico. “Our ad innovations go beyond the traditional 30-second spot, giving brands interactive, measurable ways to tie their investment directly to business outcomes."
