How much will it cost to watch every Ottawa Senators game on TV this year?

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“In a way, that original promise of more for less has turned out to be a pipe dream and consumers find themselves making individual decisions on subscriptions for ever smaller slices of an increasingly subdivided pie.”

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A Casino.org study of more than 2,000 Canadian hockey fans found that 48 per cent of Senators fans surveyed have cancelled or avoided purchasing a required subscription for the upcoming season, while 43 per cent have used an unofficial online stream to watch their favourite team in the past.

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The survey, completed in September, says it estimates Sens fans’ month-to-month viewing costs have risen by as much as 15 per cent for 2026-27. Meanwhile, in three western Canadian markets — Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver — it costs around $200 less to watch hockey, as TSN doesn’t own regional broadcasting rights of Flames, Oilers or Canucks games.

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Just three seasons ago, Sens fans needed only to pay for basic versions of Sportsnet and TSN — easily bundled in a TV package — in order to watch their beloved team from pre-season to playoffs.

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But this new, fractured broadcast landscape is here to stay.

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Prime Video signed an agreement with the National Hockey League in July to broadcast Wednesday night action for the next 12 years; Rogers has its own dozen-year renewal starting this season; and so does TSN locally in Ottawa.

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There’s no telling how exorbitant the price of watching hockey from your couch will get in the coming years.

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A couple months before dropping the Monday Night Hockey bomb, Sportsnet informed premium subscribers that their annual fee was rising by $20 to $344.99 (plus taxes), a 5.8 per cent jump.

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People weren’t happy, but the reaction paled in comparison to that of the company’s decision a year prior to jack up prices by $75 to $324.99, a 30 per cent increase. That hike was the final straw for many, including former Senators defenceman Marc Methot, who tweeted, “We just cancelled ours a few weeks ago. The prices are getting ridiculous.”

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In both cases, the year-over-year inflation rate in Canada was significantly less than Sportnet’s increases — 2.1 per cent in 2025; tracking for 2.6 per cent in 2026.

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Admittedly, there will more be more hockey on Sportsnet this season. The company is lifting 150 regional blackouts while gobbling up national games from CBC with the death of Hockey Night in Canada. The once iconic broadcast will be rebranded as Saturday Night Hockey.

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“Any Canadian with a radio, and then eventually a TV, could consume (Hockey Night in Canada on CBC),” Levy noted, “and everyone could have that shared common experience. Now, we’re moving away from that. And who’s taking that away from us? These corporate interests whose sole focus, frankly, is profitability and growth. You know, terms like ARPU, average revenue per user, and maximizing the amount of money, the revenue that they can extract from each one of us for the privilege of watching one of their games, which is anathema to decades of Canadian culture around sport.”

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Free NHL hockey in Canada is now extinct; Sportsnet is no longer attached to the iconic institution. And Sens fans need three separate streaming services to watch their team.

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“It just bothers me,” said Levy. “Any other business, you can decide to opt out and you can probably find something else to do. But if that’s your team that you’re rooting for, it’s very difficult to completely opt out of it and not feel like you’ve lost part of your community, your culture, your connectedness to others.

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“Ultimately, that’s what sports is, and if we lose that, we lose a lot more than a boxscore on a Monday morning.”

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