Talk about Standing Up to the Big Guys. We may never know who miscalculated at Bell Media’s TSN. But you can be sure that if the right to be the Big Boss of hockey broadcasting in Canada is worth $5.2 billion to Rogers Media, it is absolutely worth that much to Bell. So what happened? Did Bell even get a chance to counter-offer and or did it foolishly think that the NHL would have to come back to Bell regardless? If this deal was the result of an auction — and that seems for sure — did Bell get over-confident about its pre-eminent position in Canada? One thing is clear, the NHL was big enough in its own right to stand up and say we’re going with the other guy. The fallout at Bell is yet to come. The company has written a gracious statement congratulating Rogers but you have to know that at the top, the Bell Big Guys do not like this. Remember how they chased the CRTC all over Canada after they were turned down for Astral Media? But now they are faced with less than the crumbs as the rest of Canada tries to analyse this seismic re-ordering of hockey broadcasting (and streaming) which even the experts are struggling to comprehend. The best information and some educated guessing comes from Cassandra Szklarski of the Canadian Press
