# NHL To Go To XM



## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

I'm surprised this wasn't posted yet. Looks like both XM and Sirius will have the NHL for the next two seasons, then in 2007 XM has them exclusively.

http://www.xmradio.com/nhl/index.jsp


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## SamC (Jan 20, 2003)

What an over-bid. 

No way on earth that the NHL on radio is worth $10M/year.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

The only sport I could imagine listening to on the radio is baseball. But people do work, travel and have favorite teams besides their home team. That's what I tell myself every time sports and satellite radio is brought up. I truly hate the fact bandwidth is being used to broadcast all of these games for every major sporting league on both services and yet there is no decent metal station, sound quality could be improved. I hate that Sirius preempts talk channels for sports. But it all boils down to I have the fact XM and Sirius do not have the bandwidth they deserve. 

I think both XM and Sirius overbid on every sports league deal they made, but will it pay off, only time will tell. At least XM is getting rid of NASCAR. I’m guessing Sirius has some sort of exclusive on marketing, as the NHL shield is not on XMs website.


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## cboylan3 (Jan 26, 2004)

I'm sad that sirius will be losing NHL. I really dont like that companys have exclusive deals. I think programming should be allowed to be carried by any of the companies. An open market provides growth not exclusives. I really like NFL, but I left D* even though they have the ST exclusive. I really like NHL, but I have no intention of switching to XM becuse they have that exclusive.


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

I think they did the NHL as a hook for their Canadian subsidiary (THIS will help sell a lot of SkyFis in Montreal).

Also, it is WAY cheaper than the NFL which only broadcasts pretty much one day a week (OK, plus Monday). Just like Baseball, they can fill a lot of channels every day of the week with content. Plus, they locked them up for 10 years, so it looks like they are buying it cheap of the rules improvements bring back the fans.

The problem though is that just about everyone over .500 makes the playoffs so why bother with the LONG regular season.....


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