Quote:
Originally Posted by Flamesguy_SJ
As an out-of-market fan, and someone who was in on the ground floor when the NHL came out with GameCenter Live back in the day (I was in university, so I want to say 2009?), I truly can't believe how badly the NHL's streaming package has been fumbled.
I just checked my receipts and in 2013 the price was $150 for the year.
Wild!
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but GameCentre Live and Centre Ice were still only "out of market" services. They were add-ons to give you access to games that weren't otherwise available in your market, but didn't give you access to any in-market games.
In order to watch every NHL game, you would have still needed to have a separate subscription for nationally broadcast games (TSN and CBC in 2013), or regional games in your home region (every part of Canada is in at least one team's home region even if you don't live anywhere close to the team's city). Depending on where you lived, you would have required both TSN and SN subscriptions on top of GameCentre to watch every game.
IIRC at that time, I don't think TSN or SN had streaming-only subscriptions available, so you would have also needed a cable tv package that included the sports channels (this would have also given you access to CBC through your basic cable).
In 2013, just adding on the out-of-market NHL games cost you $150 per year. In 2025, the price difference between standard SN and premium SN is $50 per year before September 9 and $75 after. Premium SN gets you everything GameCentre used to give you plus some other international sports content that SN also has rights to (whether that's a benefit or not is up to you to decide). It also includes everything in the standard SN package, which was a separate subscription in 2013.
When you look at it that way, SN+ is a bargain.
To be clear, I'm not defending Rogers here, and a 30% price increase year-over-year is pretty bad, but it's important to compare apples to apples when looking at old prices. I also can't compare the streaming quality because I never watched GameCentre back then, and hardly ever watch streaming games on SN today because I'm old and still have a regular tv package.