The Stanley Cup Final is back in Edmonton Thursday night for the first time in nearly two decades, as the Oilers host the Florida Panthers down two games to none in their series. The Edmonton Oilers’ last trip to the Final in 2006—a seven-game loss to the Carolina Hurricanes—was a year after a lockout canceled the 2004-05 NHL season, and when the Oilers were a bottom-five club for both revenue and franchise value.
Much has changed.
The Oilers still play in one of the smallest pro sports markets in North America, but their revenue has skyrocketed since the opening of Rogers Place in 2016. The Oilers generated the fifth-highest revenue in the NHL during the 2022-23 season at an estimated $281 million net of revenue sharing—by Sportico’s count, the current Cup run will push revenue over $300 million and likely into the top three. The Oilers rank in the top five for both regular season gate receipts and local media, while sponsorship revenue is in the top quartile.
The Oilers are the NHL’s eighth-most valuable team at $1.6 billion, with every team ahead of it in a metro area at least three times larger by population.
Revenue for the Oilers has soared even though the Canadian dollar is currently worth $0.73, just a tick above the 20-year lows of $0.69 briefly hit in 2016 and 2020. The Canadian dollar was valued above $1 as recently as 2012 and is down 30% from those levels. Back then, the exchange rate parity resulted in five of the top six clubs by ticket revenue located north of the border—the New York Rangers were the outlier.
The NHL is by far the most reliant on the value of the Canadian dollar among the five biggest North American sports leagues. The NHL has seven teams in Canada, including three economic giants in Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton, while the other four clubs currently rank in the bottom half of the NHL on revenue.
A one-cent shift in the exchange rate is worth roughly $20 million in hockey-related revenue (HRR), according to someone familiar with NHL club finances who was not authorized to speak publicly; HRR is used to derive the salary cap and payroll minimum. The HRR impact could be higher for 2023-24 with four Canadian teams in the playoffs, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, as well as the Oilers in the Cup final. HRR is based on the average exchange rate for the league year (July 1-June 30), with the average for the 2023-24 season at $0.74.
In 2013, Rogers Communications signed a 12-year, CA$5.2 billion TV that was worth $4.9 billion based on 2013 exchange rates. It is a $3.8 billion agreement using current rates.
Canadian teams collect their local revenue in Canadian dollars, but their biggest expense, player salaries, is in U.S. dollars. The NHL is still very much a gate-driven league, but central revenues, which are largely collected in U.S. dollars, are creeping higher as an overall percentage, according to Allan Walsh, co-head of Octagon Hockey. “The exchange rate is something that is followed very closely in the NHL and has a great impact,” Walsh said in a phone interview.
In 1995, the NHL launched its Canadian Assistance Plan to send seven-figure checks to Canadian teams impacted by the exchange rate. The Canadian dollar was worth around $0.73 then and eventually sunk as low as $0.62 in 2002. The league ended the plan in 2004, with the NHL’s broader revenue-sharing system boosting all lower revenue clubs with payments from the top teams.
The league currently uses currency hedging strategies, and those recently have been focused on a short-term basis. Most Canadian clubs use one-to-three-year forex futures to hedge their U.S. dollar salary exposure, according to multiple sources.
HRR is expected to top $6 billion for the 2023-24 season. On Saturday, the NHL and NHL Players’ Association revealed the salary cap for next season would be $88 million, up from $83.5 million. It marks the first bump of more than $1 million since the 2019-20 campaign, as players owed a “debt” to make up for revenue shortfalls triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
(This story has been corrected in the first paragraph to reflect that the Oilers lost in seven games, not five, to the Hurricanes in the 2006 Stanley Cup Final.)