Hockey Night in Canada to be streamed in multiple languages in push for diversity

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TORONTO — Hockey Night in Canada will be streamed in seven additional languages on April 24, marking the first time in history that the games will be broadcasted in that many languages.

Molson Canadian, in partnership with Sportsnet, announced that they will be streaming the Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Winnipeg Jets game and the Vancouver Canucks vs. Ottawa Senators games in the seven most commonly spoken languages across Canada, aside from English and French. The languages include Arabic, Cantonese, German, Hindi, Mandarin, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. These streams will be available in addition to the regularly broadcasted English, French, and Punjabi platforms.

“I think it’s great that they are reaching out to different segments of the Canadian population,” Joff Wong, past president of the Unionville Minor Hockey Association, told CTVNews.ca. “Myself being an immigrant who came to Canada at a very early age, I was at an age where there weren’t that many things going on Saturday nights, and though my father didn’t speak English, we enjoyed watch[ing] Hockey Night in Canada.”

Wong says that although this is a great start to create more diversity in the game, “way more needs to be done”.

“Don’t limit yourself to just broadcasting in many languages. Spend some time and money on features during intermissions. Feature some minorities in the game,” said Wong. “What we need are more role models in different groups. Even refereeing we need to promote more minorities.”

Christina Chin, former women's hockey player at Ontario's York University, said that she hopes broadcasting the games in different languages will inspire the next generation of hockey players.

“It will help expose more kids and parents to the game early on, and hopefully these kids will want to start playing at their local rinks,” said Chin. “By having this broadcast in multiple languages, hopefully the game will grow to minority girls like myself.”

To select the different languages, Vividata conducted research on the most commonly spoken languages, outside of English and French, in each of the Canadian NHL cities in late 2020. They then compared the language index numbers to the population in each of the cities to find out how common the spoken language is. The data showed that the most commonly spoken language for each city all exceeded 100 per cent, meaning that the language is more than likely to be spoken in that region.

The games will be streamed through Spalk, which will allow hockey fans to hear the commentators and analysts call the game in their selected language.