Hundreds of thousands of Finnish households to miss ice hockey world championship finals due to broadcast dispute

Hundreds of thousands of Finnish households will be unable to watch this weekend’s ice hockey world championship medal matches on Elisa’s cable TV or streaming platform after broadcaster MTV terminated its distribution agreement with the telecom operator, Yle reports.

The blackout stems from MTV’s decision to cancel its contract with Elisa two weeks ago, removing its free-to-air channels—including MTV3, which holds the rights to Finland’s games—from Elisa’s cable and IPTV services starting May 13. Elisa claimed Friday it had proposed a temporary solution to broadcast the finals live despite ongoing negotiations, but MTV rejected the offer.

Disputes extend to the scale of the disruption. Elisa estimates 800,000 households are affected, citing its 589,000 cable subscribers and over 300,000 Elisa Viihde streaming customers (with some overlap). MTV counters that the figure is closer to 300,000, based on its 29% share of Finland’s roughly one million cable households, per Finnpanel data.

Regulatory interpretations also clash. The Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) ruled that MTV fulfills legal obligations to broadcast “socially significant events” to 90% of the population without additional fees, as MTV3 remains accessible via antenna nationwide and other providers’ networks. Traficom Director Lasse Laine confirmed the agency’s assessment accounts for these alternative access points.

MTV CEO Johannes Leppänen agreed, stating, “There is no ambiguity in this matter.” Elisa’s Business Director Sami Aalto disagreed, arguing MTV’s contract termination undermines the law’s intent by blocking 800,000 households from live coverage of nationally significant events like the championships.