How much do I have to pay them to not?

I had to turn off the sports. Used to love NHL (and TV), but it was not worth the dark destructive undercurrent in my life. It really robbed me of happiness and potential. It became much easier just to turn hockey off. If a service does not have an ad-free version, it is simply not available to me.

The irony is that, in Japan, the NHL offered a service with no advertising for a fair price.

I assume making a decent return off a large number of people is of less importance than fleecing true fans.

I used to think the Japanese baseball league was insanely commercial due to it using corporate sponsor names instead of the city name (Hanshin Tigers, Yomiuri Giants, etc..) but in retrospect, the commercialization was only skin deep while the NHL is completely and unapologetically corrupted.

Local sports is a good option - to see it in person

Lesser leagues are more fun anyways

Stop paying them anything. Get everyone you can to stop paying them anything.

The transphobic fiasco with bud light made it pretty clear that boycotts WORK, if only we had the balls to do them, and maybe endure minuscule """suffering""" to continue them.

You can’t. To believe that everything has to have some sort of grass root, personal choice-based solution, is a fallacy¹. You could not boycott your way out of Standard Oil.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36031458

Actually I cancelled it after a month. I had moved from Tokyo back to Canada and didn't realize how far things had gone.

Your point stands in general.