Why are so few people watching the Stanley Cup Final in the U.S.? – The Athletic – The New York Times

NHL
Stanley
Cup Final
TORONTO — Connor McDavid is a magician, a Patrick Mahomes on skates, Caitlin Clark with a stick. The Oilers star is the rare athlete who makes you sit up in your chair when he has the puck because you might witness something you’ve never seen before. That McDavid is playing in the Stanley Cup Final provides the National Hockey League with an immense opportunity — the best player in a sport competing when it matters most.
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In Canada, the country is riveted to this Stanley Cup Final. Through five games, the Stanley Cup Final is averaging 3.8 million viewers on Sportsnet and CBC, a two percent increase over last year. Those statistics include 4.5 million viewers watching Game 1 and 4.8 million viewers for Game 2. Keep in mind that the population of Canada is just 41.7 million.
But it’s not just viewership. In Toronto over the past two weeks, it is not uncommon to see people draped in Oilers jerseys as a show of solidarity over the potential prospect of the first Canadian-based team winning a Stanley Cup since 1993. The country’s most prominent politician, Prime Minister Mark Carney, is an Oilers super-fan who joined McDavid and Co. last March for a pregame morning skate prior to a game against the Winnipeg Jets. Last Saturday, Carney invited Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, for beers and Stanley Cup Final hockey prior to the G7 summit. (Carney clearly hopes this series also features a G7.)
While the series has had an event-like feel in Canada, the opposite is occurring in the United States. Here are the Stanley Cup viewership numbers for the first four games across TNT and truTV:
Game 1: 2.4 million viewers
Game 2: 2.5 million viewers
Game 3: 2.3 million viewers
Game 4: 2.6 million viewers
Game 1 was the least-watched Cup Final opener since the COVID-delayed Canadiens-Lightning on NBCSN in 2021 (1.61 million viewers), per Sports Media Watch. If you exclude the two COVID-altered seasons, it was the least-watched Game 1 since Penguins-Red Wings on Versus in 2008 (2.35 million viewers).
It’s not a question of boring hockey. The Panthers and Oilers have produced 39 goals, the most through five games of a championship series since 2010. Three of the five Finals games have been A+ games, as good as we’ve seen in the Stanley Cup Final over the last two decades. For some context, here were last year’s Stanley Cup viewership numbers on ABC, featuring the same two teams.
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Game 1: 3.12 million viewers
Game 2: 3.56 million viewers
Game 3: 3.4 million viewers
Game 4: 3.1 million viewers
That’s a 25 percent decrease over one year. The NHL and Turner Sports will likely be somewhat bailed out if this series goes seven games again, but it’s a disappointing number given the quality of the games and the stars on the ice.
“Obviously, there’s less distribution and less fan awareness with the games on TNT,” said John Kosner, who advises sports media companies after a two-decade career as an executive at ESPN. “That said, I find it really disappointing considering how remarkable the series was last year with seven games and how many of the star players here played in the Four Nations Face-Off, which was really highly rated on ESPN.”
Most fans are not concerned with sports viewership numbers, and that’s understandable. You love the sports you love. Who cares if your favorite sport lacks mass popularity? Trust me, I get it. But viewership metrics are of significant importance for sports leagues, given that the money from media rights-holders represents the financial lifeblood of the sport. The same applies to media rights-holders; they charge for ads based on how many eyeballs view the product.
If you want a stunning statistic from my corner of the planet, Sports Media Watch reported through Game 4 “none of the nine Cup Final games on TNT Sports have hit the three million mark, and none of the 13 on broadcast network ABC have fallen below the three million mark. While that is to be expected given the gap between broadcast and cable, it should be noted that half of the final 18 Cup Final games on NBCSN topped three million viewers. (Of course, NBCSN had the benefit of much more attractive series and a larger cable universe.)”
So why are people in the U.S. not watching this great series? Some thoughts.
1. This Stanley Cup Final is particularly hurt by moving from broadcast to cable.
When the NHL reached its seven-year rights agreement with Turner Sports, beginning with the 2021-22 season, part of the agreement stipulated that the Stanley Cup Final would air on TNT in the years when Turner Sports carried it. The 2023 Stanley Cup Final represented the first all-cable Stanley Cup Final in 29 years. A longtime broadcast executive who was given anonymity to speak freely told me regular-season NHL games on ABC did three times the viewership of games on TNT. The NHL made a trade it must live with for the years Turner Sports delivers the Cup Final. The tradeoff was more money from Turner Sports ($225 million annually) over the reach of a network such as NBC (which was offering less annually). Money usually wins here.
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“This is an issue that every sport is contending with, and you only get an opportunity to do course corrections every decade or so in a very fast-moving industry,” said Ed Desser, a senior NBA executive for two decades before forming his consultancy, Desser Sports Media. “Has there been a fall off (in cable) faster than most people anticipated? Yes. On the other hand, the pay TV business is still where the lion’s share of the revenue is coming from. The NHL, just like other leagues, is always looking to try and find a balance between revenue and exposure. An additional kind of twist to this is how they’re able to develop HBO Max. That’s a part of the equation that wasn’t really there early on in the deal. In some ways that becomes the solve for the decline in distribution via cable. But it may not be quite equivalent anytime soon.”
2. Not enough casual fans are aware that TNT is airing the Final
Diehard NHL fans will always search out where games air, but it’s worth remembering that the NHL on TNT is still a relatively new partnership. Casual fans are ultimately what turbocharges viewership numbers, which is why the longer a series goes on, the more word of mouth attracts additional viewers. “There’s a difference in not being on an ESPN-branded platform,” Desser said. “For better or worse, ESPN is kind of special, and in combination with ABC, it’s just a different animal.”
Kosner agreed with that assessment. (So do I, for that matter.) “From a sports-fan standpoint, I think TNT has generated and earned a lot of awareness among NBA fans,” Kosner said. “They did practically seven million viewers (6.96 million) for the Knicks-Pacers series. But for other sports, I think it’s more limited. They outdrew NBC for the French Open coverage thanks in part to that unbelievable Alcaraz-Sinner men’s final. But the Alcaraz match peaked at 2.6 million viewers, and that’s kind of the audience that they’re getting for the Stanley Cup.
3. Having  just one U.S. media market is a killer
What would Dallas have been worth as opposed to Edmonton as far as viewership? The unnamed executive above believed it would be worth at least an additional half a million viewers on average per game. Markets matter in television, and they really matter here, given that Turner Sports gets no viewership benefit from Edmonton being in the Cup Final. (The converse is Sportsnet, CBC and French language TVAS get a big benefit from a Canadian team.)
4. There is some good news
Lower viewership isn’t great, but you’d rather have it be about the platform than a decline in grassroots interest. It is doubtful that millions of NHL fans decided to abandon the NHL this month. Dresser correctly noted that the league is in a much better situation in 2025 than in years past, given the money Commissioner Gary Bettman has brought in from the current media deals. That’s helped player salaries rise. But there is no spinning the viewership numbers in the U.S for this series, and it’s particularly regrettable because the series has been a great advertisement for the sport.
“To generate two or three million viewers in today’s environment is no small feat,” Desser said. “But the challenge for all sports programming today is you’re competing not with what else is on TV that night but with all of the best TV and movie programming that’s ever been created.”
(Top photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Richard Deitsch is a media reporter for The Athletic. He previously worked for 20 years for Sports Illustrated, where he covered seven Olympic Games, multiple NCAA championships and U.S. Open tennis. Richard also hosts a weekly sports media podcast. Follow Richard on Twitter @richarddeitsch

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