NHL viewership sees even steeper decline in week two of season

Earlier this month a report from Drew Lerner of the sports broadcasting blog 'Awful Announcing' indicated that the NHL saw a 'sharp decline' in its viewership to start the season, with its major games ranking well behind the likes of the MLB and... the WNBA.

The NHL's opening night three game slate averaged just 559,000 viewers, a 39% decline from 2023's season opening night.

More from Lerner's column:

In an interesting programming decision, two teams situated west of the Mississippi River opened the season while it was still afternoon on the East Coast. The St. Louis Blues and Seattle Kraken opened the action during the late afternoon window, averaging 348,000 viewers, down 42% from last season’s Nashville Predators-Tampa Bay Lightning game (598,000 viewers).

Game two of the tripleheader was the top hockey audience of the night, as the Boston Bruins and defending champions Florida Panthers averaged 790,000 viewers. The game was down 45 percent from last season’s Chicago Blackhawks-Pittsburgh Penguins game that averaged 1.43 million viewers and included Bedard’s debut.

The NHL closed out the night featuring its new franchise, the Utah Hockey Club, up against the Blackhawks. The game averaged 522,000 viewers, down 24 percent from the Seattle Kraken and Las Vegas Golden Knights nightcap last season (691,000 viewers).

As many have pointed out, all three NHL games were beaten out by Game 5 of the Minnesota Lynx-Connecticut Sun WNBA semifinal series over on ESPN2, which averaged 984,000 viewers, and continued a strong postseason for that league.

- Drew Lerner

Today, Sports Media Watch reports that the NHL continued to see declining viewership numbers in its second week of the season.

From Sports Media Watch:

NHL viewership continues to fall well short of last year; NASCAR hit a second-straight multi-year high; and more.

NHL sees another round of steep declines in week two

Wednesday’s Sabres-Penguins NHL regular season game averaged a 0.28 rating and 512,000 viewers across TNT (0.23, 422K) and truTV (0.05, 90K), down 32% in ratings and 27% in viewership from Penguins-Red Wings last year (0.41, 699K), but up 40% and 51% respectively from Flyers-Panthers in 2022 (0.20, 338K). (Updated to include the truTV simulcast.) The Bruins-Avalanche nightcap drew a 0.16 and 263,000 on TNT, with figures for truTV not immediately available.

The prior night, ESPN averaged a 0.21 and 417,000 for Wild-Blues, down 29% and 24% respectively from Lightning-Sabres a year ago (0.29, 552K). The Flyers-Oilers nightcap had 333,000 (-35%).

All eight games on ESPN and TNT that can be compared to last season have declined.

Yeesh... losing viewers to playoff baseball is one thing, but losing viewers to the WNBA is a new one for the NHL.

As Lerner reports, it's clearly not the start of the season that the NHL hoped for but personally I can't say that it's surprising. The NHL's market, and the market of all major professional sports, is aging. Keeping up with all of the ways to subscribe, stream or even pirate NHL games is a confusing mess and the NHL's core market is simply not interested enough to seek out content like younger generations.

If the NHL is serious about growing its viewership it should immediately ban the things that hold it back, namely regional restrictions. It's absolutely asinine that in the year 2024, we as hockey fans can't watch games in a local area due to broadcasting agreements. Sort it out NHL or risk alienating your core fans forever.