Report: NHL viewership in the U.S. is way, way, waaaaaaay down

Earlier this season areport from Drew Lerner of the sports broadcasting blog 'Awful Announcing' brought to light that the NHL asw 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

Now, Lerner has issued an update to the NHL's viewership struggles on the United States and... well... things ain't gettin' any better.

From Lerner's report for Awful Announcing today:

After the league got off to a poor start to the season, seeing a steep 39% year-over-year decline in Opening Night viewership, then drawing a record-low audience for the Winter Classic a few months later, the NHL is putting up some truly dreadful numbers as it enters the doldrums of its regular season.

According to Braylon Breeze of Sports Media Watch, last Thursday’s game between the San Jose Sharks and Seattle Kraken averaged just 175,000 viewers on ESPN — the least-watched NHL game of the year for the network and the lowest-viewed program on ESPN for the entire day.

The game, which began at 10:30 p.m. ET — already not a prime television viewing window — was outdrawn by its lead-in, an Iowa State-Kansas State women’s basketball game, more than 2-to-1. The Cyclones and Wildcats averaged 390,000 viewers, per Programming Insider.

Wednesday’s viewership didn’t look much better. A Philadelphia Flyers-New Jersey Devils game on TNT and truTV averaged 253,000 viewers, which was actually a 59% increase versus last year’s comparable window (though that game was non-exclusive, meaning fans could watch their normal local broadcasts). Later that night, TNT and truTV averaged a paltry 138,000 viewers for a Pittsburgh Penguins-Utah Hockey Club game, which itself was a non-exclusive broadcast.

Needless to say, these figures do not look good for the NHL no matter how you slice them. ESPN has regularly been drawing nearly a million viewers recently for a brand new property like TGL. Even Thursday’s East-West Shrine Bowl on NFL Network (a 25-0 thumping) outdrew the NHL on ESPN by about 10,000 viewers.

- Drew Lerner

Yeesh...

I think it's safe to say that the NHL's most recent foray onto ESPN has been a disaster from the start. TNT shows potential, but the viewership numbers just aren't there yet.

So... what's next? What has to happen for these numbers to improve?

Here's just a wild idea... stop forcing people to have 400 subscription services just to watch a hockey game. Oh, and stop blacking out games like it's the 1970s...