Gary Bettman exposes worrying NHL viewership trend
The NHL often lacks behind the NBA and NFL in popularity, but according to Bettman, viewership has been especially low to start the new season.
While the NHL may not be as popular in North America as sports like the NBA and the NFL, they've got a loyal audience that tunes in with passionate loyalty, so while the league's numbers aren't incredible, they certainly aren't bad. To start the 2024/25 season however, it has been bad for Gary Bettman's league with Drew Lerner from Awful Announcing revealing the overall viewership numbers from the opening night triple-header that certainly doesn't look good for the league.
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.
According to Lerner, all three games on that night were down significantly, and with the growing popularity of the WNBA, the league fell behind their playoff series and the MLB postseason. In Canada, viewers are streamlined to the necessary games on Sportsnet and other broadcasting services, but in the US, this couldn't be further from the truth, as regional blackouts and a confusing mess of several streaming services risk alienating fans who simply want to see their local team play.
A few months ago, the NHL was seeing record numbers during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, so the audience is clearly there, but when you make it this hard to see games, viewership will decline, so hopefully this sends a message to the league that this is something that needs to be fixed.
