After struggling to attract meaningful audiences to start its season, hockey is having a moment.
The 4 Nations Face-Off, a best-on-best round robin competition between the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Finland that is replacing this year’s NHL All-Star festivities, is off to a great start in viewership.
According to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, Thursday’s game between the United States and Finland drew the largest hockey audience so far this season, averaging 1.55 million viewers on ESPN. The previous high was a Golden Knights-Bruins game on ABC last weekend, which averaged 1.27 million viewers on ABC.
The Americans’ 6-1 win was the most-watched non-playoff NHL-affiliated game on any network since the Winter Classic in 2023.
Notably, USA-Finland drew a larger audience than every NHL All-Star Game since 2020, when NBC captured 1.7 million viewers for the event.
The game held up well versus other sports competition on Thursday, beating a Memphis Grizzlies-Minnesota Timberwolves game on TNT (1.11 million), and finishing just behind the NASCAR Duel at Daytona on FS1 (1.84 million).
4 Nations Face-Off has been a much needed shot in the arm for the sport of hockey stateside. Between posting significant declines on Opening Night, a record-low audience for the Winter Classic, and objectively dreadful audiences during its regular season cable packages on ESPN and TNT, this week’s international competition should provide some momentum to build on for the rest of the season.
Expect an even larger audience on Saturday night, when the United States takes on Canada at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.