The NHL’s opening night was apparently overshadowed by two leagues in the heart of their respective postseasons.
A tripleheader to debut the 2024-25 NHL season on ESPN was beat out by both Major League Baseball and the WNBA on Tuesday. The three game slate averaged just 559,000 viewers, down 39 percent from last season, which featured the first game of young phenom Connor Bedard’s professional career.
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.
LRT: WNBA playoff on ESPN2 > NHL on ESPN but NHL had more viewers under 50.
— Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) October 9, 2024
It’s clearly not the start the NHL would’ve hoped for, though it was a crowded night for sports. Should one make comparisons to the 2022 season, when Bedard’s debut wasn’t a factor, the numbers look more favorable. That year featured just two games in primetime on ESPN, with the average of this year’s primetime games up 3% versus two years ago, and Bruins-Panthers in particular up six percent.
Nevertheless, the decision to play a West Coast team and a Midwest team in the middle of the day certainly didn’t help this year’s numbers. And the Utah Hockey Club proved not to be a needle-mover despite going up against a national brand in the Blackhawks.
The good news for the NHL is there’s plenty of time to rebound.
[Data via Sports Media Watch]
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.