Producing its own NHL draft coverage for the first time didn’t help NBC draw better ratings for the event. Sports Media Watch reports that NBCSN pulled in just 252,000 viewers for the first day of the draft Friday night, the smallest audience since 2012’s 207,000 and a 25 per cent drop from last year’s 337,000. That puts it behind not just ratings hits like the NFL and NBA drafts, but also the MLB draft (306,000) and the WNBA draft (278,000). However, there are a few unusual factors around this year’s draft that might suggest this is an anomaly rather than a trend that will continue into the future.
First and foremost is competition. A late-June draft rarely faces anything significant on the sports calendar, but it sure did Friday night; the Women’s World Cup quarterfinal match between the U.S. and China, which drew 5.7 million viewers to Fox (a soccer record for the network). That’s more than the average of 5.55 million viewers that watched the Stanley Cup Final this year. Thus, the NHL draft was going head to head with something that drew a bigger crowd than the NHL’s biggest event this year. It’s not hard to see that affecting its audience.
It’s also notable that the NHL is a sport that (in the U.S., at least) heavily relies on interest in the biggest hockey markets; that’s why there’s such concern about any potential Stanley Cup matchup between non-traditional markets. (Of course, NBC did just fine in the ratings this year despite having Tampa Bay involved, but much of that was fueled by Chicago, where the Blackhawks’ Cup-clinching win in Game Six drew an incredible 41.0 rating; by contrast, Tampa recorded the second-highest rating ever in that market, but that was only a 15.2.) The famed American hockey markets weren’t anywhere near the top of the draft this year, which went Edmonton-Buffalo-Arizona-Toronto-Carolina to start. Consider Nielsen’s list of the top five U.S. markets by local TV ratings this past season and where they first picked in the draft: Pittsburgh (46th), St. Louis (56th), Boston (13th), Chicago (54th) and Minnesota (20th). Fans of three of those five teams had no reason beyond league-wide interest to even tune in to the first round.
It’s unclear whether the long-foreshadowed selections of Connor McDavid first overall and Jack Eichel second overall hurt or helped the ratings. On one hand, that killed any early-draft drama, but on the other hand, many have been known to tune in to drafts to see long-awaited picks of superstars. Some of that is usually from the market in question, though, so having Edmonton hold the first overall pick didn’t help the U.S. ratings. (It certainly didn’t hurt the Canadian ratings; Sportsnet pulled in one million viewers on average for the draft, a 47 per cent rise over 2014, and that’s despite an impressive 859,000 Canadian viewers opting for the U.S.-China soccer game. It’s notable that the draft pulled a 180 from the playoffs, as playoff ratings were up in the U.S. and down in Canada.) It’s possible that the lack of drama hurt ratings in the U.S., but that seems unlikely to have been the biggest factor here.
In any case, NBC shouldn’t necessarily panic about dropping draft ratings. Their hockey coverage seems to be attracting decent ratings overall, especially for the playoffs, so it’s not like interest in the sport is tanking. This is probably a one-off event thanks to a combination of incredible competition and a remarkable lack of high picks for franchises in the top U.S. hockey markets. You can bet that NBC executives are grateful there’s no chance of going head to head with a U.S. World Cup game next summer, though…
