Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final posts a flat overnight rating for NBC compared to 2018

Last night’s opening game of the Stanley Cup Final was an exciting affair, as the Bruins erased a 2-0 deficit with four unanswered scores to beat the Blues 4-2.

The overnight ratings, meanwhile, presented a decent picture for NBC, with the rating essentially staying flat from last year’s Game 1.

Game 1 of the 2019 #StanleyCupFinal between the @StLouisBlues &@NHLBruins delivered a 3.67 overnight rating on NBC, essentially flat with last year’s Washington-Vegas (3.72 on NBC) and UP 5% vs. 2017’s Nashville-Pittsburgh (3.49 on NBC).

— NBC Sports PR (@NBCSportsPR) May 28, 2019

2018 had the intrigue of the Vegas Golden Knights’ expansion run to the Final, so staying right at that level isn’t the worst thing in the world. Plus, given how ratings tend to fall year-over-year now anyway as the world of media changes, a drop of .05 points really isn’t a bad thing.

(It is interesting to note how NBC’s PR team labeled it flat. There’s nothing statistically wrong with that; it’s in the headline of this very post, too! But had the rating been up .05 points from 2018, they probably would have called it an increase. Thank you for reading this digression on the ratings spin habits of network PR groups.)

As for the local market data, the top of the list was exactly what you’d expect:

For Game 1 of the #StanleyCupFinal on NBC, St. Louis led all markets with a whopping 29.0 local rating, NBC Sports’ highest NHL rating on record in the market. Boston scored a 25.2 rating.

1 St. Louis 29.0
2 Boston 25.2
3 Providence 18.8
4 Buffalo 8.4
5 Indianapolis 7.3

— NBC Sports PR (@NBCSportsPR) May 28, 2019

NBC’s best chance for a big NHL rating is, of course, if the series goes seven games. That’s the scenario that might be able to draw in a wider national audience of casual fans, and it would fall on an off night for the impending NBA Finals as well, or potentially even after the NBA Finals are over, if that series ends in five games or fewer. We’re a long way off from that, of course, but sports fans and NBC executives alike can certainly still hope.

Game 2 is Wednesday night at 8 PM Eastern in Boston.

[NBC Sports]