Why the NHL can’t count on repeating this year’s ratings success

Through four games of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final, the NHL is enjoying its best viewership start since the 2015 edition. But because the Stanley Cup Final still airs exclusively on cable every other year, viewership next year is unlikely to even approach any records.

In 2021, the NHL announced seven-year rights agreements with ESPN and TNT Sports. Under the NHL’s previous agreement with NBC Sports, two Stanley Cup Final games aired on cable on NBCSN, with the remaining games airing over-the-air. Under the current agreement, ESPN and TNT Sports alternate airing the Final every other year. On ESPN years, every game airs over-the-air on ABC, but on TNT Sports years, every game is cable-only.

This is a major problem for the National Hockey League. Its games have a much better casual reach on ABC than on TNT. Take, for example, the 2024 and 2025 Stanley Cup Finals. Both Finals featured the same teams: the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers. However, the 2024 series aired on ABC while the 2025 series aired on TNT.

According to Nielsen, the first four games of the series averaged 3.28 million viewers on ABC in 2024 and 2.46 million on TNT the next year. The difference is even starker when comparing viewership for Games 5 and 6 in 2024 (4.20 million viewers) with the same games in 2025 (2.73 million viewers).

This year, the NHL is hitting even higher highs on ABC. Game 3 averaged 5.0 million viewers, the largest Stanley Cup Final Game 3 audience since 2002. Meanwhile, Game 4 averaged 5.3 million viewers, the largest Game 4 audience since 2017.

Those highs seem far less achievable on TNT Sports. Across the nine Stanley Cup Final games that aired on TNT in 2023 and 2025, the largest audience was 2.76 million viewers for Oilers-Panthers Game 6 in 2025.

As much as hockey is considered the fourth sport among the Big Four, it still draws casual audiences. Some 18.6 million people watched the 2026 men’s hockey Olympic gold medal match, which started at 8 a.m.

The NHL leaves viewers on the table with cable-exclusive Stanley Cup Final games every other year. Viewers who might otherwise tune in if the games were available over the air.

Luckily for the NHL, this is a relatively easy problem to solve. For one, the Warner Bros. Discovery-Paramount merger means that TNT and CBS will become sibling channels in the near future. Even if CBS were to air only two Stanley Cup Final games, that would be a significant improvement for casual audiences.

The other thing is that there are only two years left on the NHL’s current TV agreement. — meaning TNT will air only one more Stanley Cup Final — but that makes it all the more imperative that the NHL avoid the same mistakes in its next media rights deal.

Sports leagues should do everything in their power to ensure their championships are as easy as possible for casual fans to watch. The NHL didn’t do a good enough job of that in its 2022-28 agreement, but it will soon have the opportunity to atone for its mistakes.