The 2024 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs were the league’s second most-watched ever, behind a season nearly 30 years ago.
Per the Sports Business Journal, this year’s NHL Playoffs averaged 1.54 million viewers, second to just the 1996 season that aired across on Fox and ESPN networks.
Games in this year’s NHL Playoffs aired on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, and truTV. This year was up 26% from last season’s playoffs, which aired on the same slate of networks aside from ABC, which aired the entire Stanley Cup Final this year.
This is your obligatory reminder that out-of-home viewing was not tracked prior to 2020 and would have positively impacted seasons before that year.
Unsurprisingly, Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final was the most-watched NHL game of the year and the most-watched NHL game since Game 7 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, averaging 7.7 million viewers on ABC. Given the teams involved in the Final, the number is even more impressive, with ESPN touting the audience as the largest ever for a game not involving an Original Six team.
The NBA Playoffs were a different story, negatively aided by the Conference Finals going just one game above the minimum and a lopsided five-game NBA Finals win for the Boston Celtics. Yet, the gap between the NBA and NHL’s average audience is stark. The NBA Playoffs averaged 4.53 million viewers, nearly triple the NHL’s average audience, down double digits from the last two seasons and also lower than each season from 2010-2019.
Ultimately, it was a strong spring for hockey across the league’s two national media partners, the third year of the seven-year pact between the league, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.