MSNBC tied a viewership record for its coverage of Sunday’s hockey battle between the U.S. and Canada.
The USA/Canada preliminary round game drew a 4.3 U.S. rating and 8.2 million viewers on MSNBC Sunday night. The game is tied with 2008 Election Night coverage as the most-viewed program in the history of MSNBC.
Only two programs in MSNBC history have drawn a higher rating — a February 2008 Democratic Debate (4.9), and post-debate coverage (4.4).
The 8.2 million viewers is over 1,000% higher than MSNBC’s Olympic average of 608,000 viewers.
The game stands as the most-viewed hockey telecast in the United States since the USA/Canada Gold Medal game in ’02 (10.7/24, 17.1 mil). Excluding gold medal games, this ranks as the top hockey telecast since USA/Russia in ’02 (7.2/20, 11.1 mil). Both of those games aired on NBC.
To put the numbers in perspective, Game 7 of last June’s Red Wings/Penguins Stanley Cup Final drew 8.0 million.
