Stanley Cup Final viewership remains on the low side.
Saturday’s Golden Knights-Panthers Stanley Cup Final Game 4 averaged 2.56 million viewers across TNT (1.73M), TBS (586K) and TruTV (248K), topping only Lightning-Stars in a fanless, fall 2020 “bubble” (2.26M) as the least-watched Game 4 of a Cup Final since Devils-Kings on NBCSN in 2012 (2.07M). Ratings were not immediately available.
Viewership declined a series-high 44 percent from Avalanche-Lightning last year, which aired midweek on ABC (4.60M). As in the NBA, Game 4 was the first of the Cup Final to decline from the comparable game in 2021 — Lightning-Canadiens on the day after the Fourth of July (3.02M).
The Golden Knights’ win posted the fourth-smallest Game 4 audience in at least 30 years, ahead of only the “bubble,” 2012 and Rangers-Canucks on ESPN in 1994 (1.96M). Keep in mind ESPN’s coverage of the 1994 series was completely blacked in New York.
Not counting the COVID-affected years of 2020 and 2021, Golden Knights-Panthers accounts for four of the eight smallest Cup Final audiences in the past 15 years.
For the first time in the Cup Final, the series was not the day’s top program in adults 18-34 or 18-49, trailing the UEFA Champions League Final on CBS earlier in the day. For the weekend, Game 4 ranked behind horse racing’s Belmont Stakes (3.52M), the final round of the PGA Tour Canadian Open (3.30M), a NASCAR Cup Series race (2.91M), and the combined UCL audience across CBS and Univision.
Head-to-head, it pulled dead even with a competing Major League Baseball window on FOX that featured Red Sox-Yankees in most markets (2.56M).
None of the first four games of the series have averaged at least three million viewers. In the past 30 years, only twice has a Cup Final failed to crack the three million mark in any game — Lightning-Stars in the “bubble” and the record-low Ducks-Senators in 2007.
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 6.13)
