The NHL Winter Classic hit a new viewership low on its New Year’s Eve date.
Tuesday’s Blues-Blackhawks NHL Winter Classic from Wrigley Field in Chicago averaged 920,000 viewers across TNT and truTV, marking the smallest audience in the history of the annual outdoor game. The Blues’ win, which peaked with 1.2 million in the 6:45 PM ET quarter-hour, declined 16% from the previous low set last year (Golden Knights-Kraken: 1.10M) and 48% from Penguins-Bruins two years ago (1.78M).
Prior to this year, the Winter Classic aired on New Year’s Day — or January 2 when New Year’s Day fell on a Sunday. The game moved to New Year’s Eve this year in an apparent effort to avoid the expanded College Football Playoff, trading a date associated with elevated viewing for one that has long proven troublesome for live sports.
While the Winter Classic avoided the toughest football competition, it did not avoid football altogether — overlapping with the start of the Fiesta Bowl playoff game and a Citrus Bowl that featured Illinois, the latter of which undoubtedly pulled away viewers in host market Chicago. The Winter Classic had just a 2.5 rating in Chicago, down from a 5.8 for the Blackhawks’ previous Winter Classic appearance in 2019, which aired on NBC.
It certainly did not help matters that the NHL-worst Blackhawks were blown out.
After averaging at least three million viewers every year it was played from 2008-15, Winter Classic ratings have steadily declined over the past decade — no surprise given the broader trend of television viewing, the declining novelty of outdoor games, and a move from broadcast to cable. Yet it had still remained in the seven figure range, no small feat for an NHL regular season game on cable.
The shift from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve may have been the final blow in dragging the audience into the six-figure range.
Even with the new low, the Winter Classic still delivered the largest NHL audience of the season-to-date. The previous high was 790,000 for Bruins-Panthers on ESPN Opening Night. The league will make its season debut on broadcast television (ABC) this weekend.
