![Feb 20, 2025; Boston, MA, USA; [Imagn Images direct customers only] Team Canada forward Connor McDavid (97) celebrates scoring in overtime to win with defenseman Devon Toews (5) and defenseman Cale Makar (8) and forward Mitch Marner (16) against Team USA during the 4 Nations Face-Off ice hockey championship game at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images](https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/USATSI_25469201-scaled.jpg)
An audience approaching ten million viewers watched the final game of the Four Nations Face-Off, capping the NHL’s biggest success story in some time.
Thursday’s Canada-United States Four Nations Face-Off final averaged a 4.0 rating and 9.25 million viewers on ESPN, marking the largest audience for an NHL-sanctioned game in the Nielsen people-meter era (dates back to 1988). The previous high was 8.72 million for Blues-Bruins Game 7 in the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, a game that took place before Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing in its estimates. (All things being equal, that game likely would still rank as the most-watched.)
If one goes back further, the Four Nations final ranks as the most-watched NHL game since Game 6 of the 1973 Stanley Cup Final (Canadiens-Blackhawks: 9.41M) and the fourth-most watched all-time, according to historical data released by then-rightsholder NBC 15 years ago.
As goes without saying, Canada’s overtime win delivered the largest NHL audience ever on the ESPN family of networks, topping the previous mark of 7.66 million for last year’s Oilers-Panthers Stanley Cup Final Game 7.
Compared to other international hockey competitions, Canada-United States easily outpaced every Olympic men’s and women’s hockey match since the 2010 final between the same two teams, which averaged 27.6 million on NBC.
Among all non-football sportscasts, Canada-United States ranks as the most-watched since Game 5 of the Dodgers-Yankees World Series back in October (18.15M), the most-watched on cable since the UConn-Purdue NCAA men’s basketball national championship on TNT Sports last April (14.82M), and the most-watched on ESPN since the Iowa-UConn NCAA women’s basketball national semifinal last April (14.42M).
Compared to other recent team sport international competitions, viewership unsurprisingly fell well short of last year’s United States-France Olympic men’s basketball final on NBC (20.3M, including Adobe Analytics), but easily outpaced the 2023 United States-Japan World Baseball Classic final on FS1 — which ended with Shohei Ohtani striking out then-teammate Mike Trout (4.97M).
The seven-game Four Nations Face-Off delivered the five-largest audiences of the NHL season. Prior to the start of the tournament — a one-time replacement for the NHL All-Star Game — the largest audience was 1.27 million for a Golden Knights-Bruins game earlier this month.
Note: Nielsen as of this month expanded its out-of-home viewing sample to cover 100 percent of markets (up from two-thirds previously). As a result, viewership figures will generally compare favorably not only to past years, but even to past weeks.
