It is increasingly clear that the NHL Stadium Series has taken over as the premiere NHL outdoor game, at least in the television ratings.
Sunday’s Bruins-Lightning NHL Stadium Series game averaged 2.1 million viewers on ESPN, marking the largest NHL regular season audience since the 2019 Winter Classic (Blackhawks-Bruins: 2.97M) and the top NHL regular season audience ever on cable. The previous high for a game on cable was 1.8 million for the 2023 Penguins-Bruins Winter Classic on TNT.
Keep in mind that Nielsen did not begin tracking out-of-home viewership in its estimates until 2020 and did not do so in 100 percent of markets until a year ago. In addition, Nielsen in September shifted to a new metric that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will generally skew comparisons to prior years.
Tampa Bay’s comeback win, which peaked with 2.4 million viewers, increased 30% from last year’s Red Wings-Blue Jackets Stadium Series game (1.6M). It also more-than-doubled the January 2 Rangers-Panthers Winter Classic on TNT Sports.
The Stadium Series would seem to have definitively surpassed the Winter Classic as the premiere outdoor NHL event. Over the past three seasons, the four Stadium Series games on ESPN/ABC have outdrawn all three of the Winter Classic games on TNT Sports. And since the current NHL media rights deals began in the 2021-22 season, the Stadium Series accounts for five of the seven most-watched outdoor games.
In a rarity, the Stadium Series was Sunday’s most-watched sporting event on ESPN/ABC — and, as might go without saying, built on its lead-in from Bucks-Celtics (1.5M). The game actually outdrew all of the NBA windows on ESPN/ABC over the weekend, including ABC’s “NBA Saturday Primetime” matchup (1.9M), though it almost certainly lost its head-to-head matchup with NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” premiere. Figures for those telecasts will be reported Wednesday morning.
Elsewhere over the weekend, ABC averaged 1.4 million viewers for Rangers-Penguins and 1.2 million for Avalanche-Red Wings on Saturday — up sharply from last year’s doubleheader of Rangers-Bruins (1.06M) and Blackhawks-Panthers (723K).
The weekend games were the last on ESPN/ABC before the NHL takes its Olympic break. The networks are averaging 795,000 viewers for NHL games so far this season, up 39% from last year.
