Continuing a months-long hot streak, the NHL Stanley Cup Final opened with its largest U.S. audience in seven years.
Tuesday’s Golden Knights-Hurricanes NHL Stanley Cup Final Game 1 averaged a 2.3 rating and 4.78 million viewers on ABC, marking the highest rated and most-watched Game 1 of a Cup Final since Blues-Bruins on NBC in 2019 (2.9, 5.25M). The previous highs over that span were a 2.2 and 4.20 million for Lightning-Avalanche on ABC in 2022.
The Golden Knights’ high-scoring win, which peaked with 5.5 million in the 10:45 PM ET quarter-hour, nearly doubled last year’s Panthers-Oilers Game 1 on cable networks TNT and truTV (1.2, 2.42M) and increased 44% and 54% respectivly from the previous Cup Final Game 1 on ABC — Oilers-Panthers two years ago (1.6, 3.115M).
Those increases are well beyond the range that would be explained by Nielsen’s methodological changes of the past year, specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample early last year and its shift last September to a new metric that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes.
Game 1 was the most-watched Cup Final opener on the ESPN networks (nine total dating back to 1994), and tied Hurricanes-Red Wings in 2002 as the highest rated. (Note that the aforementioned Nielsen changes skew historical comparisons, particularly to years prior to 2020, when the company began tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates.)
The substantial increase for Game 1 is in line with the broader trend this NHL season and postseason. Viewership for the Stanley Cup Playoffs increased 59% through the conference finals, ranking as the highest on record through three rounds. Regular season viewership was up 25%.
While it initially seemed as if the viewership growth was being driven by the return of high-profile big market teams to prominence — the Flyers, the Penguins, the Bruins, and even for a time the Red Wings — the gains continued as those teams fell by the wayside. Neither Carolina nor Vegas are traditional or big market teams, and while the Hurricanes were considered one of the top teams throughout the playoffs, Vegas spent most of the season mired in mediocrity.
