Not even Gary Bettman could have dreamed this up.
Not only are Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, by far the two biggest stars in the NHL, playing each other head-to-head in the playoffs, but in a series that has featured three overtime games and will now head to a winner-take-all Game 7.
This should be the series that lifts the NHL, even if temporarily, out of its general irrelevance on the national stage. Unfortunately for the league, six of the seven Penguins/Capitals games have aired on Versus, with only Game 1 airing on NBC. As a result, the NHL’s greatest showcase of the decade has been viewed by a select few.
Granted, Versus is drawing solid audiences by NHL standards. Games 2 and 3 of Capitals/Penguins were the two most-viewed second round NHL telecasts on cable in seven years. But even the 1.5 million viewers for Game 3 is minuscule compared to the numbers for other sports.
Both Games 4 and 5 last Friday and Saturday night — the latter of which went to overtime — drew fewer than 1 million viewers. Game 4 drew a paltry 647,000 viewers, making it the 81st most-viewed program on cable that night. Game 5 perked up to a still unimpressive 864,000 viewers.
Through Game 5, Versus averaged 1.1 million viewers for its coverage of the Penguins/Capitals series. To put that in perspective, regular season NBA games averaged 1.7 million viewers on TNT and ESPN, and regular season MLB telecasts on ESPN in ’08 also averaged 1.7 million. In other words, the NHL’s biggest stars playing in a hard-fought seven-game playoff series cannot compare in viewership to run-of-the-mill regular season NBA and MLB telecasts.
Compared to other sports, the 1.1 million viewers pales in comparison to the Women’s Final Four on ESPN (2.6 million viewers), the College World Series on ESPN (1.4 million), and even last year’s Arena Bowl, which drew 1.3 million viewers — albeit on broadcast network ABC. Even a World Extreme Cagefighting telecast on Versus last year drew 1.6 million viewers, more than the most-viewed Penguins/Capitals game on the network.
On the bright side, Versus has done well, partially on the strength of Penguins/Capitals. The network finished #21 among all cable networks in prime time last week, including a top ten finish in the adults 18-49 demo — “a huge feat for a tiny network.” And Wednesday night’s Game 7 will more than likely draw the most viewers of the postseason for an NHL telecast on Versus — and potentially the most viewers for any NHL telecast ever on the network.
