The NHL is hours away from possibly drawing its largest broadcast television audience since at least 1995.
Game 7 of the Penguins/Red Wings Stanley Cup Final takes place on Friday night on NBC, the biggest attraction on a barren night in television. Considering the factors at play, Penguins/Red Wings Game 7 appears to be the NHL’s best chance since 1994 to attract a legitimately big audience.
The decisive Game 7 features two of the most recognizable teams in hockey, two of the biggest stars in the game — Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin — and two of the most passionate hockey markets in the country.
While Game 7 will take place on a Friday night, traditionally the second-lowest rated night of the week, the game should finish as the highest rated NHL telecast since at least ’95. Currently, that distinction belongs to the far less attractive Mighty Ducks/Devils Game 7 in ’03, which drew a 4.6.
Since the Stanley Cup Final moved back to broadcast in ’95, four series have gone to a Game 7. Those four Game 7s averaged a 4.1 rating, 71% higher than the 2.4 average for the other games in those series*. Through four games, NBC is averaging a 2.8 rating for Penguins/Red Wings — putting Game 7 on pace for a record-high 4.8 rating.
Even if the rating does not set a record, NBC could be satisfied with at least a 4.5. A rating of 4.5 or higher would push NBC’s average rating for the Stanley Cup Final past last year’s average of 3.1, and make the ’09 Stanley Cup Finals the highest rated on broadcast since ’02. Currently, NBC is averaging a 2.8 for Penguins/Red Wings, down 10%.
One possible negative effect on the ratings could come from the switch to digitial television, which also takes place on Friday. 12.3 of the nation’s 114.5 million television households are at least partially unready for the switch, and an estimated 23,000 households in West Michigan “will lose television reception … when broadcast stations around the country turn off analog signals.”
Regardless of the rating, Friday night’s Game 7 caps a remarkable two-year run for the NHL. While the Stanley Cup Final is still a miniscule draw compared to the NBA Finals or World Series, ratings for the event have risen dramatically from the days when games would fail to draw even a 2.0 rating. Just two years ago, Ducks/Senators averaged an astonishingly low 1.6 on NBC — and Game 3 drew the lowest rating ever for a prime time program on the network.
Now, NBC is on the verge of drawing the best rating for an NHL telecast in at least fourteen years. And instead of setting record lows, the NHL has actually helped NBC win the night on broadcast — albeit against very slim competition — three of the four nights the net has aired games.
* Excludes games on cable.
