Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals did slightly worse than Game 1. And considering that Game 1 drew a mere 0.7 rating (the Sports Business Daily reported that the game drew a 0.6), that is quite a feat.
Game 2 drew a 0.6 cable rating, and the Versus network finished with a 0.7 cable average for its two Stanley Cup Finals games.
According to the Associated Press, the Stanley Cup Finals averaged 485,000 households on Versus. Game 2 itself was watched in 446,000 homes, fewer than the 447,000 households who watched the 2006 WNBA All Star Game on ESPN. One could blame distribution, but it should be pointed out that while Versus is not available in as many homes as more mainstream cable networks such as ESPN or TNT, it does reach 72 million homes. In other words, these terrible ratings cannot be blamed on distribution alone.
The 22% overall drop in ratings makes it entirely plausible that NBC could set an all-time broadcast record low for Game 3 Saturday night. The current low mark is a 1.3 rating for snowboarding on NBC in 2002. Last year, Hurricanes/Oilers Game 3 drew a 1.6 rating on a Saturday night. Two years ago, Lightning/Flames Game 3 drew a 1.4 rating, also on a Saturday night.
As bad as the ratings are, one would think that the NHL could breathe a sigh of relief that its games still rate higher than WNBA, AFL and MLS games. After all, the 2006 WNBA Playoffs (excluding Games 4 and 5 of the WNBA Finals) drew a 0.3 average rating on ESPN2, while the 2006 WNBA All-Star Game drew a 0.4 rating on ESPN. The Arena Football League is currently averaging a 0.3 rating on ESPN2, while Major League Soccer traditionally draws ratings around the 0.2-0.3 range.
That being said, the only reason NHL ratings are higher than ratings for those other niche sports is because the NHL is on Versus. Cable ratings measure the amount of people watching out of the amount of people with access to the channel, meaning that — given two programs with the same viewership — the program on a network with smaller distribution is bound to draw a higher cable rating than the program on a network with larger distribution.
As an example, Broncos/Chiefs on the NFL Network drew a 6.7 cable rating last Thanksgiving, while the Boston College/Miami game airing in the same timeslot on ESPN drew a 2.5 cable rating. Despite that, the gap in households was only 2.5 million (NFLN) to 2.3 million (ESPN). Because the NFL Network was in far fewer homes than ESPN, the cable rating for the NFL game was much higher.
In other words, even though the cable ratings are higher, the NHL draws around the same numbers as sports that are essentially viewed as minor league.
