NHL All-Star Game ratings slipped to a three-year low.
Saturday’s NHL All-Star Game earned a 1.1 rating and 1.78 million viewers on NBC, down a tick in ratings and 12% in viewership from last year (1.2, 2.03M) and down 15% and 21% respectively from 2017 (1.3, 2.26M). Prior to this year, the game aired on a Sunday afternoon.
Ratings and viewership were the lowest for the NHL All-Star Game since it last aired on NBCSN in 2016 (0.9, 1.60M), but still the third-best for the event since 2004 (1.8, 2.68M). Keep in mind it was only the third All-Star Game to air on broadcast television since ’04.
Head-to-head, the All-Star Game was no match for the competing Warriors-Celtics NBA game on ABC (2.55, 4.29M) — or Premier Boxing Champions on FOX (1.3, 1.98M). It also trailed the Kansas-Kentucky college basketball game on ESPN, which aired earlier in the evening (1.7, 2.78M).
Compared to other all-star games, the game trailed its equivalents in Major League Baseball (5.2, 8.69M), the NFL (5.1, 8.23M) and the NBA (4.3, 7.65M). It did finish comfortably ahead of last year’s MLS All-Star Game, which had a combined audience of 947,000 on ESPN and UniMas.
It still did well by NHL standards, ranking second among all games this season. The January 1 Winter Classic holds the top spot (1.6, 2.97M).
[Numbers from Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily 1.29]
