Stanley Cup Finals TV ratings present a sigh of relief for NBC
The ratings for the first game of the 2017 Stanley Cup Finals set a local record and significantly improved upon last year’s numbers.
So far this postseason, TV ratings for the NHL should help to relieve any regret about paying the high price to be the exclusive broadcaster of the event for NBC. Monday’s Stanley Cup Final TV ratings represented an improvement on a disappointing 2016.
According to Mike Organ of The Tennessean, the local broadcast in Nashville, Tennessee, the home of the Western Conference champion Predators, set a team record. Its 22.2 overnight rating made it the most-watched Predators game on local television ever. That was a foregone conclusion given the fact that it was the first-ever Stanley Cup Finals game in franchise history, and the national ratings tell more of the story of how the contest fared on Monday prime time.
The national share of the market was up over half a point from Game 1 of the 2016 Stanley Cup Finals between the same Pittsburgh Penguins and San Jose Sharks. The increase from 2.73 to 3.49 means that nationwide, over 70,000 more televisions were tuned in to Game 1 this year as compared to last year.
In Pittsburgh, the game got a 35.7 rating, which is up from last year’s six-game average of 31.7. To be thorough, however, improving upon 2016 was no impressive task.
Next: 10 reasons Stanley Cup Playoffs are better than NBA Playoffs
Anthony Crupi of Ad Age explained how last year the ratings of the Stanley Cup Finals were historically low, and gave several reasons like the fact that the NBA’s Golden State Warriors’ quest to repeat as NBA Finals champions distracted the audience in San Jose’s television market. TV ratings for 2016’s series were so poor that some regular season MLB games outperformed the contests.
Neither the Penguins or Predators have an NBA team in close vicinity competing for an NBA Finals title this year, so a bump in the ratings simply because of that fact was expected. Additionally with the NBA Finals yet to begin, Monday’s Game 1 was expected to perform strongly because of that fact as well.
The real test of the strength of this year’s product will be later in the series, when it has the NBA Finals in progress to potentially distract national audiences and the hysteria of the first-ever Stanley Cup Finals game for Nashville has somewhat withered for the local audience.
Had this year’s Game 1 ratings flat-lined or even dropped from 2016, it would have been cause for NBC to re-think its investment. The fact that the game improved from last year is as of yet unremarkable, but should be a sigh of relief for the invested parties.