A troubling report was made regarding the NHL losing viewership and it's affecting the Boston Bruins

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Austin Sabourin
October 14, 2024 (10:55 PM)

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A troubling report has been made regarding the NHL and it's viewership seeing a sharp decline.

Drew Lerner from the sports broadcasting blog 'Awful Announcing' has reported that the NHL has seen a sharp decline in viewership to start this season off.

According to Lerner the NHL is losing viewership, and has lower viewership then the MLB, and the WNBA.

Reportedly the NHL's opening night only averaged 559,000 views, which is 39% less then the 2023 opening night season.

Report from Drew Lerner:

In an interesting programming decision, two teams situated west of the Mississippi River opened the season while it was still afternoon on the East Coast. The St. Louis Blues and Seattle Kraken opened the action during the late afternoon window, averaging 348,000 viewers, down 42% from last season's Nashville Predators-Tampa Bay Lightning game (598,000 viewers).

Game two of the tripleheader was the top hockey audience of the night, as the Boston Bruins and defending champions Florida Panthers averaged 790,000 viewers. The game was down 45 percent from last season's Chicago Blackhawks-Pittsburgh Penguins game that averaged 1.43 million viewers and included Bedard's debut.

The NHL closed out the night featuring its new franchise, the Utah Hockey Club, up against the Blackhawks. The game averaged 522,000 viewers, down 24 percent from the Seattle Kraken and Las Vegas Golden Knights nightcap last season (691,000 viewers).

As many have pointed out, all three NHL games were beaten out by Game 5 of the Minnesota Lynx-Connecticut Sun WNBA semifinal series over on ESPN2, which averaged 984,000 viewers, and continued a strong postseason for that league.

- Drew Lerner

It's understandable to lose viewers to the MLB, as they are a bigger sport, and they are in their playoffs right now, but losing viewers to the WNBA is a big low for the NHL.

The NHL has been horrible at promoting the league for years now, and they think bringing in expansion teams is going to do just that, but it won't. Not only that but forcing people to subscribe to streams to watch their team play is not a good way to go about it.

Regional restrictions is another thing the NHL needs to get rid of, it makes no sense that fans can't watch games in a local area because the broadcasting agreements. This affects every team in the NHL.

As seen on Hockeyfeed:
Report: NHL viewership is in a «sharp decline»