from Bill Shea of The Athletic,
NBC’s National Hockey League and Stanley Cup swan song began on Monday.
The Tampa Bay Lightning’s title defense began with a 5-1 thumping of the visiting Montreal Canadiens, which is making its first finals appearance since winning an NHL-record 24th championship in 1993.
NBC said the game averaged 1.66 million combined viewers on its NBCSN cable channel and Peacock streaming audience. That makes it the least-watched Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final since 2007, per historic data from Sports Media Watch. The 2007 Senators-Ducks opener averaged 769,000 on Versus (remember Versus? That was NBCSN’s name from 2006-11).
Last year, when the pandemic forced the delayed NHL playoffs into so-called bubbles in Edmonton and Toronto, the Lightning-Dallas Stars Game 1 aired on NBC and it averaged 2.16 million total viewers.
continued ($$$)
he Bruins come-from-behind 4-2 victory over the Blues at TD Garden in Boston, Mass., averaged 5.380 million viewers across NBC, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app (8:09-11:01 p.m. ET), up 2% vs. last year’s Game 1 (WSH-VGK, 5.288 million) and up 9% vs. 2017 (NSH-PIT, 4.925 million). It trails only two other Game 1s in NBC Sports’ 14-year history broadcasting the Stanley Cup Final (BOS-CHI, 6.315 million, 2013; CHI-TBL, 5.586 million, 2015).
Game 1 is expected to propel NBC to win Monday night in total viewers, and the key Adult 18-49 and Adult 25-54 demographics. The game delivered a 2.87 HH rating and 5.264 million TV-only viewers.
Digitally, Blues-Bruins delivered the most-streamed Stanley Cup Final Game 1 ever and the fourth-most streamed NHL game on record, with an Average Minute Audience (AMA) of 115,500 viewers and 19.9 million live minutes, up 37% and 24%, respectively, vs. 2018.
St. Louis led all markets with a 29.0 local rating, NBC Sports’ highest NHL rating on record in the market. Boston scored a 25.2 rating. NBC was the No. 1 network in both markets during the game.
Following are the Top 5 markets for Blues-Bruins Stanley Cup Final Game 1 on NBC:
Rank | Market | Rating |
1 |
St. Louis |
29.0 |
2 |
Boston |
25.2 |
3 |
Providence |
18.8 |
4 |
Buffalo |
8.4 |
5 |
Kansas City |
5.2
|
Create an Account
In order to leave a comment, please create an account.