from John Ourand of Sports Business Journal,

The second season of the media rights deal the NHL has with TNT, ABC and ESPN saw a slight viewership drop, as the league had more tonnage of games across each of its partners, notes my ratings-focused colleague Austin Karp.

ABC/ESPN averaged 583,000 viewers for its games, down 2%. The Disney networks had 50 games this season vs. only 28 last season (no blackouts each season). The expansion of the ESPN slate of games this season included six cable TV windows up against the NFL early in the season, something that wasn’t an issue in Year 1. Excluding those NHL vs. NFL windows, ABC/ESPN averaged 629,000 viewers this season, up 6% from the full 2021-22 season.

ABC on its own averaged around 1 million viewers for games this season, up 19% season-over-season (15 games vs. 9). ABC’s Devils-Bruins on April 8 was the best non-Winter Classic NHL regular-season game under the current rights deal (even with direct competition on ESPN2 from the NCAA Men’s Hockey Championship and its best audience since 2011).

TNT averaged 364,000 viewers for its regular season games, up 1% from Season 1 of the new media rights pact in 2021-22. TNT had 61 games this season, which is 20% more than Season 1.

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