NHL Viewership Declines as the WNBA Surpasses Total Audience Numbers from Last Season

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Tom Banks
October 15, 2024 (3:28 PM)

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The NHL has seen a worrying dip in viewership, and now it has officially been revealed that the WNBA Playoffs have more viewers this year than the NHL.

It's been known for quite some time that the NHL falls behind the NBA, NFL and MLB in popularity in North America, but with a loyal fanbase, the viewership has always been high enough to be respectable. However, viewership numbers have come out for the NHL's opening night triple header, and they are worrying to say the least.

According to reports from Awful Announcing, the NHL saw tragic drops in viewership numbers from this time last year;

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 averaged 1.43 million viewers and included Bedard's debut.

The NHL closed out the night by 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).

The league may not have had a big time, hyped debut like Connor Bedard's to lean on this year, but the numbers are still worrying, with that report also clarifying that the league was beaten in total viewers by the WNBA semi-final series.

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.

It's incredible to see women's sports at the level it is now, as this could potentially boost interest in season two of the PWHL, but for the NHL, they have to be worried, with Gary Bettman pointing at streaming services as a potential way forward for the league. Regardless, this certainly isn't a good sign for the NHL, but with so many avenues to watch games, it's hard to ignore the fact that the league are making it almost impossible for fans to watch games, which is potentially a major factor for the decline.

At this current point in time, the NHL have arguably the best on-ice product that we've seen in quite some time, but with viewership dipping, Gary Bettman clearly needs to make some type of change if he wants the league to thrive as it should moving forward.