Opening Night NHL Viewership Turns Out To Be Major Disappointment

According to a new report from Awful Announcing, the NHL's opening night slate on October 8th saw a 39% decrease in viewership from the year before. The NHL drew 559,000 viewers on average across all games.

Opening night consisted of three games, the Kraken vs. Blues, Bruins vs. Panthers, and Blackhawks vs. Utah. They are all American teams and relatively weaker teams except for the Eastern game, but last year's NHL opening night was similar and drew a much larger audience.

The NHL was only competing with the MLB playoffs and the WNBA playoffs, and both leagues vastly surpassed hockey. Awful Announcing noted that one WNBA playoff game beat out every single NHL game.

It's clearly not the start the NHL hoped for, but they clearly made some questionable decisions with a mid-week day game and the Utah Hockey Club as the marquee matchup. Still, the results were so bad that Gary Bettman and the NHL may pursues other options than cable broadcasting.

According to Arpon Basu, Bettman was in Montreal for the debut of the NHL on Amazon Prime Video, and amenable to the idea of moving more towards streaming services instead of traditional television. The next Canadian network deal for the NHL will reflect the new reality that streaming is the future.

Hockey broadcasting will be changing quickly in the next few years, and perhaps will bring some much needed changes for fans.