Like about 98% of everything else in the known universe, the 2024 Stanley Cup Final is a win, some lose affair. On the one hand, the NHL finally has a chance to showcase its human standout: Connor McDavid, who teams with Leon Draisaitl to lead a faith-threatening Edmonton Oilers offense. On the other hand, even as McDavid prepares for his first appearance in Lord Stanley’s beer mug, ABC’s coverage is unlikely to attract a TV audience commensurate with the generational talent that will be on show.
Bad news first. While the NHL has enjoyed a torrid ratings boom — so far, postseason deliveries on the ESPN networks are up 20% year-over-year — that momentum is about to zoom headlong into the grim reality of the math on the market. If ABC failed to catch a break in the New York area (Florida’s demise of the Rangers put a damper on much of the 7.6 million TV homes on the market), it suffered another blow when the Oilers powered their way past the Dallas Stars.
It doesn’t happen all that often, but whenever a Canadian team manages to secure a ticket to the finals, the subsequent absence of a crucial hometown DMA is clearly visible in the Nielsen data. In 2021, the five-game Montreal Canadiens-Tampa Bay Lightning series averaged just under 2.5 million viewers per game across NBC’s various broadcast, cable and digital platforms. Our neighbors to the north also played a role in the least-watched Finals ever, as the 2007 five-game Anaheim Ducks-Ottawa Senators set averaged just 1.74 million viewers on the NBC flagship and the now-defunct cable channel Versus.
Yet all is not lost. If a short series with a Canadian club is more or less box-office poison, a finale pushed to its limits will frighten audiences regardless of local market considerations. In 2011, when Boston represented the Original Six in a seventh frame against Vancouver, 8.54 million viewers watched the action on NBC. The Bruins’ 4-0 victory remains the fifth-biggest TV draw in NHL history, trailing only Game 7 of St. Louis-Boston in 2019 (8.72 million) as the league’s best performance during the modern Nielsen era.
If there’s only so much the league’s TV partners can do when faced with a domestic final, TNT Sports and ABC/ESPN have done their utmost to raise the Oilers’ national profile throughout the regular season. strengthen. Edmonton appeared on national television a whopping 11 times during the 2023-2024 campaign, including a Saturday afternoon appointment on ABC wireless. (By comparison, the megamarket Rangers were featured in twelve national games, although six of those were ABC productions with wide reach.)
The ouster of the Stars could also be tough on ABC’s deliveries, as could Dallas-Ft. Worth represents the fifth largest media market in the country. The DFW DMA is home to 3.13 million TV households and accounts for 2.5% of all potential viewers in the US. Of course, no cluster of consumer hubs can rival New York; add the 1.74 million TV homes Miami brings to the table to Dallas’ no longer active workforce and you’re still only looking at 65% of Gotham’s reach. In fact, the deficit of 2.73 million households almost perfectly matches the No. 7 market in Atlanta, a place that 2.74 million TV viewers call home.
While the Panthers-Oilers matchup may not be ideal from a pure ratings perspective, ABC can still expect to post much stronger numbers than the finale from a year ago. TNT/TBS/truTV’s coverage of the Panthers-Golden Knights short series had the third-lowest deliveries on the books, as the built-in lack of reach made for unspectacular TV attendance. ABC’s signals reach about 12.5 million more homes than TNT Sports channels, and that lead alone should help Disney renew this year’s deliveries.
A six-game series will likely come within shooting distance of the 2022 finals, which averaged 4.6 million viewers in the very first year of the NHL’s return to ABC. And while Game 7s are hard to come by — before the 2019 capper averaged 8.72 million viewers in 38 years, the last time a seventh telecast was needed was in 2011 — the novelty alone should be enough to keep ABC on its least to help attract 8 million fans if hockey is still played on Monday, June 24.
Seven games should allow ABC to walk away with somewhere in the neighborhood of $35 million in ad revenue, which isn’t a bad few days’ work considering the network will also air the NBA Finals on its non-hockey nights. For its part, the NHL is simply thrilled to see McDavid in the spotlight; If mere TV ratings were the league’s primary concern, the league would not have been in bed with the underpowered OLN/Versus/NBCSN for 16 seasons, nor would it have agreed to a seven-year deal worth $1.6 billion with the predecessor of TNT Sports, Turner. will see the final return to basic cable in 2025 and 2027.
The Panthers opened as -125 favorites to win the Cup, with Vegas books favoring a six-game set. The puck drops on ABC Saturday, June 8 at 8pm EDT.
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