NHL National Viewership Down 22% in the U.S.

[flames_fan_down_under]

Cable TV providers like Comcast, Verizon are losing subscribers by the millions annually and that number is increasing annually. Diamond Sports Group which owns Bally Sports Network and paid billions for regional broadcasting rights in 2019 for 42 NBA/NHL/MLB teams, which includes the Wild, Panthers, Lighting, Kings, Coyotes, Blues, Red Wings, Predators, Hurricane and Blue Jackets, is going to file for bankruptcy. While the NHL still relies a lot on gate sales for revenue these broadcasting deals are a cash cow for them. If these mega deals are not proving to be worth the hundreds of millions being spent then the NHL is definitely going to be looking at decreased revenue growth at some point in the near future.

[EN FUEGO]

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

These are numbers for National broadcasts, not local broadcasts. I mean local blackouts could play a part in the overall apathy towards the NHL however Wednesday night hockey is TNT's flagship broadcast; The reason they are paying millions to 99 to be on the panel. And not only is you friend in Denver not watching, nobody else in the city is either, possibly no-one in the entire state.

Thanks for clarifying. I've noticed those TNT Wed night games seem to feature more Canadian teams than I'd have expected from the NBC Sports/VS national broadcasts in the past.

All that said, most folks I know down here either follow their team on the local market channel or through ESPN+ if out of market. I find ways to get the TNT games without my own cable subscription, but I know fewer and fewer folks with cable these days. (luckily at least one)

TNT and NHL Network are both pretty tough to get online access to outside of a cable package.

[Erick Estrada]

It's a regional sport in the US and unlike basketball or basketball it's not widely available for american kids to play. I'm not sure this is ever going to change. I do agree with everyone that blackouts are dumb. Even the CFL realized this.

[Skyceman]

I also wonder if it correlates with the drop in fighting and body checking?

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Skyceman

I also wonder if it correlates with the drop in fighting and body checking?

It probably has more to do with changes in attention span. You actually have to pay attention to enjoy the flow of a game. With Football, 2/3s of the run time is breaks in play. Lots of time to watch replays of what just happened, and lots of time to scroll through your phone.

[Mr.Coffee]

The NHL actually has a lot of issues and things it needs to be addressed, all of which have been already mentioned. They would be wise to smarten up and start listening to paying fans... the game management is next level now and literally has stripped any authenticity of the sport altogether.

Since they decided hockey shouldn't be physical anymore, I suspect this is a HUGE factor in decreasing attendance. Games are generally quite boring and lack excitement unless artificially propped up with game management which loses the charm of sport- a not insignificant factor.

As mentioned, access and TV programming issues are wide....

yeah, lots of problems.

[MacFlame]

My viewing has dropped off significantly over the past couple of years. Most of that is due to other obligations, but I think there are two main areas that have reduced my intrigue over the past couple of years:

1.) officiating...I'm wrong more often than not as to what the call is...is it a goal?...is it offside? is that a hook? why did that guy get a diving penalty, but then the other guy got a tripping penalty? Too much confusion and nonsense.

2.) lack of player movement. This is a by product of the cap. To be clear, I like the cap, but the lack of trades and the inability for a team to improve during the season lessens the overall enjoyment I had with the league.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by MacFlame

1.) officiating...I'm wrong more often than not as to what the call is...is it a goal?...is it offside? is that a hook? why did that guy get a diving penalty, but then the other guy got a tripping penalty? Too much confusion and nonsense.

My viewing of games has really dropped off and officiating is one of the main reasons.

It must be the worst officiated "major" league by a long shot.

[MacFlame]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

My viewing of games has really dropped off and officiating is one of the main reasons.

It must be the worst officiated "major" league by a long shot.

Playoffs are a really good example of this. First round...lots of penalties....by the fourth round, the whistles seem to have completely vanished. Its a completely different game being played by that point. I just want some sort of consistency.

[SuperMatt18]

I think it's possibly an aging demographics piece as well.

In my 20's I used to probably watch the full 60 minutes of every single Flames game. Now in my mid-30s with a young kid and a busier life I'm generally catching a period or two and not even for every game.

Most people in their early 20's to mid 20's that I know don't really care about hockey, and really I think that's the demographic that might be missing as the previous demographics start to age out a bit.

And honestly I think the product has taken a decline - even though I think the players are more skilled than ever:

-Poor production values and terrible intermission and analysts
-Poor officiating and game management where it's inconsistent period to period
-Lack of personality that is just drained out of NHLers

In general I think it's just a more competitive market for people's free time, and really the quality of other things to watch as increased with strong content on Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc.

Tougher to justify spending 3 hours watching a game that is plagued with poor reffing and production values, when you have so much other content available to watch. Especially since you just end up being frustrated with what you just watched half the time with the NHL.

[MacFlame]

I should also note that my listening habits have changed dramatically too. I used to commute everyday into work and listen to the Fan 960 along the way. Now, I'm often working from home or, if I'm in the car, I'm listening to a podcast or something else on spotify, etc.

Those drive-ins used to get me excited for the upcoming game...likely a big factor of the pandemic and how it still influences my patterns/habits.

[Hot_Flatus]

Nature of the times. People don't have time to watch a 2.5-3 hour game several nights a week, especially if it involves a mediocre team. Younger generations of fans certainly aren't sitting down for that length of time regardless very often either.

I can nearly count on one hand the amount of complete Flames games I've watched this year, and this is from someone who considers themselves a relatively hardcore fan. Even last year when the team was flying high, it was a challenge to watch more than a full game a week.

It would never happen, but a reduction in the NHL schedule to 60-65 games would go a long way in terms of making each game a little more special and reducing the monotony of the regular season.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by EN FUEGO

Thanks for clarifying. I've noticed those TNT Wed night games seem to feature more Canadian teams than I'd have expected from the NBC Sports/VS national broadcasts in the past.

All that said, most folks I know down here either follow their team on the local market channel or through ESPN+ if out of market. I find ways to get the TNT games without my own cable subscription, but I know fewer and fewer folks with cable these days. (luckily at least one)

TNT and NHL Network are both pretty tough to get online access to outside of a cable package.

Yeah, I was wondering about that too. There was a Calgary vs Vancouver game at 10 Eastern on TNT that they had a whole broadcast crew and panel for.

How can that possibly make sense financially? It didn't even get the 200k viewers required to show up in the ratings listed above.

[dino7c]

Pay for cable or a streaming sports package and they block out games...good business model.

Meanwhile there is a website that shows every game for free, both teams feeds...there are tons of viewers on this site and sites like it every night but they aren't being counted as viewers...likely skews young too.

If the NHL wants viewers they should maybe allow people to watch games they are willing to pay for and make it easy.... because some rando in Macedonia figured it out.

[flames_fan_down_under]

The product in Canada is extremely predictable and unimaginative. Score and Win is so and so, boiler plate 30 second meaningless interview with player unwilling to say anything of value, here is Ron or Elliot with an equally vanilla take. It’a the same product every night. Please pay 30 dollars a month for this stale product. Equally frustrating for me is our national sports coverage is saturated with hockey to the point where I now go directly to The Athletic for good journalism about things I want to read about.

[bobbylouie]

My post will only address the general level of interest in the U.S., not why the numbers continue to drop.

As a member of an extremely elderly demographic and as a person based in a large U.S. city with an NHL team, I think Canadian fans have a skewed view of how much interest there is in the NHL in the USA. I suppose that's natural if your sense of it is based on watching games on TV and seeing mostly full arenas with what appear to be rabid fans in the U.S. home rinks.

The reality is that for 99% of the U.S. population, the NHL doesn't even exist.

Sports interest generally breaks down into 3 categories: Hardcore fans, general sports fans and non-sports fans. If you take the NFL as an example, the hardcore fans schedule their entire weekend around games, even in cases where the home team isn't participating. General fans have less rabid interest but are still very much aware of league happenings, players, etc. But even the far larger non-sports population have some awareness of who the local team is, the names of the star players, the fact that the game is on TV on a certain day, how traffic in the area might be affected, etc. They might even follow what happens in a given game just to be part of the conversation the next day to feel included.

For hockey in the U.S., hardcore fans essentially make up the entire fan base in most cities. Beyond that, casual sports fans think of the NHL as a joke ("wait, you get credit for half a win even when you lose, that can't be serious!!!"), and the general population (the vast, vast majority) have ZERO knowledge or interest.

With that, it's almost impossible to get any kind of impressive TV numbers, and as a person said earlier in this thread, it's not much more than what you'd get if you accidentally left the TV on that channel earlier in the day.

I also think there is a flaw in the logic that says "listen to what your fans are now saying". People that are still fans probably think the product is fine and survey responses you get from them are going to be skewed. You should have been listening to fans who were dissatisfied before and have already left, or try to identify those people now and see what caused them to lose interest. Somebody like an old fart like me (who worked for the league at one time) and now sees it as a joke with a crap product.

It's probably too late to get us back but I don't think you're going to learn much by only asking people who are still fans.

[bubbsy]

I’m not entirely surprised. Nhl hockey has been my favourite sport to watch for decades (despite not playing it ever) but in the last few years I can’t help but find it incredibly dull. I now only watch flames games, and even then find myself falling asleep while watching (living in the EST and getting older big contributors to that).

I think the nhl has to take a hard look at the sport and the competition for consumer attention.

Nhl have hypothesized that more scoring should equate to more excitement for fans. Well aren’t we seeing a substantial uptick in goals, comeback wins this year, yet the drop in viewership??

Hockey differed itself from other sports in that it was fast, skilled, and emotionally-charged violent. They have taken the third , most differentiating factor out of the game. The nba/nfl all offer speed and skill, and plenty of scoring.

If they aren’t going to bring back the bad blood, rivalries, fights and brawls, then there’s gotta be more continuous action to the game.

Some things I would love to see in this regard:
- shots that get tipped out of play. This happens so much and converts watchin msg offensive play converted to a game pause then boring face off. Why not raise the glasss higher, so pucks stay in play more, cause more chaos and more offensive zone time/chances.

- blocked shots ugh. With players wearing so much hard gear now, every single player on the team blocks shots. It’s boring, I want to see shots, saves and goals, and the small percentage of players willing to sacrifice to block. I feel like at least 1 out of every 3 shots taken in the nhl is blocked . It’s boring. Unfortunately, there’s no way the player pads will go backwards in effectiveness to offset this, so not much that can be done.

- Playoff hockey is just a different game, a far more intriguing thing to watch than almost all of the 82 games a team plays in the season. I’d be fine to see the number of season games reduced and increase the teams/rounds in the playoffs. It would create more emotionally invested players (bad blood, etc) and a far more fun experience for fans to watch. It would also make regular season games more meaningful to watch as playoff races would become more crystallized sooner.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by bobbylouie

I also think there is a flaw in the logic that says "listen to what your fans are now saying". People that are still fans probably think the product is fine and survey responses you get from them are going to be skewed. You should have been listening to fans who were dissatisfied before and have already left, or try to identify those people now and see what caused them to lose interest. Somebody like an old fart like me (who worked for the league at one time) and now sees it as a joke with a crap product..

Absolutely. Plus even when you do listen, you're mostly just hearing the vocal minority. For example the people whining for more penalties in the playoffs just so the stars have more room, but personally, that's exactly the opposite of what I want to see

[flames_fan_down_under]

Sounds like Bettman wants to add more games to the regular season. So be prepared for more hockey.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by nik-

The NHL has a demographics problem, not an ads on the boards problem.

It's the same thing that happened to golf participation. You take something that is gaining in popularity/demand, jack prices to the moon because profits, and immediately start pricing a generation of kids out. The kids in question take a couple decades to show up as a decline in revenue/participation, so your price jacking moves make you a hero to the board, and you double down on them.

20 years later, no one wants what you're peddling, because when they were kids they found other things they could afford.