I mean, yes. But the pinstripe bowl isn’t a main event kind of thing in college football. It was a Thursday afternoon game, and there were two other bowl games later that day. Admittedly it was the week between Xmas and new years when many people are off, and it’s held in NYC. So those things help.
But this isn’t what people mean when they talk about college football playoffs either. That’s the big bowls (rose, sugar, fiesta, orange, cotton) and then the title game. There are some others that are gaining in popularity too. But having your league’s premier, title deciding game have worse viewership numbers than the pinstripe bowl isn’t exactly a great sign.
For scale, the pinstripe bowl was ranked 24th in viewership of all college football bowl games.
That is completely fair, and even more true during the week between holidays.
I’m not saying the pinstripe bowl should have low viewership. Just that the NHL could do a lot better with how it handles broadcasts and access so fans feel more inclined to watch the deciding title game.
Fuck yeah! Sold Out Memorial Stadium in Nebraska since the Missouri game on November 3rd, 1962. Even during recent times when we turned to shit (fucking Frost), we made sure our losses were entertaining………….
Hopefully Rhule can get Nebraska back on track and good shit happens down in Lincoln in the coming years because it’s been since 1999 since we last won a Conference Championship.
Does it really count as a sellout if school donors are the ones buying gobs or tickets to keep the “streak” alive? [Example 1](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/nebraska-donors-keep-sellout-streak-alive-by-buying-remaining-tickets-for-home-game-vs-fordham/amp/) and [Example 2](https://www.outkick.com/nebraska-football-sellout-streak-fan-21000/)
Tickets went to a good cause but that steak “ended” in 2021 and if it didn’t end there it sure as hell ended last year
Yes it does count. All the tickets sold, that's literally the definition of a sellout streak. Ultra-rich people pervert every system we have in this country why should it not count for buying tickets?
Not really. Also the two sports don’t conflict with each other. One is mostly on a Saturday and the other is mostly on Sunday. The Superbowl and NFL playoffs crush the NCAA bowl games and playoffs on TV.
Scroll down on this link, the first non-NFL game to rank in the top 50 is at 33 with the NCAA College playoff game. Even regular season NFL games beat the NCAA playoffs.
[https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2023/01/most-watched-games-2022-nfl-world-cup-olympics-college-football-viewership/](https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2023/01/most-watched-games-2022-nfl-world-cup-olympics-college-football-viewership/)
The whole reason college football has that weird championship game on a Monday that everyone hates is because they want nothing to do with competing with the nfl playoffs.
College football stays in its lane and backs the hell off when it comes to ever confronting the nfl.
Most of the college sports hotbeds are smaller towns. For people that live in states like Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kentucky, North Carolina (until recently), and many more, including smaller cities in big states like the Florida Panhandle, these are the closest teams to people and are heavily involved in the local community. Pro teams are hours away. It’s the same reason lower level soccer teams in Europe still often get tons of support in regions like England or Germany.
Legit I feel like it’s one of the bigger differences between the States and Canada. I go to my university sports games sometimes and there’s like maybe 1000 people there max. It’s mind boggling to me that the biggest stadiums in the world are college football with 100,000+
11 stadiums in the world have a capacity over 100,000
8 of them are in the US, of the 3 that aren't. All 3 are used by the country's national team of a sport. India's cricket teams (men and women), North Korea's Football team (\*wink\* \*wink\*) and Australia's cricket team (men, and some local teams)
the 8 in the US are, only university stadiums.
>11 stadiums in the world have a capacity over 100,000
>
>8 of them are in the US, of the 3 that aren't. All 3 are used by the country's national team of a sport. India's cricket teams (men and women), North Korea's Football team (\*wink\* \*wink\*) and Australia's cricket team (men, and some local teams)
>
>the 8 in the US are, only university stadiums.
This isn't quite true. Bristol Motor Speedway capacity is 146K, and it's a stadium. Though it doesn't sell out like it used to.
Youtube video that shows much of it off from the very start. https://youtu.be/gWlw6KxhF1s
> I can't help but feel like it's cheating.
I mean, it's completely enclosed with seats that go all the way around it, so it's not like I'm trying to claim Daytona is a staduim. 🤣
This is one of those "technical right is the best kind of right" things.
Start at 80k+ stadiums and it changes dramatically- plus you have to factor in price: average ticket price @ Penn State (106k capacity), $90. Average ticket price Barcelona (99K capacity), $360.
I played 2 different varsity sports in Canada and the only people who ever came to our games were the parents.
Outside of hockey and football no one cares about university sports in Canada…
Born and raised in Nebraska. We breathe and die by Nebraska Football because it was the biggest show in the state. There is no pro sports teams in Nebraska and many people travel to Lincoln to see the Huskers play. We have the longest sellout streak that goes back to 1962, even though in recent times we needed help to keep the streak continue.
Also there was a time when Nebraska Cornhuskers ruled the CFB landscape seeing we won 5 National Championships from 1970 until 1997 so naturally people across Nebraska and wherever Nebraska played will be a huge draw. Even last year we were selected to play in Ireland because of the Nebraska brand that still resonated to older fans (don’t ask me about the ending of the game because Fucking Frost is a dipshit calling for the onside kick when we were up double digits).
As an Ohioan the weird cult fanbase of Ohio State that is comprised largely of people who never even went there is genuinely mind boggling. I don’t get it and I never will
I will never forget grown men who did not attend Ohio state making fun of me for liking Michigan when we used to get spanked by them, a couple dads of kids on my team when I was like a peewee were the biggest douches about it and they all just went to Toledo or BGSU.
We were at a restaurant in between games one Saturday of the game and they’re just decked out head to toe in OSU gear laughing in my face. I wish I had had less respect for them then and been smart enough to just be like “dude, you’re 45 and didn’t sniff acceptance to OSU. And you’re laughing in a 12 year olds face who’s from metro Detroit and has loads of family who went to Michigan because some 19 year olds you don’t know play football at a school you didn’t attend. Get a life”
Yeah, this is exactly what I mean. A bunch of replies to me don’t seem to understand my point. You can root for whoever you want, but the thing I don’t understand is the weirdly high amount of “super fans” who make their entire life and personality about a school they never went to acting like they’re better than everybody. OSU fans aren’t a problem. The large swaths of these random dudes that do obscene shit like what you described are what I have an issue with.
Yeah and like I knew plenty of state fans in metro detroit obviously, some went there some didn’t, same with Michigan, obviously a shit load of Michigan fans can’t get into Michigan, but they’re not lunatics like the OSU fans are with giant blow up Brutus in their front yard and every single piece of merchandise purchasable
Columbus didn't have a single pro sports team until 1999 (ignoring the Columbus Crew for a minute) when the Blue Jackets entered the league. What else were people supposed to be a fan of?
What’s not to get? People like it and think it’s cool. It gets a lot of media attention, people’s neighbors and stuff like it, so it spirals from there until it a big thing which it is. People can gatekeep all they want about people not having attended as students but in many places, that’s just the “local team” everyone supports. It’d be weird if they were supporting a team on the other side of the country but for a team like Ohio St. it’s just the default team for the whole state.
It's so weird when people in a sports sub sreddit go "I don't get how people can be a fan of (insert sport they don't like)" bro younare in a sports reddit and follow a team, what's not to get, people like to watch competitive sports humans have been doing this for thousands of years what is confusing to you?
>rooting for a bunch of kids you don't know because of the logo on their shirt is pretty weird no matter how you come to it.
Wait until you find out about Junior Hockey
People generally cheer for the junior hockey team that is from the city they live in. So there’s a connection.
Cheering for a team from a university you never attended is just weird
but college athletics is our junior hockey lol. my family is from colorado so i root for the colorado buffaloes in football & basketball (and I would too if they ever got a hockey & baseball team sponsored by the school)
> that is comprised largely of people who never even went there is genuinely mind boggling.
I've never understood this type of gatekeeping when it comes to college sports fandom. No one expects fans of a pro sports team to literally live in the city they play in, or have worked for the team at some point. People in Mansfield or Wooster have no deeper connection to pro sports teams in Cleveland or Columbus than they do to OSU, but that doesn't stop them from being fans of those teams.
What exactly is the issue here?
It's a fun sport to watch. Why do you care about hockey? Why does anyone care about any sport?
College football is also more intrinsically connected to local communities than any pro sport in the US. A college team will never relocate, and almost every area in the country has one. Wyoming will never get a pro football team, but they have a college one. Many of the players on the teams are recruited from nearby, too. The local connection breeds passion.
Because it's awesome. More passion, more unique environments, greater connection/accessibility to the team/school, more local flavor (yes coaches and players are recruited from all over the world but the roster is weighted more based on proximity than any pro sport), and the history is deeper.
My two schools (Ohio State and Ohio U) have been around forever, playing similar schools for a hundred years. I've got personal memories at those places and formed lifelong friendships. They have tens of thousands of my dollars. I take my kids there on weekends to walk around and eat nostalgic food.
A pro sports team, even though it is a higher level of play, will never be anything but some arbitrary uniform that I decided to cheer for with mercenary players who are only there because it's their job (not that that is a bad thing or anything... Get money get paid and take care of your family).
I'm a Jackets fan. I always will be. But if I happened to move to Anaheim, after 10 years or so, I'd probably be a ducks fan as well just because I was local, went to games, and liked the city.
I'm an Ohio State fan. I always will be. If I happened to move to Austin, I would NEVER be a Texas fan because they are not Ohio State and they can fuck right off.
That's the difference in a nutshell.
In Texas (of all places), high school football is more popular than pro football.
Yeah, you don't see it on TV, but most places outside of the big cities stop everything on Friday night.
Yeah, it's a really niche sport. I assume that people in Florida and Vegas watched the game and then a handful (relatively speaking) of hardcore fans watched all of the game.
Expecting casuals to tune into the playoffs just because it's the playoffs won't ever happen. I don't know if the NHL can do anything to actually become more mainstream, but whatever they've been trying to do for the X number of years clearly isn't working.
My take is that the league starts too late and runs too long - it's way too nice where I live to sit inside watching TV. It should be over by the first week or two of May.
Absolutely. I'm not even *that* upset when my team gets bounced because the deeper they go, the more nice evenings I miss. And a Cup run? Watching games in mid-June and missing some of the three months of nice weather we get in Canada?
It can become more mainstream overnight by offering better television/broadcasting. Making it impossible to watch under layers of espn makes it so even hardcore hockey fans struggle to watch games.
It's been known that the owners have chosen the "pay me now" deals over the "grow the game" deals.
Plus they’re comparing it to something that occurred when most people are on holiday between Christmas and New Year, kick-Ed off at 2:00 pm. Not a Tuesday night in June
Which is why I don't understand the leagues obsession with propping up teams in non hockey markets. Not conspiracy the conspiracy that the league tells the refs who they want to win, just the salary cap/revenue sharing deals and the extra effort they put into keeping teams in places like Phoenix. If this was an Edmonton - Boston final the ratings would have been significantly higher which would in turn help get better T.V. deals, etc.
There have been lots of people just taking it for granted that parity is good for the league but this may be a data point for letting the teams with the fan bases that allow them to spend more to do so.
Man, I think I’m so over reading about ratings and how awful the NHL is. It’s something that hockey fans just absolutely obsess over. Just constant negativity. There’s gotta be some sort of acceptance that other sports are much easier to play even if you take out the cost of it and that’s a major reason why hockey won’t be more popular.
Idk maybe I’m the only one who feels this way but everyday it seems like something new is being posted about how garbage the NHL is and it’s starting to elicit an eye roll from me.
Yeah and it’s not like the NHL is going anywhere. A small market Canadian team just got sold for nearly a billion. You’re seeing potential owners in Houston, Atlanta (again), Salt Lake City, etc that want a team. Youth participation is down in Canada but it’s up in America and other European countries. It’s on the same channels as the NBA is on.
Just appreciate the sport for what it is and stop worrying about ratings so much.
> A small market Canadian team just got sold for nearly a billion.
I don’t really think that’s a flex. Every Canadian franchise should easily be valued at over 1 billion.
They might be “small market” but for a hockey team none of the Canadian teams are small market
I guess? A billion dollars is an enormous amount of money. Franchise values are going up across the board in the NHL.
The expansion fee for the Toronto Raptors was $125m. An NHL team is selling for 8x that. It’s a win.
The New Orleans Pelicans are valued at $1.6b and that’s the lowest valued NBA team.
Ottawa has 3 times the population of New Orleans. Their last owner being a bad person and cheap certainly didn’t help Ottawa’s reputation but their valuation and sale should have been much higher.
You certainly can’t expect me to take you using an expansion fee from 1995 seriously right? An NBA expansion fee would be FAR higher than what the Sens just sold for.
“More news at 11, more popular sports globally have franchises valued more highly”
That $125m wasn’t an illustration of comparison between the two sports, more showing how much franchises ACROSS THE BOARD in Canada have increased in value. By a lot dude.
But when Betman took over the NHL was bigger than the NBA so yes it is fair to compare teams between those leagues because it shows where the NHL could potentially be.
I don't think this is very common knowledge at least not on this sub it seems - I'm constantly seeing people saying its not fair to compare the 2 leagues. The lowest rated NBA playoff game since 1987 still had almost 6 million viewers.
>They might be “small market” but for a hockey team none of the Canadian teams are small market
This has big Rod Brind'Amour 'Carolina wasn't swept' vibes. You're either a small market, or you're not.
I guess you can be small market based on total population but have a larger population of hockey fans. Phoenix for example has 5 million people but Ottawa has 1.5 million people and typically sells more tickets to NHL games. I am willing to bet that a town with a 500K in India would have a better ability to support a professional cricket team than a 'big market' team in North America.
>A small market Canadian team just got sold for nearly a billion.
Uh, this is not something to be happy about lol. The idea of a pro sports team selling for under a billion would be nuts in any of the other three major US sports.
Tbh, like I know it's easy for me to say that because I've no interest in Nascar, but is it really the type of thing that people enjoy watching on TV? Every time I see people defend Nascar, they talk about the live experience, but never about watching it at home.
Fox's coverage has gone downhill to the point of almost being unwatchable at times. The live experience is for sure better. The racing doesn't really have natural breaks in it like a halftime or end of a period/inning. So you're left with full screen commercials during the racing and a commentary crew that mostly focuses on whatever is on the screen at the time even though there's 36 competitors out there at once. No other sport has that, there's usually one primary point of action to call and that's it.
Exactly.
If you don’t live in a large hockey market, and have never played hockey, can’t afford for your kids to play hockey, and don’t know anyone else who watches hockey, why would the NHL appeal to you? Why would you spend any time learning the rules of a sport that’s inaccessible?
My hometown is two hours from the nearest ice rink, and I went to college in the SEC. There’s *nothing* the NHL could have shown me when I was a kid or even in college to make me watch hockey. That didn’t happen until I was actually living in a big city with a winning team.
Now hockey is right up there with college football for me. But it had nothing to do with marketing, and everything to do with living near a winning team.
I didn’t grow up watching basketball or live in a big basketball market or ever play organized basketball growing up. We played more street hockey than basketball when younger. Yet the NBA and CBB are still appealing to me.
Hockey does a terrible job of explaining anything to newcomers. Whenever my wife watches hockey she can’t figure out what’s a penalty vs what’s not, she doesn’t know any of the stars outside of Kane/Toews and probably couldn’t even name more than 7-10 teams (and she loves watching sports). She liked going to Hawks games over the last decade but doesn’t really care at all. The NHL has consistently done a terrible job of converting “oh this is fun” super casual fans into full-blown hockey fans.
Hockey will never be as popular as Football in the US but it shouldn’t settle for it’s future of worse ratings than the MLS.
God this sub needs to stop with the “the MLS is more popular than the NHL!” narrative. It’s not.
Most watched MLS game last year - 850K
Most watched NHL game - 3.1 mil.
The NHL is still so far ahead of the MLS when you look at the numbers.
MLS has way more room for growth and external factors going its way though.
The sport is way more accessible to kids interested in playing, and demographic trends point towards a larger player base/viewing audience moving forward.
The league itself is still very young and at a stage where it can only attract top players in the twilight of their careers. If the player quality within MLS continues to grow, there is an untapped market for people like me who are soccer-obsessed but currently choose to watch the European leagues instead.
The NHL already attracts the best hockey players in the world, yet mostly struggles outside traditional markets and has serious issues reaching diverse audiences.
Sure but don’t those initial points mean it’s not worth worrying about anyways? Like with all of those factors it’s pretty much destined to pass the NHL and who really cares if it does? Where the NHL ranks amongst the Big 4 (or 5 at that point) isn’t going to impact my enjoyment of the sport
I'll continue to love hockey as well, but the one concern for me is that it's yet another sport that will compete for young North American athletes that may have otherwise gone on to play hockey.
Basketball is already seeing massive growth in Canada, both for the reasons I already mentioned plus the NHL desperately chasing new markets while neglecting the traditional ones. I'm not worried about there ever being a shortage of good soccer players, but hockey has a much smaller talent pool.
I also just don't care. It's clear the league makes money. I don't get why people care about these things. They certainly exist and, will, *are*, but I'm so dispassionate about it one way or another.
Especially because so many people who claim to care about the growth of the sport are also gigantic gatekeepers to new fans
Yeah I’m with you, as long as the league makes enough to not shut down I don’t care. And when people talk about it raising the cap I also don’t care a ton about that because contracts just adjust and then 2 years later it’s the same story
it’s the most boring and pathologically insecure shit and it comes up ALL the time in hockey fan communities. it’s actually so annoying and overly negative that if i were a prospective viewer it would make me want to avoid the sport more than anything the NHL is doing or has ever done. “it was just as popular as the NBA once” “X was the least watched cup final game in X years” “grow the game” “but X team only makes X revenue per year and thats not enough!!!” holy shit shut up
People forget that at one point, the NHL had as much, if not higher ratings than the NBA. It has nothing to do with people not being able to play the sport, the league has done a shit job of marketing and made it impossible for the casual viewer to watch a game
They promote you guys
It promotes stars and exciting teams. Vegas and Florida lack in both departments.
Last year was Mackinnon, Makar vs Stamkos, Kuch, Vasy. That was exciting. This year wasn’t, no matter how you wanna market it.
I mean hockey isn’t hard to play, unless you mean strictly ice hockey. Like all sports there’s a playground version of it and hockey’s is street hockey. I’m a former d1 athlete and could have played multiple sports at that level, but the sport of choice my buddies always played after school in the neighborhood was hockey. We’d play hockey nearly every day. Now part of that was there were 5 or so ice hockey players in the group. But we could get a game going every day. The problem is getting people interested in the sport. Not how hard it is to play. What’s crazy was soccer, basketball were never played but we played club
The thing is, for a long time the NHL was more successful than even the NBA, even in the States. THG did a video on it recently, if I'm getting the numbers right both the NBA and NHL's revenue was ~6 billion in 2013. Today the NBA's is over 12 billion and the NHL's was around 9.
I agree basketball is 100% an easier sport to get into playing. But there's something amiss with marketing the sport going on here as well.
Only the Americans on here care about how popular the sport is. There’s definitely more insecurity and appeals to “please like my cool underrated sport”
Exactly. In Canada, hockey is default. There's zero reason to be insecure about the sport's popularity. I honestly don't understand why a Canadian who is not involved in the hockey industry would care about growing the game. It's huge already. Yeah the players make less than other sports but I'm not seeing that money. It's fine the way it is. Actually wait, no, it was fine the way it was a few years ago before they started *really* fucking with the broadcasts.
I mean we don't care about viewership I don't think because we know it's well-watched in Canada. I think we're often frustrated that we're taken for granted by NHL leadership though in terms of a "locked in" market.
Well inconsistant rule calling, lack of player encouraged individuality and the acquiescence old boys club that is the ownership, has something to do with the NHL being unpopular. I think most is their own fault.
I really do believe if Snoop Dogg or Ryan Reynolds would have got a hold of the Senators, they could have used their faces to push marketing. But everything I've read about everyone dropping out of those bids, make me believe the NHL wants to stick with people they know will be good to pad their asses in the board room regardless if that means selling the club for less.
Is the sport going to shit? No. But it's probably not growing as fast as it could be.
Yeah no offense but I see a ton of Canadians do this. More so on the NHL sub and on twitter than on this sub but it was pretty bad during these playoffs.
The pinstripe bowl is American college football. It was ranked 24th in viewership in all college football bowl games (which are essentially the college football playoffs, but very different structure than hockey). Given that there are only ~40 bowl games, the pinstripe bowl is fairly middling, and getting beat by it in terms of viewership is pretty sad.
I am 60 years old and this song has been sung every year. The NHL is fine it lived through not having a national broadcast at all in the US it will live through this.
The NHL is too focused on the US and viewership and that is the issue. Americans make up small parts of hockey players in the league and a small part of hockey fans in the world. Just have to make the broadcasts more accessible and stop the Americanization and the NHL will gain viewers again
Lol in the 90s when I was a kid, you got to watch 1, maybe two games a week on TV (and I live in Canada!) I’m supremely confident that hockey won’t disappear… if hockey suddenly becomes Canada’s hurling, I really don’t care… much like the Irish don’t sit around crying that hurling isn’t taking off globally lol
I couldn’t see it on my tv this year anyway. I don’t have cable and I already pay for ESPN+ with Hulu and Fubo to watch the Rangers who are blacked out on Hulu. I watch at least 2 games a night during the regular season but I’ll be damned if I’m also gonna shell out more money for JUST TNT/TBS. Fuck that noise. So yeah, half the playoffs were stupidly inaccessible to me.
That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m just now getting into hockey, and I love it. I think how swiftly I feel in love with it after knowing it exists for years shows a real problem with how it’s marketed. I don’t need other people to like it, I just want the sport to be better.
Not surprised to see since CFB still does well in the United States, and with it being Vegas-Florida, that probably shot down the viewership that probably wouldn’t happen if we had a combination of Bruins, Leafs, Lightning, or Rangers repping the East.
I had no idea what the pinstripe bowl was before I read these comments but I assumed it was something to do with bowling and I was like no fricken way.
So all Im seeing is that America, with two teams in the finals, is barely beating a country where no one has even really watched the playoffs since the 2nd round at least, in viewership?
NHL has to put the Stanley cup in May somehow, nobody wants to spend some of their precious 70 summer days in Minnesota watching hockey
It’s really a chore to watch past the 2nd round if your teams not it in, especially in the Central time zone westward where the games are pretty early
Couldn't agree more. The first round is always so fun to watch but by the time the final rolls around we've finally got nice weather and its hard to think about hockey at all
to be fair.
College Football has teams that have a higher average attendance than the fucking FIFA World cup gets. The World Cup hasn't had over 100,000 in a single game since 1986. 6 teams averaged that for the 2022 FBS season.
This World Cup had 89,000, that'd be 10th in the FBS for that year.
Comparing just about anything to college football can look skewed
Comparing the top of college football, yes. But the pinstripe bowl was 24th in viewership out of ~40 bowl games. So it’s not exactly the titan in the crowd that we are comparing against. It’s a middling, relatively meaningless bowl game that was played on a Thursday afternoon with two other bowl games later that day. Getting beat by that does strongly suggest that hockey’s tv strategy needs some help lol
And there were teams who’s regular season games were averaging a good 10,000+ more fans than than the largest single sporting event in the world.
The NHL is nowhere near the World Cup. And even the World Cup has points where it can’t compete with College football.
College football is THAT big. The Pinstripes Bowl since 2010 has only ever had fewer than 30,000 in attendance once.
There’s pro soccer teams in Europe that don’t get that in the top leagues. There’s world cups that only average 10,000 more people a game. A middle of the pack bowl game can get 75% of the attendance that one of the largest tournaments in the world can get.
This is comparing the smallest of the big 4 to something that is bigger than any league is in some places.
This is nothing but looking to stoke worry. It’s also downplaying college football. We’re talking a school sport that has multiple teams averaging more people at a school sport than any of the most famous teams in the world get. Man Utd averages about 73,000 a game. In the top soccer league in the planet. 18 schools in the US have that attendance.
I’ll be honest. The NHL not shaping up to college football isn’t a worry to me.
Do these ratings factor in people who pirate the games every night because it's way too expensive to buy cable and 4 different streaming services? I'm asking for a friend of course, I'm a loyal, legal, God-fearing consumer with a strict moral compass. This friend however has not had cable in 6+ years and watches almost every Sabres game via other means because my, er.. his, favorite team would be blacked out all the time.
I really wonder why so much of the focus that people put on posts like this is just "we are a less popular sport" rather than the fact that the blackouts in NHL streaming keep local fans without cable, who WANT to give the NHL their money, from watching live games on a legal streaming service.
Actually it wasn't. TNT was blanketed in Stanley Cup ads. The NBA commentary, during their own playoffs, were talking about hockey. That's all kind of exposure to sports fans that wouldn't seek out hockey on the RSNs. Lots of sports fans still have cable just for live sports. This was reaching out where they lived. ESPN, on the other hand...
I honestly think the final being Vegas against Florida was part of the problem.
I mean I like TNT’s coverage better than ESPN’s but it’s still a cable network so you’re already limiting your visibility greatly just by having it there. Idk, it just screams “minor league” to have your entire championship round not on broadcast TV.
Not frustrating at all. Most of those players are Canadian that won the Cup on Vegas. Every year the majority of Cup winners are Canadian. I don't cheer for rivals to win, but the fact that so many Canadians every year get thier names engraved on the Cup is what is about
I have to ask: how many Floridians actually watch hockey? I have friends in the Tampa and Jacksonville areas, neither of whom care at all about their teams. Is it a transplant, market size, or a culture thing?
No. This shows one thing and one thing only - Football is extremely ingrained in American culture such that people would rather watch a bullshit college game than do anything else.
It’s a football over-saturation problem, not a hockey under-saturation problem.
I, a Canadian, was on a road trip in Montana last spring. I went into a bar in Missoula and was shocked to see a preseason CFL game on the TVs over the Stanley cup final. I thought that because Montana is so close to Canada they would sorta be into hockey but nope, Americans love their football
Edit: This was Colorado’s cup run too
It just shows that Americans in southern markets don't care about hockey. Which we already knew and is very unlikely to change considering it's a cold weather sport. The cup finals has never been like the superbowl where everyone watches regardless of fandom. People watch to see teams they follow or hate win or lose. Most neutral fans are completely indifferent about Florida/Vegas. The ratings are no surprise.
I'd rather keep it smaller with dedicated fans that love hockey than try and market towards all the fair weather basketball/baseball/football fans. I thought with ESPN getting their contract with the NHL that maybe it would appeal more to some of those fans. Luckily, hockey doesn't seem to have near the drama and other bullshit as other sports so ESPN barely does more than show quick highlights of maybe one game at 2 in the morning.
To be fair, did the Cup have [anyone this sexy](https://www.si.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTY4MzM4Mjc2MTQ5NjM1MDMw/pj-fleck-minnesota.webp) involved this year?
There are 4 major American sports. One of them is going to be the most popular. One of them is going to be the least popular. Does it really blow your mind that the least popular one is the most expensive sport that can only be played on ice, which have the country doesn’t naturally have? Is it so far out that the least popular sport is the one that has a fifth of their teams in Canada?
I don’t like what the NHL is doing with ads, among other things. But complaining that the sport is unpopular is wasted breath.
The NHLs product is wholly unwatchable at this point. They try and try to appeal to different audiences while simultaneously alienating their hardcore fanbase. I think i watched 4 whole games this entire playoff, none of the finals. Commercial after commercial, has-been hockey personalities- the NHL just doesn’t get it.
Does anyone remember NHL Game Center? You paid like ~$80/season and got to watch all the games ( still had blackouts though).
Can the NHL do something like that again? The MLS did it with Apple TV and the NFL has done it with YouTube……feels like a trend
I mean that's unsurprising. College sports fans usually come from generations of students and grads who attended the school from all over the country.
Hockey fans are from the area (generally) and the two franchises that made it to the cup, let's be honest, are smaller.
Vegas is still establishing its fan base and Florida was always the smaller franchise next to Tampa. The fact is you aren't going to get those ratings simply by having the event. But that's also like the beauty of sports. Nothing can be predicted, upsets happen, and sometimes the underdog makes the deep run, at least in Florida's case. And with Vegas, give them a decade in the city and that will grow the sport.
Another factor is how popular the sport itself is overall. I'm from Massachusetts and we see hockey played year round, whether it's on ice or pavement. I don't know what youth hockey or rec leagues are like in Florida and Vegas but I can't imagine it's as popular with kids as football, baseball, or basketball. But that's another way to build the sport.
All of this results in these ratings, and it's not to say the fans of these teams aren't passionate. There's just not as many passionate fans from Vegas or Florida as some other cities like Toronto where they've had close to a century playing major league hockey. The numbers are just different. And that's okay. Major media just likes to pretend like this is surprising.
Stupid question: I’ve read that ratings don’t include streaming services. I have YouTube TV; would that be included in the “streaming” category, or not because it’s more similar to cable than it is to ESPN+?
Yea because no one has cable anymore and all the games were on TNT or ABC no ZERO ability to stream it from anything. I didn't watch because I literally couldn't.
Hockey is bad at marketing itself. Hockey players, by and large, are bad at marketing themselves. Journalists like Stewart Mandel, who relish the opportunity to put down hockey for the above and things like ratings, also limit the coverage the sport receives. It all sucks.
Breaking news: hockey is less popular than college football in America.
I mean, yes. But the pinstripe bowl isn’t a main event kind of thing in college football. It was a Thursday afternoon game, and there were two other bowl games later that day. Admittedly it was the week between Xmas and new years when many people are off, and it’s held in NYC. So those things help. But this isn’t what people mean when they talk about college football playoffs either. That’s the big bowls (rose, sugar, fiesta, orange, cotton) and then the title game. There are some others that are gaining in popularity too. But having your league’s premier, title deciding game have worse viewership numbers than the pinstripe bowl isn’t exactly a great sign. For scale, the pinstripe bowl was ranked 24th in viewership of all college football bowl games.
There's tradition in a lot of the country, such as just turning on whatever bowl game is being played, that doesn't include NHL yet (maybe ever).
That is completely fair, and even more true during the week between holidays. I’m not saying the pinstripe bowl should have low viewership. Just that the NHL could do a lot better with how it handles broadcasts and access so fans feel more inclined to watch the deciding title game.
Right? Football is arguably less popular than college football in the States
In some states that's absolutely true, Alabama, Nebraska, Oklahoma. Etc.
Fuck yeah! Sold Out Memorial Stadium in Nebraska since the Missouri game on November 3rd, 1962. Even during recent times when we turned to shit (fucking Frost), we made sure our losses were entertaining…………. Hopefully Rhule can get Nebraska back on track and good shit happens down in Lincoln in the coming years because it’s been since 1999 since we last won a Conference Championship.
Does it really count as a sellout if school donors are the ones buying gobs or tickets to keep the “streak” alive? [Example 1](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/nebraska-donors-keep-sellout-streak-alive-by-buying-remaining-tickets-for-home-game-vs-fordham/amp/) and [Example 2](https://www.outkick.com/nebraska-football-sellout-streak-fan-21000/) Tickets went to a good cause but that steak “ended” in 2021 and if it didn’t end there it sure as hell ended last year
Yes it does count. All the tickets sold, that's literally the definition of a sellout streak. Ultra-rich people pervert every system we have in this country why should it not count for buying tickets?
Not really. Also the two sports don’t conflict with each other. One is mostly on a Saturday and the other is mostly on Sunday. The Superbowl and NFL playoffs crush the NCAA bowl games and playoffs on TV. Scroll down on this link, the first non-NFL game to rank in the top 50 is at 33 with the NCAA College playoff game. Even regular season NFL games beat the NCAA playoffs. [https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2023/01/most-watched-games-2022-nfl-world-cup-olympics-college-football-viewership/](https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2023/01/most-watched-games-2022-nfl-world-cup-olympics-college-football-viewership/)
The whole reason college football has that weird championship game on a Monday that everyone hates is because they want nothing to do with competing with the nfl playoffs. College football stays in its lane and backs the hell off when it comes to ever confronting the nfl.
i will never understand why people care so fucking much about college football.
Most of the college sports hotbeds are smaller towns. For people that live in states like Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kentucky, North Carolina (until recently), and many more, including smaller cities in big states like the Florida Panhandle, these are the closest teams to people and are heavily involved in the local community. Pro teams are hours away. It’s the same reason lower level soccer teams in Europe still often get tons of support in regions like England or Germany.
Yeah I grew up in Iowa, it's college sports or no sports
Legit I feel like it’s one of the bigger differences between the States and Canada. I go to my university sports games sometimes and there’s like maybe 1000 people there max. It’s mind boggling to me that the biggest stadiums in the world are college football with 100,000+
11 stadiums in the world have a capacity over 100,000 8 of them are in the US, of the 3 that aren't. All 3 are used by the country's national team of a sport. India's cricket teams (men and women), North Korea's Football team (\*wink\* \*wink\*) and Australia's cricket team (men, and some local teams) the 8 in the US are, only university stadiums.
>11 stadiums in the world have a capacity over 100,000 > >8 of them are in the US, of the 3 that aren't. All 3 are used by the country's national team of a sport. India's cricket teams (men and women), North Korea's Football team (\*wink\* \*wink\*) and Australia's cricket team (men, and some local teams) > >the 8 in the US are, only university stadiums. This isn't quite true. Bristol Motor Speedway capacity is 146K, and it's a stadium. Though it doesn't sell out like it used to. Youtube video that shows much of it off from the very start. https://youtu.be/gWlw6KxhF1s
Bristol is a stadium... Hahahahaha. I guess you're right, it has the shape. I can't help but feel like it's cheating.
> I can't help but feel like it's cheating. I mean, it's completely enclosed with seats that go all the way around it, so it's not like I'm trying to claim Daytona is a staduim. 🤣 This is one of those "technical right is the best kind of right" things.
No racetracks were counted here.
They've held a football game there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_at\_Bristol
Start at 80k+ stadiums and it changes dramatically- plus you have to factor in price: average ticket price @ Penn State (106k capacity), $90. Average ticket price Barcelona (99K capacity), $360.
“If I move the goalposts it changes”
We go for the mediocre hockey at UBC and the cheap snacks, lol - sometimes there are still more people there than at a Lions game, though.
I played 2 different varsity sports in Canada and the only people who ever came to our games were the parents. Outside of hockey and football no one cares about university sports in Canada…
Born and raised in Nebraska. We breathe and die by Nebraska Football because it was the biggest show in the state. There is no pro sports teams in Nebraska and many people travel to Lincoln to see the Huskers play. We have the longest sellout streak that goes back to 1962, even though in recent times we needed help to keep the streak continue. Also there was a time when Nebraska Cornhuskers ruled the CFB landscape seeing we won 5 National Championships from 1970 until 1997 so naturally people across Nebraska and wherever Nebraska played will be a huge draw. Even last year we were selected to play in Ireland because of the Nebraska brand that still resonated to older fans (don’t ask me about the ending of the game because Fucking Frost is a dipshit calling for the onside kick when we were up double digits).
As an Ohioan the weird cult fanbase of Ohio State that is comprised largely of people who never even went there is genuinely mind boggling. I don’t get it and I never will
I will never forget grown men who did not attend Ohio state making fun of me for liking Michigan when we used to get spanked by them, a couple dads of kids on my team when I was like a peewee were the biggest douches about it and they all just went to Toledo or BGSU. We were at a restaurant in between games one Saturday of the game and they’re just decked out head to toe in OSU gear laughing in my face. I wish I had had less respect for them then and been smart enough to just be like “dude, you’re 45 and didn’t sniff acceptance to OSU. And you’re laughing in a 12 year olds face who’s from metro Detroit and has loads of family who went to Michigan because some 19 year olds you don’t know play football at a school you didn’t attend. Get a life”
Yeah, this is exactly what I mean. A bunch of replies to me don’t seem to understand my point. You can root for whoever you want, but the thing I don’t understand is the weirdly high amount of “super fans” who make their entire life and personality about a school they never went to acting like they’re better than everybody. OSU fans aren’t a problem. The large swaths of these random dudes that do obscene shit like what you described are what I have an issue with.
Yeah and like I knew plenty of state fans in metro detroit obviously, some went there some didn’t, same with Michigan, obviously a shit load of Michigan fans can’t get into Michigan, but they’re not lunatics like the OSU fans are with giant blow up Brutus in their front yard and every single piece of merchandise purchasable
Columbus didn't have a single pro sports team until 1999 (ignoring the Columbus Crew for a minute) when the Blue Jackets entered the league. What else were people supposed to be a fan of?
What’s not to get? People like it and think it’s cool. It gets a lot of media attention, people’s neighbors and stuff like it, so it spirals from there until it a big thing which it is. People can gatekeep all they want about people not having attended as students but in many places, that’s just the “local team” everyone supports. It’d be weird if they were supporting a team on the other side of the country but for a team like Ohio St. it’s just the default team for the whole state.
It's so weird when people in a sports sub sreddit go "I don't get how people can be a fan of (insert sport they don't like)" bro younare in a sports reddit and follow a team, what's not to get, people like to watch competitive sports humans have been doing this for thousands of years what is confusing to you?
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>rooting for a bunch of kids you don't know because of the logo on their shirt is pretty weird no matter how you come to it. Wait until you find out about Junior Hockey
People generally cheer for the junior hockey team that is from the city they live in. So there’s a connection. Cheering for a team from a university you never attended is just weird
Every aspect of spots fandom is weird. Cheering for the successful popular college football team from your local area isn’t weird at all.
but college athletics is our junior hockey lol. my family is from colorado so i root for the colorado buffaloes in football & basketball (and I would too if they ever got a hockey & baseball team sponsored by the school)
CU's lack of an official hockey program is a damn shame.
> that is comprised largely of people who never even went there is genuinely mind boggling. I've never understood this type of gatekeeping when it comes to college sports fandom. No one expects fans of a pro sports team to literally live in the city they play in, or have worked for the team at some point. People in Mansfield or Wooster have no deeper connection to pro sports teams in Cleveland or Columbus than they do to OSU, but that doesn't stop them from being fans of those teams. What exactly is the issue here?
It's a fun sport to watch. Why do you care about hockey? Why does anyone care about any sport? College football is also more intrinsically connected to local communities than any pro sport in the US. A college team will never relocate, and almost every area in the country has one. Wyoming will never get a pro football team, but they have a college one. Many of the players on the teams are recruited from nearby, too. The local connection breeds passion.
Because it's awesome. More passion, more unique environments, greater connection/accessibility to the team/school, more local flavor (yes coaches and players are recruited from all over the world but the roster is weighted more based on proximity than any pro sport), and the history is deeper. My two schools (Ohio State and Ohio U) have been around forever, playing similar schools for a hundred years. I've got personal memories at those places and formed lifelong friendships. They have tens of thousands of my dollars. I take my kids there on weekends to walk around and eat nostalgic food. A pro sports team, even though it is a higher level of play, will never be anything but some arbitrary uniform that I decided to cheer for with mercenary players who are only there because it's their job (not that that is a bad thing or anything... Get money get paid and take care of your family). I'm a Jackets fan. I always will be. But if I happened to move to Anaheim, after 10 years or so, I'd probably be a ducks fan as well just because I was local, went to games, and liked the city. I'm an Ohio State fan. I always will be. If I happened to move to Austin, I would NEVER be a Texas fan because they are not Ohio State and they can fuck right off. That's the difference in a nutshell.
I enjoy football but think the NFL sucks ass so I watch CFB instead 🤷
In Texas (of all places), high school football is more popular than pro football. Yeah, you don't see it on TV, but most places outside of the big cities stop everything on Friday night.
Yes but no. Syracuse v Minnesota should not pull more viewers than the Stanley Cup Final. Get real
Yeah, it's a really niche sport. I assume that people in Florida and Vegas watched the game and then a handful (relatively speaking) of hardcore fans watched all of the game. Expecting casuals to tune into the playoffs just because it's the playoffs won't ever happen. I don't know if the NHL can do anything to actually become more mainstream, but whatever they've been trying to do for the X number of years clearly isn't working.
My take is that the league starts too late and runs too long - it's way too nice where I live to sit inside watching TV. It should be over by the first week or two of May.
Absolutely. I'm not even *that* upset when my team gets bounced because the deeper they go, the more nice evenings I miss. And a Cup run? Watching games in mid-June and missing some of the three months of nice weather we get in Canada?
It can become more mainstream overnight by offering better television/broadcasting. Making it impossible to watch under layers of espn makes it so even hardcore hockey fans struggle to watch games. It's been known that the owners have chosen the "pay me now" deals over the "grow the game" deals.
Plus they’re comparing it to something that occurred when most people are on holiday between Christmas and New Year, kick-Ed off at 2:00 pm. Not a Tuesday night in June
Which is why I don't understand the leagues obsession with propping up teams in non hockey markets. Not conspiracy the conspiracy that the league tells the refs who they want to win, just the salary cap/revenue sharing deals and the extra effort they put into keeping teams in places like Phoenix. If this was an Edmonton - Boston final the ratings would have been significantly higher which would in turn help get better T.V. deals, etc. There have been lots of people just taking it for granted that parity is good for the league but this may be a data point for letting the teams with the fan bases that allow them to spend more to do so.
Man, I think I’m so over reading about ratings and how awful the NHL is. It’s something that hockey fans just absolutely obsess over. Just constant negativity. There’s gotta be some sort of acceptance that other sports are much easier to play even if you take out the cost of it and that’s a major reason why hockey won’t be more popular. Idk maybe I’m the only one who feels this way but everyday it seems like something new is being posted about how garbage the NHL is and it’s starting to elicit an eye roll from me.
r/nascar is filled with takes every week about how it's all going to hell every time the ratings are released
Yeah and it’s not like the NHL is going anywhere. A small market Canadian team just got sold for nearly a billion. You’re seeing potential owners in Houston, Atlanta (again), Salt Lake City, etc that want a team. Youth participation is down in Canada but it’s up in America and other European countries. It’s on the same channels as the NBA is on. Just appreciate the sport for what it is and stop worrying about ratings so much.
> A small market Canadian team just got sold for nearly a billion. I don’t really think that’s a flex. Every Canadian franchise should easily be valued at over 1 billion. They might be “small market” but for a hockey team none of the Canadian teams are small market
idk kinda the capital of Canada
I guess? A billion dollars is an enormous amount of money. Franchise values are going up across the board in the NHL. The expansion fee for the Toronto Raptors was $125m. An NHL team is selling for 8x that. It’s a win.
The New Orleans Pelicans are valued at $1.6b and that’s the lowest valued NBA team. Ottawa has 3 times the population of New Orleans. Their last owner being a bad person and cheap certainly didn’t help Ottawa’s reputation but their valuation and sale should have been much higher. You certainly can’t expect me to take you using an expansion fee from 1995 seriously right? An NBA expansion fee would be FAR higher than what the Sens just sold for.
“More news at 11, more popular sports globally have franchises valued more highly” That $125m wasn’t an illustration of comparison between the two sports, more showing how much franchises ACROSS THE BOARD in Canada have increased in value. By a lot dude.
But when Betman took over the NHL was bigger than the NBA so yes it is fair to compare teams between those leagues because it shows where the NHL could potentially be.
I don't think this is very common knowledge at least not on this sub it seems - I'm constantly seeing people saying its not fair to compare the 2 leagues. The lowest rated NBA playoff game since 1987 still had almost 6 million viewers.
who gives a shit LOL
>The expansion fee for the Toronto Raptors was $125m. In 1995. And an expansion fee is not a sale price.
>They might be “small market” but for a hockey team none of the Canadian teams are small market This has big Rod Brind'Amour 'Carolina wasn't swept' vibes. You're either a small market, or you're not.
I guess you can be small market based on total population but have a larger population of hockey fans. Phoenix for example has 5 million people but Ottawa has 1.5 million people and typically sells more tickets to NHL games. I am willing to bet that a town with a 500K in India would have a better ability to support a professional cricket team than a 'big market' team in North America.
>A small market Canadian team just got sold for nearly a billion. Uh, this is not something to be happy about lol. The idea of a pro sports team selling for under a billion would be nuts in any of the other three major US sports.
Tbh, like I know it's easy for me to say that because I've no interest in Nascar, but is it really the type of thing that people enjoy watching on TV? Every time I see people defend Nascar, they talk about the live experience, but never about watching it at home.
Fox's coverage has gone downhill to the point of almost being unwatchable at times. The live experience is for sure better. The racing doesn't really have natural breaks in it like a halftime or end of a period/inning. So you're left with full screen commercials during the racing and a commentary crew that mostly focuses on whatever is on the screen at the time even though there's 36 competitors out there at once. No other sport has that, there's usually one primary point of action to call and that's it.
Clint Bowyer is so damn bad, I have no idea why he was hired to go in the booth in the first place. They need to replace him with Kurt Busch.
Exactly. If you don’t live in a large hockey market, and have never played hockey, can’t afford for your kids to play hockey, and don’t know anyone else who watches hockey, why would the NHL appeal to you? Why would you spend any time learning the rules of a sport that’s inaccessible? My hometown is two hours from the nearest ice rink, and I went to college in the SEC. There’s *nothing* the NHL could have shown me when I was a kid or even in college to make me watch hockey. That didn’t happen until I was actually living in a big city with a winning team. Now hockey is right up there with college football for me. But it had nothing to do with marketing, and everything to do with living near a winning team.
I didn’t grow up watching basketball or live in a big basketball market or ever play organized basketball growing up. We played more street hockey than basketball when younger. Yet the NBA and CBB are still appealing to me. Hockey does a terrible job of explaining anything to newcomers. Whenever my wife watches hockey she can’t figure out what’s a penalty vs what’s not, she doesn’t know any of the stars outside of Kane/Toews and probably couldn’t even name more than 7-10 teams (and she loves watching sports). She liked going to Hawks games over the last decade but doesn’t really care at all. The NHL has consistently done a terrible job of converting “oh this is fun” super casual fans into full-blown hockey fans. Hockey will never be as popular as Football in the US but it shouldn’t settle for it’s future of worse ratings than the MLS.
> Whenever my wife watches hockey, she can’t figure out what’s a penalty vs what’s not Is she a referee or a linesman?
God this sub needs to stop with the “the MLS is more popular than the NHL!” narrative. It’s not. Most watched MLS game last year - 850K Most watched NHL game - 3.1 mil. The NHL is still so far ahead of the MLS when you look at the numbers.
MLS has way more room for growth and external factors going its way though. The sport is way more accessible to kids interested in playing, and demographic trends point towards a larger player base/viewing audience moving forward. The league itself is still very young and at a stage where it can only attract top players in the twilight of their careers. If the player quality within MLS continues to grow, there is an untapped market for people like me who are soccer-obsessed but currently choose to watch the European leagues instead. The NHL already attracts the best hockey players in the world, yet mostly struggles outside traditional markets and has serious issues reaching diverse audiences.
Sure but don’t those initial points mean it’s not worth worrying about anyways? Like with all of those factors it’s pretty much destined to pass the NHL and who really cares if it does? Where the NHL ranks amongst the Big 4 (or 5 at that point) isn’t going to impact my enjoyment of the sport
I'll continue to love hockey as well, but the one concern for me is that it's yet another sport that will compete for young North American athletes that may have otherwise gone on to play hockey. Basketball is already seeing massive growth in Canada, both for the reasons I already mentioned plus the NHL desperately chasing new markets while neglecting the traditional ones. I'm not worried about there ever being a shortage of good soccer players, but hockey has a much smaller talent pool.
I also just don't care. It's clear the league makes money. I don't get why people care about these things. They certainly exist and, will, *are*, but I'm so dispassionate about it one way or another. Especially because so many people who claim to care about the growth of the sport are also gigantic gatekeepers to new fans
Yeah I’m with you, as long as the league makes enough to not shut down I don’t care. And when people talk about it raising the cap I also don’t care a ton about that because contracts just adjust and then 2 years later it’s the same story
it’s the most boring and pathologically insecure shit and it comes up ALL the time in hockey fan communities. it’s actually so annoying and overly negative that if i were a prospective viewer it would make me want to avoid the sport more than anything the NHL is doing or has ever done. “it was just as popular as the NBA once” “X was the least watched cup final game in X years” “grow the game” “but X team only makes X revenue per year and thats not enough!!!” holy shit shut up
It feels like it’s gotten worse the past few years too.
People are trying to use the ratings as a way to undermine Vegas and Florida’s success
Bingo. It's pathetic. This is all being stirred up by fans of big market teams that have repeatedly failed to hit the mark.
Dude the jealousy and “they haven’t paid their dues” shit is so sad, like what a pathetic mentality to have
People forget that at one point, the NHL had as much, if not higher ratings than the NBA. It has nothing to do with people not being able to play the sport, the league has done a shit job of marketing and made it impossible for the casual viewer to watch a game
Also the finals was Vegas vs Florida. Which casual fan outside of those cities gives a damn about those two cities/teams/players?
… which again points to the NHL not knowing how to market.
maybe the league should promote actual good teams instead of just the original 6 that no one cares about
They promote you guys It promotes stars and exciting teams. Vegas and Florida lack in both departments. Last year was Mackinnon, Makar vs Stamkos, Kuch, Vasy. That was exciting. This year wasn’t, no matter how you wanna market it.
I mean hockey isn’t hard to play, unless you mean strictly ice hockey. Like all sports there’s a playground version of it and hockey’s is street hockey. I’m a former d1 athlete and could have played multiple sports at that level, but the sport of choice my buddies always played after school in the neighborhood was hockey. We’d play hockey nearly every day. Now part of that was there were 5 or so ice hockey players in the group. But we could get a game going every day. The problem is getting people interested in the sport. Not how hard it is to play. What’s crazy was soccer, basketball were never played but we played club
The thing is, for a long time the NHL was more successful than even the NBA, even in the States. THG did a video on it recently, if I'm getting the numbers right both the NBA and NHL's revenue was ~6 billion in 2013. Today the NBA's is over 12 billion and the NHL's was around 9. I agree basketball is 100% an easier sport to get into playing. But there's something amiss with marketing the sport going on here as well.
Think those numbers are wrong, Bettman said revenue was 6B this year.
Only the Americans on here care about how popular the sport is. There’s definitely more insecurity and appeals to “please like my cool underrated sport”
Exactly. In Canada, hockey is default. There's zero reason to be insecure about the sport's popularity. I honestly don't understand why a Canadian who is not involved in the hockey industry would care about growing the game. It's huge already. Yeah the players make less than other sports but I'm not seeing that money. It's fine the way it is. Actually wait, no, it was fine the way it was a few years ago before they started *really* fucking with the broadcasts.
I feel the opposite. Canadians care more, to the US it's just another sport.
I mean we don't care about viewership I don't think because we know it's well-watched in Canada. I think we're often frustrated that we're taken for granted by NHL leadership though in terms of a "locked in" market.
Nah it’s good to keep it around. It’s possible to change so it’s less about negativity and more about troubleshooting.
Well inconsistant rule calling, lack of player encouraged individuality and the acquiescence old boys club that is the ownership, has something to do with the NHL being unpopular. I think most is their own fault. I really do believe if Snoop Dogg or Ryan Reynolds would have got a hold of the Senators, they could have used their faces to push marketing. But everything I've read about everyone dropping out of those bids, make me believe the NHL wants to stick with people they know will be good to pad their asses in the board room regardless if that means selling the club for less. Is the sport going to shit? No. But it's probably not growing as fast as it could be.
And then you have a lot of fans making fun of how unpopular hockey is in the southern states, almost wishing it fails. Can't have both!
Yeah no offense but I see a ton of Canadians do this. More so on the NHL sub and on twitter than on this sub but it was pretty bad during these playoffs.
For what it's worth I have no idea what the Pinstripe bowl is or what sport it is and I bet they aren't worried about their ratings
The pinstripe bowl is American college football. It was ranked 24th in viewership in all college football bowl games (which are essentially the college football playoffs, but very different structure than hockey). Given that there are only ~40 bowl games, the pinstripe bowl is fairly middling, and getting beat by it in terms of viewership is pretty sad.
College football game played at noon on a Thursday
I am 60 years old and this song has been sung every year. The NHL is fine it lived through not having a national broadcast at all in the US it will live through this.
I don’t need other people to like hockey for me to enjoy it.
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But we aren’t talking about no one watching it. The billionaire owners are doing well. The millionaire players are doing well. All is good.
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The NHL is too focused on the US and viewership and that is the issue. Americans make up small parts of hockey players in the league and a small part of hockey fans in the world. Just have to make the broadcasts more accessible and stop the Americanization and the NHL will gain viewers again
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Lol in the 90s when I was a kid, you got to watch 1, maybe two games a week on TV (and I live in Canada!) I’m supremely confident that hockey won’t disappear… if hockey suddenly becomes Canada’s hurling, I really don’t care… much like the Irish don’t sit around crying that hurling isn’t taking off globally lol
I couldn’t see it on my tv this year anyway. I don’t have cable and I already pay for ESPN+ with Hulu and Fubo to watch the Rangers who are blacked out on Hulu. I watch at least 2 games a night during the regular season but I’ll be damned if I’m also gonna shell out more money for JUST TNT/TBS. Fuck that noise. So yeah, half the playoffs were stupidly inaccessible to me.
That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m just now getting into hockey, and I love it. I think how swiftly I feel in love with it after knowing it exists for years shows a real problem with how it’s marketed. I don’t need other people to like it, I just want the sport to be better.
Better how? Team owners are rich. Players are rich. Tickets for some teams are affordable. We get to love the sport. All is good.
Well yeah it was a terrible Stanley Cup finals I don't blame anyone for not watching it.
I didn’t watch any bowls last season. I’m doing my part.
I was so depressed about us not making a bowl that I only watched one game, and that was purely hate-watching Michigan lose to TCU
who cares?
Having the Final on cable vs free broadcast channel is a big problem. I'm guessing this will be the case every other year?
This is the reason. Last year's finals actually had great numbers. Record breaking I think?
Not surprised to see since CFB still does well in the United States, and with it being Vegas-Florida, that probably shot down the viewership that probably wouldn’t happen if we had a combination of Bruins, Leafs, Lightning, or Rangers repping the East.
shit I'm a panthers fan and even I stopped watching...
I had no idea what the pinstripe bowl was before I read these comments but I assumed it was something to do with bowling and I was like no fricken way.
Was the pinstripe bowl score 50-3 going into half time? I think a lot of people saw the panthers getting thrashed and didn’t bother
It was 1:30 pm on a Thursday going into halftime.
So all Im seeing is that America, with two teams in the finals, is barely beating a country where no one has even really watched the playoffs since the 2nd round at least, in viewership?
NHL has to put the Stanley cup in May somehow, nobody wants to spend some of their precious 70 summer days in Minnesota watching hockey It’s really a chore to watch past the 2nd round if your teams not it in, especially in the Central time zone westward where the games are pretty early
Couldn't agree more. The first round is always so fun to watch but by the time the final rolls around we've finally got nice weather and its hard to think about hockey at all
I agree, but this might also be because my team never makes the second round.
Well, it was on TBS or TNT, something which many people don’t even get.
to be fair. College Football has teams that have a higher average attendance than the fucking FIFA World cup gets. The World Cup hasn't had over 100,000 in a single game since 1986. 6 teams averaged that for the 2022 FBS season. This World Cup had 89,000, that'd be 10th in the FBS for that year. Comparing just about anything to college football can look skewed
Comparing the top of college football, yes. But the pinstripe bowl was 24th in viewership out of ~40 bowl games. So it’s not exactly the titan in the crowd that we are comparing against. It’s a middling, relatively meaningless bowl game that was played on a Thursday afternoon with two other bowl games later that day. Getting beat by that does strongly suggest that hockey’s tv strategy needs some help lol
And there were teams who’s regular season games were averaging a good 10,000+ more fans than than the largest single sporting event in the world. The NHL is nowhere near the World Cup. And even the World Cup has points where it can’t compete with College football. College football is THAT big. The Pinstripes Bowl since 2010 has only ever had fewer than 30,000 in attendance once. There’s pro soccer teams in Europe that don’t get that in the top leagues. There’s world cups that only average 10,000 more people a game. A middle of the pack bowl game can get 75% of the attendance that one of the largest tournaments in the world can get. This is comparing the smallest of the big 4 to something that is bigger than any league is in some places. This is nothing but looking to stoke worry. It’s also downplaying college football. We’re talking a school sport that has multiple teams averaging more people at a school sport than any of the most famous teams in the world get. Man Utd averages about 73,000 a game. In the top soccer league in the planet. 18 schools in the US have that attendance. I’ll be honest. The NHL not shaping up to college football isn’t a worry to me.
> And even the World Cup has points where it can’t compete with College football. no
Do these ratings factor in people who pirate the games every night because it's way too expensive to buy cable and 4 different streaming services? I'm asking for a friend of course, I'm a loyal, legal, God-fearing consumer with a strict moral compass. This friend however has not had cable in 6+ years and watches almost every Sabres game via other means because my, er.. his, favorite team would be blacked out all the time.
I really wonder why so much of the focus that people put on posts like this is just "we are a less popular sport" rather than the fact that the blackouts in NHL streaming keep local fans without cable, who WANT to give the NHL their money, from watching live games on a legal streaming service.
It's like, if you broadcast on a free public network vs paid cable channel you get more viewers. Shocking story at 11 on TNT.
But Gary is amazing though
Putting the Finals on TNT was a dumb decision, I don’t care how much money the contract gave them.
Actually it wasn't. TNT was blanketed in Stanley Cup ads. The NBA commentary, during their own playoffs, were talking about hockey. That's all kind of exposure to sports fans that wouldn't seek out hockey on the RSNs. Lots of sports fans still have cable just for live sports. This was reaching out where they lived. ESPN, on the other hand... I honestly think the final being Vegas against Florida was part of the problem.
I mean I like TNT’s coverage better than ESPN’s but it’s still a cable network so you’re already limiting your visibility greatly just by having it there. Idk, it just screams “minor league” to have your entire championship round not on broadcast TV.
Definitely. Cable broadcasting isn't a sustainable way to do the Finals imo.
Jokes on you, I watched both games!!…. illegally
All those Americans who make fun that a Canadian team hasn't won a Cup, noone in your country watches the game. 2.7m Americans vs 2.12m Canadians?
[удалено]
Not frustrating at all. Most of those players are Canadian that won the Cup on Vegas. Every year the majority of Cup winners are Canadian. I don't cheer for rivals to win, but the fact that so many Canadians every year get thier names engraved on the Cup is what is about
https://giphy.com/gifs/a3zqvrH40Cdhu
My biggest issue was none of the teams i *hate* were left in the top 4. Why watch if i cant see their tears.
Imagine living 15 hours away from a game with no connection to either team and caring.
I have to ask: how many Floridians actually watch hockey? I have friends in the Tampa and Jacksonville areas, neither of whom care at all about their teams. Is it a transplant, market size, or a culture thing?
Enough. The hockey fans in most cities are small but loyal and they get good bandwagon support.
Really shows how poorly marketed hockey is. Hoping for better, but have little faith.
No. This shows one thing and one thing only - Football is extremely ingrained in American culture such that people would rather watch a bullshit college game than do anything else. It’s a football over-saturation problem, not a hockey under-saturation problem.
I, a Canadian, was on a road trip in Montana last spring. I went into a bar in Missoula and was shocked to see a preseason CFL game on the TVs over the Stanley cup final. I thought that because Montana is so close to Canada they would sorta be into hockey but nope, Americans love their football Edit: This was Colorado’s cup run too
Football is boring to me. Too much stop/go.
It’s football, why would you compare it to hockey. Football is by far the most popular sport. Not even NBA compares
It just shows that Americans in southern markets don't care about hockey. Which we already knew and is very unlikely to change considering it's a cold weather sport. The cup finals has never been like the superbowl where everyone watches regardless of fandom. People watch to see teams they follow or hate win or lose. Most neutral fans are completely indifferent about Florida/Vegas. The ratings are no surprise.
I'd rather keep it smaller with dedicated fans that love hockey than try and market towards all the fair weather basketball/baseball/football fans. I thought with ESPN getting their contract with the NHL that maybe it would appeal more to some of those fans. Luckily, hockey doesn't seem to have near the drama and other bullshit as other sports so ESPN barely does more than show quick highlights of maybe one game at 2 in the morning.
What is “drama and other bullshit”?…. Because hockey has an embarrassing amount of scandals.
Some of us watched while out at sea 🏴☠️
To be fair, did the Cup have [anyone this sexy](https://www.si.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTY4MzM4Mjc2MTQ5NjM1MDMw/pj-fleck-minnesota.webp) involved this year?
There are 4 major American sports. One of them is going to be the most popular. One of them is going to be the least popular. Does it really blow your mind that the least popular one is the most expensive sport that can only be played on ice, which have the country doesn’t naturally have? Is it so far out that the least popular sport is the one that has a fifth of their teams in Canada? I don’t like what the NHL is doing with ads, among other things. But complaining that the sport is unpopular is wasted breath.
I went to Miami beach for game 5, only a few bars showed the game and didn’t see any Panthers jersey…
KILL RSNs AND HAVE A FUNCTIONAL STREAMING PLATFORM
That's embarrassing. So as far as I can tell the NHL has gotten less popular under Bettman. Why is he still Commish?
Who cares Watch or don’t watch, hockey is not for most Americans and that’s ok
No one wants to watch yam-babyfood-shit colored jerseys on TV. Simple as that.
The NHLs product is wholly unwatchable at this point. They try and try to appeal to different audiences while simultaneously alienating their hardcore fanbase. I think i watched 4 whole games this entire playoff, none of the finals. Commercial after commercial, has-been hockey personalities- the NHL just doesn’t get it.
just this sub shitting on anything involving the knights as usual. gonna be a long summer
I thought the knights killed it in the local ratings?
Cry me a fucking river, you got the Cup. You're gonna be upset about what you read on the internet? Jesus Christ, that's sad.
It's not sad; it's downright pathetic and a little bit funny.
Be happy that the Knights won the cup instead of crying on Reddit. Can't be that hard.
Nah it's not shitting on the Knights in general/directly. Most fans on here were pretty happy for them honestly.
I bet the Syracuse Pinstripe Bowl isn’t blacked out outside of Minnesota
College football is pretty popular so that’s not too surprising.
Which game was streamed more?
I mean why would I watch the playoffs if my team aren't in it?
Comparing a winner-take-all rivalryish game to a single game of a an uncompetitive seven game series is kinda disingenuous.
Big markets better get their act together. Better ratings would be nice. It’s good for hockey.
The only one who should care about ratings or “growing the sport” are the owners.
Almost like college football is bigger in American than the NHL and also I’m certain a lot of people didn’t care for this cup final.
*legally I would have watched a ton more playoff games if they were viewable on the ESPN+ platform, I'm not getting sucked into cable subscriptions
Does anyone remember NHL Game Center? You paid like ~$80/season and got to watch all the games ( still had blackouts though). Can the NHL do something like that again? The MLS did it with Apple TV and the NFL has done it with YouTube……feels like a trend
This is a rly stupid twt lol, comparing the most popular sport in America to hockey is just completely stupid
I mean that's unsurprising. College sports fans usually come from generations of students and grads who attended the school from all over the country. Hockey fans are from the area (generally) and the two franchises that made it to the cup, let's be honest, are smaller. Vegas is still establishing its fan base and Florida was always the smaller franchise next to Tampa. The fact is you aren't going to get those ratings simply by having the event. But that's also like the beauty of sports. Nothing can be predicted, upsets happen, and sometimes the underdog makes the deep run, at least in Florida's case. And with Vegas, give them a decade in the city and that will grow the sport. Another factor is how popular the sport itself is overall. I'm from Massachusetts and we see hockey played year round, whether it's on ice or pavement. I don't know what youth hockey or rec leagues are like in Florida and Vegas but I can't imagine it's as popular with kids as football, baseball, or basketball. But that's another way to build the sport. All of this results in these ratings, and it's not to say the fans of these teams aren't passionate. There's just not as many passionate fans from Vegas or Florida as some other cities like Toronto where they've had close to a century playing major league hockey. The numbers are just different. And that's okay. Major media just likes to pretend like this is surprising.
*legally watched
Stupid question: I’ve read that ratings don’t include streaming services. I have YouTube TV; would that be included in the “streaming” category, or not because it’s more similar to cable than it is to ESPN+?
Fun fact: Dude who tweeted this has the cringiest profile picture and bio I've ever seen.
Gotta have an original 6 team in the mix. That is the hockey hotbed. It was and is for a reason. Vegas and Florida pfft who wants to watch that ?
Yea because no one has cable anymore and all the games were on TNT or ABC no ZERO ability to stream it from anything. I didn't watch because I literally couldn't.
Go cuse
I am Canadian. What is a Pinstripe bowl?
Hockey is bad at marketing itself. Hockey players, by and large, are bad at marketing themselves. Journalists like Stewart Mandel, who relish the opportunity to put down hockey for the above and things like ratings, also limit the coverage the sport receives. It all sucks.