Like nearly 98% of everything in the known universe, the 2024 Stanley Cup Final is a win-some, lose-some proposition. On the one hand, the NHL finally has the opportunity to showcase the human standout that is Connor McDavid, who, alongside Leon Draisaitl, commands an unbelievable Edmonton Oilers attack. On the other hand, even as McDavid prepares for his first shot at Lord Stanley’s beer mug, ABC’s coverage is unlikely to attract a TV audience commensurate with the generational talent that will be on display.
Bad news first. While the NHL has suffered a sharp decline in ratings — to date, postseason deliveries on ESPN networks are up 20% year over year — that momentum is about to come closer to the harsh reality of market math. If ABC didn’t catch a break in the New York area (the Rangers’ collapse in Florida cast a shadow over much of the market’s 7.6 million TV homes), it suffered another blow when the Oilers overtook the Dallas Stars.
It doesn’t happen all that often, but whenever a Canadian team punches its ticket to the finals, the subsequent absence of a crucial hometown DMA is readily apparent in the Nielsen data. In 2021, the five-game Montreal Canadiens-Tampa Bay Lightning series averaged 2.5 million viewers per game across NBC’s various broadcast, cable and digital platforms. Our neighbors to the north also played a role in the least-watched finals on record, as the 2007 five-game Anaheim Ducks-Ottawa Senators set averaged just 1.74 million viewers on NBC’s flagship and the now-defunct cabler Versus.
Still, not all is lost. If a short series with a Canadian club is more or less box office poison, a final that has been pushed to the limit will scare the crowd regardless of local market considerations. In 2011, when Boston represented the Original Six in a seventh frame against Vancouver, 8.54 million viewers watched the action unfold on NBC. The Bruins’ 4-0 victory remains the fifth-largest televised draw in NHL history and trails only 2019’s St. Louis-Boston Game 7 (8.72 million) as the league’s best game during the Nielsen era Modern.
If there’s a limit to what the league’s TV partners can do when faced with a single-market finals, TNT Sports and ABC/ESPN have done their best to bolster the Oilers’ national profile throughout the regular season. Edmonton has appeared on national TV no fewer than 11 times during the 2023-24 campaign, a list that includes a Saturday afternoon encounter on ABC. (By comparison, the megamarket Rangers appeared in 12 national games, though six of those were big-picture ABC productions.)
The Stars’ ouster could also be tough on ABC deliverables like Dallas-Ft. Worth represents the fifth-largest media market in the country. Home to 3.13 million TV households, the DFW DMA accounts for 2.5% of all potential viewers in the US. Of course, no group of us consumers compares to New York; add the 1.74 million TV homes that Miami brings to the table to the headcount no longer in play in Dallas and you’re yet looking at just 65% of Gotham’s range. In fact, the shortfall of 2.73 million households is almost a perfect match for the seventh market of Atlanta, a place that 2.74 million viewers call home.
If the Panthers-Oilers matchup isn’t ideal from a pure ratings standpoint, ABC can still expect to put up much stronger numbers than the previous year’s finale. TNT/TBS/truTV’s coverage of the short-lived Panthers-Golden Knights series delivered the third-lowest deliveries in history, as cable’s built-in reach deficit ensured unspectacular TV share. ABC’s signals reach approximately 12.5 million more homes than TNT Sports channels, and that advantage alone should help Disney catch up on this year’s deliveries.
A six-game series will likely be close to the 2022 final, which averaged 4.6 million viewers in the first year of the NHL’s return to ABC. And while Game 7s are hard to come by — before the end of 2019 it averaged 8.72 million viewers, the most in 38 years, the last time a seventh broadcast was necessary was in 2011 — the novelty in itself should be enough to help ABC attract at least 8 million fans if there is still hockey on Monday, June 24.
Seven games should allow ABC to earn somewhere around $35 million in advertising revenue, which isn’t a bad job considering the network will also air the NBA Finals on non-hockey nights. For its part, the NHL is simply elated to see McDavid step into the spotlight; If mere TV ratings were the league’s main concern, it would not have been in bed with the undersized OLN/Versus/NBCSN for 16 seasons, nor would it have agreed to a seven-year stint, US$1.6 billion deal with TNT Sports precursor Turner, which will see The Final return to basic cable in 2025 and 2027.
The Panthers opened as -125 favorites to win the Cup, with the Vegas books favoring a six-game set. The album will be released on ABC Saturday, June 8th at 8pm EDT.
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