The city of Seattle appeared to have loved hosting this year’s Winter Classic, but for the rest of the country, another all-time low was hit in the viewership department.
Monday’s Winter Classic was between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Seattle Kraken. These are of course the two newest teams in the NHL, and both come from places that have long been accustomed to not having a team in the National Hockey League. Meanwhile, we also aren’t accustomed to this kind of viewership for the game as the 2024 Winter Classic averaged 1,110,000 viewers across TNT (1.03M) and truTV (76K).
For the third consecutive year, TNT would air the game exclusively on cable, and this time the event would have a later start time with the game being on the West Coast with a 3:25 p.m. ET puck drop. With this, the third period of the Winter Classic would go head-to-head against one of the most-watched college football playoff games in history, the Rose Bowl.
Per Sports Media Watch, this year’s Winter Classic peaked at 1,400,000 viewers right before the Rose Bowl kicked off.
The 38% decline from last year’s game, which was between the Penguins and the Bruins, will result in this year’s Winter Classic not being the most-watched regular-season NHL game of the year for the first time in the history of the event, as the Blackhawks-Bruins averaged 1.43 million viewers on ESPN’s opening night. In addition, there is a solid chance that this Winter Classic will not even be the most-watched outdoor game this season, as ABC will be airing a doubleheader of Stadium Series games in February.
Even with the all-time low number from the Winter Classic, TNT is averaging 437,000 viewers across the 25 games they have aired this season, which is still up 17% overall and 24% in the 18-49 demo when compared to the same point last year.
Winter Classic Ratings History:
- 2008: 3,750,000, Penguins vs. Sabres, NBC
- 2009: 4,440,000, Red Wings vs. Blackhawks, NBC
- 2010: 3,680,000, Flyers vs. Bruins, NBC
- 2011: 4,500,000, Capitals vs. Penguins, NBC
- 2012: 3,730,000, Rangers vs. Flyers, NBC
- 2014: 4,404,000, Maple Leafs vs. Red Wings, NBC
- 2015: 3,470,000, Blackhawks vs. Capitals, NBC
- 2016: 2,780,000, Canadiens vs. Bruins, NBC
- 2017: 2,557,000, Blackhawks vs. Blues, NBC
- 2018: 2,480,000, Rangers vs. Sabres, NBC
- 2019: 2,970,000, Bruins vs. Blackhawks, NBC
- 2020: 1,970,000, Predators vs. Stars, NBC
- 2022: 1,360,000, Blues vs. Wild, TNT
- 2023: 1,780,000, Penguins vs. Bruins, TNT
- 2024: 1,110,000, Golden Knights vs. Kraken, TNT and truTV
So what’s the reasoning behind this? Why have the Winter Classic numbers dropped off so much? Some may resort to saying things such as airing the game on TNT or involving non-original six teams in the game are what caused this, but I would beg to differ. Sure, the move to cable most certainly lowers the viewership ceiling for the event somewhat, but TNT also just had the most-watched playoff game last year between the Panthers and Bruins in the opening round, which averaged 3.095 million viewers. There is still high viewership that can be obtained on cable channels, even in 2024.
The main reasoning behind the drop-off of the event is simple. It is the oversaturation of outdoor games in the NHL. For the first few years of the Winter Classic, it was the only outdoor game for fans and was treated as an annual event that hockey fans must watch. Then in 2014, the league announced the Stadium Series, and ever since that year, viewership has never been the same.
Now, we have entered a time where outdoor games are everywhere in the NHL, as there are two more still coming up this season. As season after season passes, we will continue to see the trajectory of the once-viewership-behemoth event, the Winter Classic.
