While the NHL media rights deal for 2021 While Disney and Warner Media have helped boost the league’s revenues and television exposure, that doesn’t solve a couple of major lingering issues: how to manage the quantification of Canadian teams’ audiences and the lasting impact of southern expansion on team recognition (for the casual fan) and parity.
Spectators continue to watch Canadian teams, especially the “original six” teams, such as the Montreal Canadiens or the Toronto Maple Leafs. But without the ability to attract American viewers or easily measure audiences abroad, the NHL’s television partners are not necessarily in favor of Canadian teams participating in the Stanley Cup Final.
As a result, the league may not be the same either, which is difficult when you have seven clubs in Canada. But the longer Canadian teams stay in the playoffs, the harder it is to truly quantify TV ratings, which hurts the NHL’s ability to negotiate the next media rights deal and the network partners’ ability to sell inventory that puts a precise value on audiences.
Beyond the question of the Canadian team, there is also the question of the league’s expansion and relocation to non-traditional and “newer” American markets.
This is not an exhaustive list of expansion and relocation destinations, but the NHL has added clubs in cities like San Jose, Anaheim, Tampa, Miami, Dallas, Raleigh, Nashville, Denver, Las Vegas and Seattle over the past 30 years, while losing a Phoenix team to Utah and an Atlanta team to Winnipeg.
That’s a significant number of teams (not counting others like Minnesota, Columbus, and Ottawa), and many of them have had significant success over the years. That’s a good sign for the league’s competitiveness in many ways. But to a more casual viewer, it can also make the playoffs seem like an even-keeled group of expansion teams, even though that’s not really the case (except for Vegas’ run of success since joining in 2017-18).
It’s a long way to go to get to these two issues facing off again in this year’s Stanley Cup Final, a matchup between the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers.
Now, I have to admit that I was a little upset by this game personally, as a Rangers fan, which certainly got me thinking about these questions to start: Is Florida (or another Southern state) vs. Canada an NHL nightmare? Recent Stanley Cup Notes can indicate it.
In 2021, an average of 2.4 American viewers per game watched the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Canadiens in five games. The 2007 Stanley Cup between the Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators averaged just 1.7 million American viewers per game. In 2006, the Carolina Hurricanes and Oilers averaged 2.8 million viewers the year after the infamous 2005 lockout ended that entire season.
From a US television perspective, Canada vs. Southern State TBD also seems to draw roughly the same audience as any matchup between two Southern teams. Florida vs. Vegas averaged 2.6 million viewers last year, and Tampa Bay vs. Dallas only drew 2.0 million in 2020. Even the Los Angeles Kings vs. New Jersey Devils series in 2012 only drew 3.0 million viewers per game, which is astonishing, despite the markets you assume it is in.
All of this isn’t to say that the NHL shouldn’t invest in expanding the game to new markets, that Canadian teams shouldn’t exist, or that teams in the South shouldn’t exist. To be fair, the 2004-05 lockout set the sport back a decade in the popular consciousness in the United States, and new markets and better television exposure were (and are) the easiest ways to regain that momentum.
The question, however, is what is the price of all this from a television perspective?
At this point, Florida State has been to five consecutive Stanley Cups (three for Tampa Bay, two for Florida, much to my dismay, again). Teams from Nevada, Texas, Tennessee, and California have also been to the Stanley Cup in the last decade.
Despite the ratings issues mentioned above, there is a long-term gain from the success and awareness of these non-traditional hockey markets in their respective markets, as it increases local interest in the sport, which leads to ticket sales, more kids watching and playing, etc. The ratings can potentially increase in the long run. And if more people care As far as hockey goes, then ultimately it’s a win for the NHL.
The question for the league is how it can better leverage these “non-traditional” and/or Canadian-heavy matchups (in this case, both) to ensure that its teams and players are marketed to a broader American audience so that they are more familiar with the NHL’s on-ice product and associated personalities.
A YouGov poll ranks Oilers’ Connor McDavid — the best hockey player — outside of America’s top 1,000 athletes Mark Cuban once said in 2019 that he couldn’t tell you who McDavid was or where he played. Hyperbole or not, it raises the point that the league has had a select few players (Sidney Crosby, Wayne Gretzky…) break through into the national consciousness in the way athletes from other Big 4 sports do. That’s a mistake, especially if you’re promoting parity and expansion as ways to grow the game.
While there is a chance this series could be a “nightmare” for the NHL from a ratings perspective, there is still work to be done now nationally to ensure that the next matchup between Canada and the team from the South doesn’t have to be a nightmare.
The NHL could work with brands and broadcast partners to highlight this star-studded series between McDavid, the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard and the Panthers’ Matthew Tkachuk, Alex Barkov and Sam Reinhart (among many other big names from both teams). Social videos should be filled with NHL sponsored videos featuring these athletes. Yet there have only been a handful (about 30) of sponsored videos featuring them in the last 30 days according to Tubular laboratories data, and many of them were local advertisements in Canada.
Social video may not be exactly television. But when you consider How Much Is YouTube Taking Over Watch Time in the US?Especially with younger viewers, this suggests that social video is exactly where the NHL should be positioning itself in hopes of creating a national conversation around its product that converts unaffiliated audiences into viewers. What is “just” likes and comments today could be the difference maker in the next media negotiation at the end of the decade. And as live sports take up an ever-larger share of the television landscape, hockey should want to position itself as best it can.
