Gary Bettman and the NHL Hit a New Low as Worrying Viewership Numbers Release Publicly

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Tyler Ball
February 5, 2025  (3:50 PM)

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Photo credit: The Hockey Writers

Today a new report has released that has revealed the NHL is struggling mightily with television viewership.

The NHL announced a deal for United States viewership with ESPN and TNT back in 2021 to be the exclusive networks of the NHL in America.

After the initial switch for the NHL viewership seemed to spike particularly on TNT broadcasts of games.

This was expected to continue growing on both networks as each one built out its hockey coverage and had the ability to improve the product.

Unfortunately new data provided has shown that the opposite has occurred this season as viewership on both ESPN and TNT broadcasts are down dramatically.

According to a new report from Braylon Breeze the NHL has seen severe drops in viewership across all major networks in the United States.

ESPN and ABC have dropped a combined 31% in views with ESPN 2 hardly even being used to show games.

For TNT the drop is just as worrying as they are also down 24% across all games shown on the network.

This steep drop off is a worrying sign of potential things to come for the NHL as this agreement with ESPN and TNT goes all the way until the end of the 2028-29 season.

If views continue to drop off and ESPN along with TNT continue to neglect the product especially with other sports being broadcast on both networks things could get ugly fast.

The NHL was hoping this deal would potentially springboard the sport to new heights but seems to have stalled out all the same as it did with NBC.

Now it will be on Gary Bettman and the NHL to put a plan together with the networks to get things back on track.

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FÉVRIER 5   |   306 ANSWERS Gary Bettman and the NHL Hit a New Low as Worrying Viewership Numbers Release Publicly Do you think the NHL made a mistake giving their television rights to ESPN and TNT?
Yes	244	79.7 %
No	62	20.3 %
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