The National Hockey League (NHL) will be disappointed to learn that its 2022/2023 regular season viewership has gone down by 2% on Disney-owned networks ABC and ESPN.
Across the 50 hockey broadcasts on those two networks, an average of 583,000 viewers tuned in, down 2% on the results from the 2021/22 season.
It has been projected that this downturn could be explained by the increased number of games Disney slated for broadcast this season compared to last. Across ABC and ESPN, 50 regular season NHL games were aired, 22 more than the previous season. Several of these games clashed with the National Football League (NFL), a battle that hockey is just never going to win.
However, interestingly ABC averaged roughly 1m viewers per game for the coverage it provided, representing a huge 19% rise on its figures from last season.
NHL has also been present on TNT during the regular season, and it was on that network that 1.78m viewers watched the Winter Classic between the Boston Bruins and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Is the NHL losing popularity in the US?
While some experts may rightly point to the clashes with the NFL when placing the blame for this slight decrease in average viewership, the more cynical eye may see it as a representation of a continued dip in popularity for hockey stateside.
According to a Gallup poll from 2017, soccer has now overtaken hockey as the fourth most popular sport in the US, with 7% of adults responding that soccer was their favourite sport, even beginning to rival baseball (9%) and basketball (11%).
NFL Football was way ahead with 37% of adults still calling it their favourite sport.
Ice hockey didn't make the top four.
Despite historically being one of the four most- watched sports in the US, it seems that the popularity of the NHL is starting to wane. With more and more young people favouring soccer, and more people with ties to other countries outside the US following the global sport, soccer seems destined to cement that fourth spot and push hockey into fifth, if it hasn't already.
Networks will hope they can see a big increase in viewership across the NHL playoffs run, which started on Monday and will run until June 3rd when the Stanley Cup final takes place.
Fans will be able to tune in across ABC, ESPN and TNT to catch plenty of the action.
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