It took around 5,566 more aerial miles than they probably would have preferred, but in securing their first Stanley Cup Final title, the Florida Panthers helped ABC bring its ratings deliveries to a comfortable cruising altitude.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, Game 7 of the back-and-forth series between the Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers averaged 7.66 million viewers Monday night, marking the biggest TV turnout for an NHL game since the deciding frame of the 2019 St. Louis Blues-Boston Bruins final. With an average draw of 8.72 million viewers, NBC five years ago laid claim to the most-watched NHL game since the dawn of the People Meter era (1987) and notched the fourth-biggest stateside draw in the league’s history.
The Panthers’ televised triumph now stands as the NHL’s fifth most-watched Game 7 in the last 60 years.
With its 2-1 win on home ice, Florida narrowly avoided becoming the first U.S. professional sports team since the 1942 Detroit Red Wings to blow a best-of-seven championship series after taking a 3-0 lead. Instead, the Panthers outlasted Connor McDavid & Co. and earned the privilege of having their names forever etched on the Cup. (Despite the losing effort, McDavid became only the sixth NHL player to win the Conn Smythe postseason MVP award after losing the Final.)
In Canada, where commercial breaks included a Boston Pizza ad exhorting the fan bases of the nation’s other six NHL franchises to pull for their rivals in Edmonton, Game 7 averaged 7.55 million viewers on the Rogers-owned Sportsnet. The last time a Canadian team hoisted the Cup was in 1993, when the Montreal Canadiens beat the Los Angeles Kings in five.
All told, the series averaged 4.17 million viewers on ABC, marking a 59% improvement versus last year’s little-watched Panthers-Vegas Golden Knights set on the Warner Bros. Discovery cable nets TNT/TBS/truTV. That five-game series averaged 2.63 million viewers, which marked the fourth-lowest deliveries of the 21st century behind only the 2007 Ottawa Senators-Anaheim Ducks Final (1.74 million) and the two pandemic-blighted sets in 2020 and 2021.
For all that, this year’s single-market series finished down 9% compared to ABC’s coverage of the 2022 Tampa Bay Lightning-Colorado Avalanche final. Along with gifting hockey fans with a white knuckler of a series, the Panthers and Oilers also helped Disney get out of a jam on the advertising side of the ledger. After the five-game NBA Finals came up short, the prolonged NHL series helped ABC whip up an estimated $24.1 million in commercial revenue.
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