{"id":617539,"date":"2026-05-01T16:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/617539\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T16:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:18:08","slug":"local-nhl-viewership-up-big-thanks-to-streaming-gains-over-the-air-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/617539\/","title":{"rendered":"Local NHL viewership up big thanks to streaming gains, over-the-air shift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Local NHL broadcasts seemingly experienced similar growth to what was seen in the national numbers this regular season.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/04\/30\/fans-continue-to-find-nhl-local-games-amid-industry-shift-with-teams-up-15-during-regular-season\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a report by Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal<\/a>, local regular-season NHL telecasts grew by 15% versus last year thanks to a big uptick in streaming viewership and the transition of some teams to an over-the-air model. Per Karp, viewership from streaming shot up 51% year-over-year for local NHL broadcasts.<\/p>\n<p>Teams that saw the largest increases include the Chicago Blackhawks, which benefited from <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/local-networks\/chicago-sports-network-comcast-chsn-agreement.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Comcast finally picking up Chicago Sports Network<\/a> after a lengthy carriage negotiation, the Anaheim Ducks, which entered its second season on over-the-air television, and the Colorado Avalanche, which had its <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/local-networks\/altitude-comcast-reach-carriage-agreement-ending-six-year-blackout.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first full season distributed to Comcast customers<\/a> in many years.<\/p>\n<p>Playfly Sports CEO Craig Sloan told Sports Business Journal that most teams that have made the transition from traditional regional sports networks to over-the-air broadcast networks have seen over a 50% increase in viewership. \u201cFans are finding these teams no matter where they\u2019re ending up,\u201d Sloan said.<\/p>\n<p>The gains local broadcasts are seeing mirror what was seen on the national side of things this regular season. In total, <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/nhl\/regular-season-viewership-rebounds-14-year-high.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">national NHL viewership rocketed up 23%<\/a> versus last season, averaging 546,000 viewers across ESPN, ABC, and TNT\/truTV.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not exactly easy to parse out how much of the local gains can be attributed to new distribution models (i.e. streaming, over-the-air), versus hockey simply becoming a more popular viewership sport. Not to mention, a few percentage points in either direction could just be statistical noise.<\/p>\n<p>But one thing is certain, the NHL has some great forward momentum at the moment. Call it an Olympic bump, a Heated Rivalry bump, or just a hockey revival; the NHL will take it however it can get it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Local NHL broadcasts seemingly experienced similar growth to what was seen in the national numbers this regular season.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4830,4824,1223,385,99],"class_list":["post-617539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}