{"id":683508,"date":"2026-06-04T08:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/683508\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T08:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:05:10","slug":"stanley-cup-viewership-remains-at-high-entering-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/683508\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanley Cup viewership remains at high entering Final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite lacking the usual marquee teams, the Stanley Cup playoff viewership momentum carried into a fairly lopsided conference final round.<\/p>\n

The NHL Stanley Cup Final was averaging 1.5 million viewers across ESPN\/ABC and TNT Sports through the conference finals, up 59% from last year and the highest average on record at this point of the postseason (dates back to 1994). Viewership is up 13% from the previous high set in 1996.<\/p>\n

Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with \u201cBig Data\u201d from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will generally skew historical comparisons, particularly to years prior to 2020.<\/p>\n

Despite neither series extending to a sixth game, both conference finals posted double-digit gains in viewership. As previously noted<\/a>, the four-game Golden Knights-Avalanche Western Conference Final averaged 2.2 million \u2014 up 44% from last year\u2019s five-game Oilers-Stars series on the network and the most-watched Western Conference Final since 2015.<\/p>\n

The most-watched game of the series \u2014 and the conference finals as a whole \u2014 was Game 3 on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, which drew a 1.0 rating and 2.48 million on ESPN.<\/p>\n

The five-game Hurricanes-Canadiens Eastern Conference Final averaged 2.0 million viewers on TNT Sports, up 41% from last year\u2019s four-game Panthers-Hurricanes series (1.4M). While not a multi-year high for the event \u2014 Rangers-Panthers averaged 2.29 million on ESPN\/ABC two years ago \u2014 it was the most-watched conference final on TNT Sports since it acquired NHL rights in 2021.<\/p>\n

The most-watched game of the series was Game 3 on Memorial Day, which drew 2.3 million \u2014 up 74% from last year and the largest audience for a conference final game on TNT Sports. The series wrapped up with 2.1 million for Game 4 last Wednesday (+30%) and 1.8 million for Game 5 last Friday (+15%).<\/p>\n

The top game of the playoffs remains Canadiens-Sabres Game 7 in the second round at just shy of 3.0 million viewers. Owing to their series against Buffalo, two Game 7s, and a trip to the conference finals, Montreal ended up playing in four of the top eight games prior to the Cup Final \u2014 the most of any team. That is despite Montreal occupying a Canadian market that does not count toward U.S. viewership.<\/p>\n

Figures for Tuesday\u2019s Golden Knights-Hurricanes Stanley Cup Final Game 1 will not be out until Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite lacking the usual marquee teams, the Stanley Cup playoff viewership momentum carried into a fairly lopsided conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[297389,283428,297390,385,74828,74829,99,283430,297391],"class_list":["post-683508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-avalanche-tv-ratings","tag-canadiens-tv-ratings","tag-hurricanes-tv-ratings","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-on-espn","tag-nhl-on-tnt","tag-sports","tag-stanley-cup-playoff-ratings","tag-vegas-golden-knights-ratings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683508","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=683508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}