Airing on New Year’s Eve this year, the NHL Winter Classic between the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks averaged its smallest audience in the history of the game. The matchup, emanating from Wrigley Field in Chicago, drew 920,000 viewers on TNT and truTV, marking a 16% year-over-year decline, according to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch. Peak viewership for the matchup finished at 1.2 million viewers in the 6:45 p.m. EST quarter-hour.
Last year’s NHL Winter Classic between the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken from T-Mobile Park averaged 1.1 million viewers, which represented the previous low point for the game. Yet that game and other iterations of the NHL Winter Classic generally aired on the first two days in January, but it reportedly moved to New Year’s Eve to avoid games within the expanded College Football Playoff.
The game accrued a 2.5 rating on linear television in the Chicago marketplace, down from the 5.8 mark registered by the locale when the team appeared in the 2019 version of the game airing on NBC. NHL Winter Classic games had averaged at least 3 million viewers in every year from 2008 to 2015, but over the last decade, the ratings have been on the decline. Over the last four seasons, TNT Sports has presented the game on its cable television network and has also made the matchup available to stream on Max.
Kenny Albert, Eddie Olczyk, Brian Boucher, Darren Pang and Jackie Redmond took part in the live game broadcast of the NHL Winter Classic airing on TNT and Max. The NHL DataCast concurrently presented the game on truTV and Max with John Forslund, Colby Armstrong and Mike Kelly on the call. TNT Sports also aired its NHL in ASL broadcast on Max with Jason Altmann and Noah Blankenship. The studio team, consisting of Liam McHugh, Paul Bissonnette, Anson Carter and Wayne Gretzky, broadcast live outside of Wrigley Field before and after the game on TNT, truTV and Max.
Warner Bros. Discovery is currently in the midst of a seven-year media rights contract with the NHL for a reported $225 million per year. The TNT Sports division will broadcast the Stanley Cup Final to conclude the 2024-25 season, marking the second time the game will be presented by the media conglomerate. Games throughout the 2023 Stanley Cup Final between the Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers aired on TNT, TBS and truTV (excluding Game 5, which was on TNT and truTV) and averaged 2.6 million viewers.
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