News Article: Playoff Viewership tanking

[rojac]

I'm not quite dinosaur aged, relatively speaking on this site, but getting up there. Up until this winter my wife and I still had a cable package basically to watch sports. We live in Canada. I like NHL, NFL and F1. She's a curler. So we kept our cable package to have access to all the TSNs and Sportsnets. Finally decided to cut the cord and just pick up the Sportsnet+ app, and thank God we did. I couldn't believe that the app has access to every single NHL game. It's basically like having NHL Center Ice or whatever the league's product is called. Would always get out of town games blacked out on cable. Not on the app. It's night and day and wish I made the switch earlier (not that I really needed to watch more of my shitty Rangers games this year).

Technically, you have the Sportsnet+ Premium package if you are getting all the games. And to be accurate, it does not have have all NHL games. The following games are not available on Sportsnet+ Premium:

Amazon Prime Monday night games
TSN regional games for WIN, TOR, OTT, and MON if you live in that team's TV territory.

 

[John Mandalorian]

Buying a $85 cable package through a streaming service is still cable. That’s all sling is.

I knew where you were coming from. It’s just not worth derailing all your solid points over splitting hairs on one particular thing.

 

[FlyguyOX]

The game times and scheduling are horrible.

Caps-Habs is on at 7 tonight and the interesting games don't start until 9:30??

Canes-NJ started at 6(!) yesterday??

Games have never been easier to watch, but the scheduling is nonsensical. They had MIN-VGK start at 10PM on a Sunday?!?

 

[GMR]

There's also the fact that there are five Canadian teams in the playoffs. That will generally reduce the ratings for a series because you're drawing only from one US market (or zero in the case of TOR-OTT) instead of two.

Canadian teams and warm weather cities. Bettman probably doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

But yeah, warm weather U.S. cities and Canadian teams aren't going to result in many viewers in the United States. The big markets drive the most viewers, unless it's football which is watched by all.

 

[WaitingForThatCab]

All the younger fans stream it illegally how do they account for that?

ding ding ding, we have a winner

 

[Rec T]

We have ESPN+ but no cable package & zero desire to jump through even more hoops to watch games that were one click away all season.

Or

Two clicks & hoisting the Jolly Roger for the same quality broadcast.

It really isn't that difficult a choice. I don't mind paying for my programming, but I'm not going to pay more than I already am just because the NHL has their head up their third point of contact.

 

[barriers]

Technically, you have the Sportsnet+ Premium package if you are getting all the games. And to be accurate, it does not have have all NHL games. The following games are not available on Sportsnet+ Premium:

Amazon Prime Monday night games
TSN regional games for WIN, TOR, OTT, and MON if you live in that team's TV territory.

Wait, are you telling me there is a 'Sportsnet+ Plus' package, and even that doesn't get you all the games?

 

[Mr Positive]

I'm guessing they aren't measuring correctly

 

[Grifter3511]

Technically, you have the Sportsnet+ Premium package if you are getting all the games. And to be accurate, it does not have have all NHL games. The following games are not available on Sportsnet+ Premium:

Amazon Prime Monday night games
TSN regional games for WIN, TOR, OTT, and MON if you live in that team's TV territory.

Fair enough. So everything except Amazon prime games. 1291 out of 1312 games.

 

[stats1]

I am slightly disappointed in the games so far. I was looking forward to the send vs Toronto games, but they haven't been as intense as I would have expected. Plenty of time to ramp up. We'll see.

Game 1 wasn’t ramped up? I’m not sure what you guys are expecting tbh.

 

[Lonewolfe2015]

ESPN needs to keep it on ESPN+. People with ESPN + might be saying no when being asked to jump through hoops.

The knights who say ni... The other night they punted the Avs game to ESPN U after I had signed up for Sling TV to get ESPN for the playoffs and the first thing they do is put it on a channel I didn't get.

It's 10000% the terrible broadcasting decisions the league is making. NHL Network, TNT/HBO, ESPN, ESPN+.... There's too many places to watch games fracturing it. And once you miss out, your desire to keep trying drops significantly. They literally had me watching the Pro Bowl this year because I couldn't watch hockey with my existing 3 subscriptions.

 

[elmaco]

All the younger fans stream it illegally how do they account for that?

Can you blame them when it's actually more convenient just to fire up a stream, takes 5 seconds, compared to all those shitty pay per view services.

 

[The Gr8 Dane]

Can you blame them when it's actually more convenient just to fire up a stream, takes 5 seconds, compared to all those shitty pay per view services.

Nope I don't blame them at all , I am also a pirate. Not to mention you can watch multiple different feeds and choose whatever broadcast you prefer

 

[Mr Nogatco]

No Boston, no Chicago, no Rangers, no Flyers this post season.

Nailed it. Pittsburgh has also always a draw despite being a small market.

 

[WTFMAN99]

I don't pay for the privilege to watch anymore because of stupid geo locked feeds.

Also, the officiating / DoS makes it incredibly frustrating at times.

 

[Mr Nogatco]

Can you blame them when it's actually more convenient just to fire up a stream, takes 5 seconds, compared to all those shitty pay per view services.

Didn’t a lot of the major streaming services seriously clamp down on account sharing in the last year? That’s probably a major factor too

 

[Kobe Armstrong]

Yeah it's impossible to know how accurate streaming numbers are now

If they put the Super Bowl on YouTube for free it would destroy previous records

 

[Summer Rose]

Didn’t a lot of the major streaming services seriously clamp down on account sharing in the last year? That’s probably a major factor too

I have YouTube TV for the playoffs. They actually let you do a "family share" which I did for my husband so he can log in with his own Google account to watch it.

Of course, we're always logged in from the same IP address since obviously we live together. I'm not sure what would happen if we ever attempted to log in at the same time from different locations.

 

[Oilslick941611]

I’m watching way less. I’ve only watched 1 full game so far and it was game 1 of LA and EDM.

I’m in Ottawa and my team is the oilers, but they play so damn late in LA, and the Vegas game last night started at 11pm. Some games started at 6pm… its all over the place.

 

[Ghost of Murph]

I got ESPN+ this season for the first time. I don't have any other cable or streaming services. All I watch on TV is hockey, so it makes no sense to pay a high amount for only watching hockey.

Other than being blacked out from two teams, both more than 4 hours drive from me, and learning that I get no playoff games, I've liked ESPN+ and will go that route again next season.

For many years up until I cut the cord a decade ago I bought Center Ice along with dish service. There really needs to be a streaming Center Ice plan here in the US. I would pay for it in a heartbeat if it included the regular season and playoffs.

As it stands, I am trying to pay for the regular season via ESPN+, but using other methods to watch the playoffs. I'm a hardcore hockey fan who is willing to pay money for a fair deal. The league doesn't give me that option, so they are leaving money on the table and missing out on better ratings in my case and apparently many others

 

[McFlash97]

Next year's Carolina vs Devils or Edmonton vs Kings will bring the views back up!

The logic of this post is comparable to a caterpillar solving a quadratic equation. I bet if you look at the ratings Oil-Kings probably in the top 3 or 4 despite playing for the 4th time.

 

[voyageur]

Hey, what about the Red Wings?

It's been so long now. Detroit and Chicago in the West were probably the glory days for national broadcasts. Now the Central is largely a Mountain/Pacific time zone for major eastern networks.

This year's Eastern Conference teams, outside of Washington, don't have the same kind of national fanbases. The Devils might have had more allure with Jack Hughes.

For Rogers though having their bread and butter looking at multiple rounds, while alternating the two biggest hockey markets in Canada prime time should see their numbers going up.

 

[Lacaar]

Game 1 and round 1 of the playoffs always seemed to me to produce some exciting hockey.

I turned on the Colorado vs Dallas game 1 on Saturday night looking forward to what I thought would be a great game. It was a snooze fest of epic proportions. The only goals scored were by fortune and honestly after watching that abomination of entertainment you can't be surprised the only goals scored were flukes.

This isn't intended to pick on the teams at all. They probably played great! just like their coaches want. And that's the problem. Hockey played to todays coaching standards and strategies is snooze fest hockey where the only goals are deflections of some sort.

Todays game is absolutely stifling 5 on 5. Goals may not be down for all I know. But I'd be shocked if the types of goals hadn't changed. This game suffers from dumb luck being way to prevalent imo.

 

[Summer Rose]

I got ESPN+ this season for the first time. I don't have any other cable or streaming services. All I watch on TV is hockey, so it makes no sense to pay a high amount for only watching hockey.

Other than being blacked out from two teams, both more than 4 hours drive from me, and learning that I get no playoff games, I've liked ESPN+ and will go that route again next season.

For many years up until I cut the cord a decade ago I bought Center Ice along with dish service. There really needs to be a streaming Center Ice plan here in the US. I would pay for it in a heartbeat if it included the regular season and playoffs.

As it stands, I am trying to pay for the regular season via ESPN+, but using other methods to watch the playoffs. I'm a hardcore hockey fan who is willing to pay money for a fair deal. The league doesn't give me that option, so they are leaving money on the table and missing out on better ratings in my case and apparently many others

I agree with you about ESPN Plus. I'm a fan of an out of market team (Utah) and I can get the vast majority of their games with it, and it's not that expensive. That alone makes it quite good value for the money. The hoops I have to jump through to be able to watch my team when they're on a "national only" game is really stupid though, and since it's Utah they're not featured very often anyway.

Biting the bullet for YouTube TV for the playoffs is... if I really think about it, not exactly great value. I will end up having paid for three months of it (I got it a month early in order to watch some college hockey as well).

 

[Oilslick941611]

The logic of this post is comparable to a caterpillar solving a quadratic equation. I bet if you look at the ratings Oil-Kings probably in the top 3 or 4 despite playing for the 4th time.

By virtue of it being a Canadian team with a large fan base sure, but I know I can barely bring myself to keep watching these two teams play, and I’m an oiler fan. There’s no rivalry here.