NHL Winter Classic flops with viewers, fans
Blackhawks get pummeled at Wrigley Field and in the ratings as classic moved to New Year’s Eve
It’s fitting that the awful year in Chicago sports was topped off by the Blackhawks playing nothing resembling hockey in the NHL Winter Classic.
As first reported by Sports Media Watch, the NHL Winter Classic’s move a day earlier from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve did not pay dividends as the matchup between the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks drew the lowest ratings on record for the game, with just 920,000 viewers split between TruTV and TNT according to Nielsen, despite playing in one of the most iconic venues in the city, Wrigley Field and an awesome intermission performance by Chicago’s Chance The Rapper. The Blackhawks were blown out in a 6-2 loss to the Blues in a highly non-competitive and boring game.
The Winter Classic didn’t draw much interest in Chicago either, averaging a 2.5 household live-plus-same-day rating, down a whopping 79 percent from the 2009 Winter Classic (11.8) when the Blackhawks hosted the Detroit Red Wings at Wrigley in the first edition of the game on NBC, and down 57 percent when they last played in the Winter Classic, also on NBC in 2019. The game was also a flop with fans, as Yardbarker noted, “[I]t was a matchup that almost nobody wanted,” and most of those at Wrigley were aligned with the Blues.
Ratings for the Winter Classic have declined significantly for the last few years, accelerated after NBC lost the NHL rights and the Winter Classic moved to TNT in 2022 (no Winter Classic was held in 2021 due to Covid.) Last year’s Las Vegas Golden Knights-Seattle Kraken game at T-Mobile Field in Seattle drew only a little north of one million viewers. The hope was to use the Blackhawks’ Connor Bedard as a draw, but it proved futile given how bad the team is.
The NHL decided to move the Winter Classic to New Year’s Eve to avoid competition from the new College Football Playoff, which has been a ratings hit despite numerous games being blowouts. But the Classic still had to face competition from the Cheez-It Bowl airing on ABC featuring the Illinois Fighting Illini vs. South Carolina Gamecocks in a game that was even more contentious and heated than the hockey game was (the second-period fight between the Blues’ Schenn and Blackhawks’ Foligno doesn’t count.) The Illini game likely drew viewers away from the Classic in Chicago as it isn’t every year the team is in a major bowl game, even one named after a box of crackers.
Also not helping the ratings is the mere presence of the Blackhawks, who are a league-worst 26 points as of this writing and were already featured in seven outdoor games, in which the Blackhawks lost six of them. This is the second time the Blackhawks and Blues met in the Classic; they both played each other outdoors at Busch Stadium in St. Louis in 2017. The game drew 2.6 million viewers – then an all-time low and in Chicago drew a 7.4 rating, down 35 percent from the 2015 Classic when they played against the Washington Capitals at Nationals Park. Adding to the Blackhawks’ woes is the new Chicago Sports Network’s inability to reach a deal with Comcast for carriage, leaving a good portion of the Chicago market without access to the games.
Another factor is that outside of the Bears’ debacle against the Lions on Thanksgiving Day, Chicago’s pro teams haven’t been great national draws in recent years due to their poor performance. The much-criticized Thursday Night Football game between the Bears and the Seattle Seahawks on Amazon drew eleven million viewers as the NFL Lakefront Team lost 6-3, the third-lowest tally of the season.
Yet another is the move of the Classic to cable TV in an age of cord-cutting. With the Classic drawing low ratings and airing on TNT, it was a missed opportunity to showcase the city when Chicago’s image isn’t exactly shining on the world stage. This doesn’t bode well for the third edition of The Great Chicago Race this summer from downtown as the main race shifts from NBC to TNT thanks to a new NASCAR TV deal, with ratings for the second edition last year down 45 percent in the local ratings from the inaugural edition.
Given all the talk about NBA ratings in the last month, the NHL needs to be called out for its inability to draw viewership this season and these terrible scheduling decisions of national games. For instance, ABC is putting on a Rangers-Blackhawks game from the United Center this Sunday at 2 p.m. CT opposite the NFL and the last hour of the Bears-Packers game from Lambeau Field. Similar to the Winter Classic, this is another instance of two lesser teams receiving exposure on the national stage, and you have to question if the NHL is genuinely committed to marketing the game in the United States, as it has historically struggled to do so effectively.