Will Canadians watch summer playoffs?
Will fans watch six hockey games a day from behind closed doors in two empty-seat venues with staggered start times of 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., from two different time zones on television every day through July and August? Even in Canada?
What might Stanley Cup playoff TV numbers look like in July and August?
Those are big questions in the U.S., where NHL rights-holder NBC is looking to replace endless hours of postponed Tokyo Olympic Games coverage with a salvaged NHL season.
Should the NHL return, particularly with a two-hub concept featuring 12 teams in each, it’s debatable what the numbers might be like even in hockeycrazy Canada.
Normally, the highlight of the hockey season in Canada is the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, with eight series going at once and everybody alive in their hockey pools.
But that would have concluded a couple of weeks ago.
Interest, with the departure of eliminated teams and the arrival of summer, normally drops dramatically until spiking again for the Stanley Cup final.
We’re now closing in on June and there’s still no set plan in place for rebooting the season. That first round might not be played until mid- or even late July.
Would this year’s Stanley Cup be viewed instead as the COVID Cup?
One thing we discovered this past weekend: After an endless number of distant replays of various games telecast in a multitude of sports, even a North American audience that wouldn’t normally watch a soccer game from Germany was willing to embrace something live from somewhere.
OK, in the case of one game, maybe it wasn’t some soccer game from somewhere because of Canada’s Alphonso Davies playing for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga.
The Bundesliga fixtures reached 632,000 Canadian viewers on Sportnet.
“The Bayern Munich-versus-Berlin Union match on Sunday was the most watched Bundesliga matchup on Sportsnet to date,” the network offered in response to my request.
Hardly Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, but …
Sportsnet, you’d have to figure, considering all the money it spent to acquire NHL rights, might be one of the most interested observers of all looking ahead to a return of the league to complete its season and proceed to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
There was a lot of focus on the Bundesliga around the sports world that wasn’t exclusively about Edmonton’s Davies. It was about a league returning to action ahead of the other four major soccer leagues in Europe, while the NHL, NBA, NFL and MLB watch with significant interest in planning similar returns in North America.
Sky Deutschland’s telecasts attracted record numbers.
In Great Britain, the TV numbers increased five-fold from the average Bundesliga games.
In the U.S., Fox Sports reported the Borussia Dortmond- Schalke broadcast drew a gained audience of 725 per cent more than it’s last Bundesliga broadcast.
But this is May. And we’re talking hockey in July and August.
We’re closing in on June and while progress is being reported, there’s still no plan in place.
You figure they are going to have to produce one by June 1. Time is becoming a factor.
Will people, even in Canada, want to sit inside watching hockey games on TV in July and August unless their Canadiens, Maple Leafs, Jets, Oilers, Flames or Canucks are involved?