Ratings are down, Sportsnet is up
A new national hockey broadcaster. More games on more channels than ever. Fewer regional blackouts. A younger, hipper host. Fancy new studio.
It was supposed to add up to more viewers for Rogers, in the first year of a 12-year, $5.2-billion deal with the NHL to be Canada’s hockey network. It has. And it hasn’t. More people are watching Sportsnet than ever before, and the network has closed the gap on TSN as the country’s No. 1 sports property. But television ratings for hockey — despite all Rogers’ bells and whistles — are down.
“It was supposed to be a hockey lovers’ dream,” said McMaster University professor Marvin Ryder. “Whatever they’ve done does not seem to resonate. That’s the concern.”
Hockey Night In Canada is down one per cent for the 7 p.m. game on Saturday night, and down 16 per cent for the late game.
Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey is down three per cent from the TSN numbers on Wednesdays last year.
When opening night is excluded — it was on a Tuesday last year on TSN — the Wednesday audiences for Canadian teams are down 12 per.
The regional Toronto Maple Leafs games on Sportsnet Ontario are down a whopping 29 per cent.
One bright spot: Rogers Hometown Hockey on Sunday nights, a new brand, is drawing a bigger audience to CITY-TV than last year’s non-hockey broadcasts. Viewership there is 567,000 viewers in the 7 -11 p.m. network prime-time slot on City, up by 19 per cent.
Rogers is not concerned with the numbers.
“For the last 11 months, our Sportsnet ratings are up 16 per cent overall in an environment where almost everybody’s ratings are down on both sides of the border,” said Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet and NHL Properties for Rogers. Our main competitor is down about five per cent.”
Sportsnet is within 7,000 viewers on an average daily basis of tying TSN. Sportsnet draws 158,900 viewers, TSN 165,700, Moore said. “I would expect and hope that by the end of April with playoffs and Blue Jays, we will have completely closed that gap and potentially overtaken our competitor.”
Still, fewer people are watching hockey on TV than before.
“It has nothing to do with the broadcasts,” said Ryder. “The sportscasters are not doing anything wrong. I just think you’ve got a younger group of people who are saying over and over again they just don’t have the time or the patience to sit in front of a TV at a specifically scheduled time and sit there for three hours and watch it all.”
They following along in snippets, on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and tune in when they want, said Ryder.
That, too, is Moore’s point. Sure, he wishes the ratings were better, but the rights deal is about more than television.
“If this were the 1970s, (TV ratings) would clearly be the only metric that mattered,” he said.
Moore said Rogers saw a 400 per cent increase in consumption for Rogers NHL GameCentre Live, by which almost all games were available on tablets and mobile phones. “The Pittsburgh-Ottawa game the other night — 92,000 people watched it on GameCentre Live,” said Moore. “Consider the impact of that to a telecom company and the data that it entails.”
Part of the ratings issue was the outright collapse of the Maple Leafs. Hockey’s largest fan base tuned out.
“Would we have done it more if the Leafs were ratings-better? Of course,” said Moore. “But this is a 12-year deal and over the course of the 12 years I’m relatively positive at least one of those years the Leafs will be in the playoffs.”
Rogers can at least count on an increase of Canadian teams in the playoffs, from one last season to four or five this year.
“I have every finger, every toe crossed,” said Moore. “It would be really terrific for us. No question there is an upside from a viewership standpoint. Definitely an upside from a financial standpoint.”