Lack of Canadian team hurting NHL ratings

Scott Moore is a fan of the first round.

There’s something about the sheer volume of games, said the president of Sportsnet and NHL properties for Rogers Communications. Whether it is the physicality of Los Angeles and San Jose, the skill and pace of Chicago and St. Louis (“the Western Conference series have been particularly great,” said Moore), or even the soap opera subplot of Tampa Bay and Detroit (“the story with Jonathan Drouin is interesting”) there is no shortage of entertaining hockey.

“The hockey’s been great,” said Moore. “The first round, I think, is some of the best hockey of the year.”

Unfortunately for Rogers, not everyone in Canada shares Moore’s opinion. Viewership for the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is down 58 per cent overall from where it was a year ago, with CBC’s numbers taking a 69 per cent hit.

None of this is particularly surprising.

Interest in the Toronto Blue Jays has been unusually high at this time of year, a carry-over from last year’s playoff appearance. And the Toronto Raptors, who finished with the second-best record in the Eastern Conference, are also stealing away viewers as they continue their firstround series.

But the obvious reason fewer fans care about hockey is that for the first time in 46 years there are no Canadian teams in the playoffs. Without a so-called home team to cheer for, most Canadians are tuning out.

“We’re in uncharted territory, right?” said Moore. “In any sport, you want a home team. You want the home markets to be involved.”

According to Moore, an average audience of 492,000 viewers tuned in for the first 20 games of the playoffs (April 13 through April 17) — a significant drop from the 1.306 million average viewers that watched the first 21 first-round games in 2015.

“The CBC numbers, because the CBC has historically had most of the Canadian teams, they’re down significantly,” he said. “Overall, the numbers are down 58 per cent, which on a percentage basis looks troubling, but when you look at the actual numbers for a U.S.-U.S. series, they’re about what we’d expect and actually a little higher of what we’d expect on Sportsnet.”