The Winter Classic Ratings...As Bad As The Blackhawks
Posted by ABRockNJock on January 3, 2025, 1:24 am
The ratings are in for Tuesday's NHL Winter Classic...And needless to say, they were as bad as the Blackhawks on the ice at Wrigley Field vs the Blues.
The game, which was played on New Year's Eve for the first time in the event's 16 year history, was hoping to avoid the expanded College Football Playoff. No dice.
The game, which aired on TNT & TruTV as well as streamed on Max, averaged just 920,000 viewers Tuesday afternoon. It was the smallest audience in the game's history and declined 16% from the previous low, last year's Golden Knights/Kraken matchup at T-Mobile Park in Seattle. Last year's "Winter Classic" averaged just 1.10 Million viewers, a 48% decline from the Penguins/Bruins' matchup 2 years earlier at Fenway Park in Boston.
In the host city, Chicago drew a 2.5 rating for this year's Winter Classic broadcast on TNT, down from a 5.8 rating from the 2009 matchup between the Blackhawks & Red Wings which aired on NBC.
It also didn't help that the Hawks lost a 6-4 game in the 2009 game to the Wings and a 6-2 game to the Blues in this year's Winter Classic.
Needless to say, Blackhawks' games are a hard watch these days and the lack of a carriage deal with Comcast/Xfinity doesn't help.
on January 3, 2025, 1:24 am