Stanley Cup Game 7 attracted near-record Canadian TV audience

The Edmonton Oilers’ improbable near-comeback attracted a near-record number of Canadian TV viewers for their Stanley Cup final Game 7 clash against the Florida Panthers.

Monday night’s showdown ranked as the second-most-watched NHL match in Canadian TV history on record, pulling in an average audience of 7.55-million viewers across Sportsnet, CBC-TV, and Citytv according to figures released Tuesday afternoon by Rogers Sports & Media.

That made it the most-watched broadcast in Sportsnet’s history since the channel’s launch in October, 1998, giving Rogers a rare blockbuster ratings win after the company bought the national NHL rights beginning with the 2014-15 season.

Only one other NHL match has attracted a larger English-language audience, the Vancouver Canucks’ Game 7 loss to the Boston Bruins in 2011, which was watched by an average of 8.76-million on CBC-TV’s Hockey Night in Canada.

Monday night’s matchup pulled in 7.66-million viewers in the U.S., making it the most-watched NHL game there since 2019 and the fifth most-watched Game 7 on record.

But the Canadian viewership for Monday night’s game was almost certainly significantly higher than the official figure released by Rogers, as it also aired across the country on U.S.-based affiliates of the ABC-TV network, which produced its own broadcast. That viewership is not counted by the Canadian-based ratings agency, Numeris.

The Canadian viewership is further muddied by the peculiarities of the domestic TV market.

A Sportsnet spokesperson told The Globe and Mail that the Sportsnet-produced broadcast which aired on Sportsnet and CBC-TV attracted an average audience of 6.5-million. An additional 1.05-million watched the game on Citytv, which ran the ABC-produced broadcast.

That viewership is included in the Canadian audience numbers as the channel is owned and controlled by Rogers. (The company’s deal with the NHL allows it to control and sell all of the advertising time across all of the channels, including the broadcast on the ABC stations that air in Canada.)

In a press release, Rogers added that the game reached 15-million Canadians on TV, which means that many viewers tuned in at some point during the broadcast. The company reached an additional 1.93-million viewers on its Sportsnet+ streaming service, which it said was also a record.

Rogers added that an average audience of 1.5-million viewers watched all games of the Stanley Cup playoffs, which ran April 20 to June 24.