Over the past few years, the viewership of the NHL’s annual Winter Classic game has dropped drastically.
The Winter Classic is an outdoor game usually played on an ice rink built atop a baseball or football field. Every year right after Christmas, two teams picked by the NHL face off against each other
Before 2020, the viewership of the game always broke 2 million. Since then, it has not gone above a million.
It is unknown exactly why this is, but there could be several factors playing into it.
The Winter Classic used to focus a lot more on rivalries. For example, the iconic face off between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals in the 2011 Winter Classic drew 4.5 million viewers, the most of all the Winter Classic games.
It featured the two best players in the league at the time, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, in a showdown highly anticipated among fans across the league.
And there lies the problem: The Winter Classic does not try to appeal to all NHL fans anymore. If someone is a casual fan of hockey, their interest will most likely be attracted to a popular rivalry, not a game between two random teams.
Last year’s game featured the Seattle Kraken against the Vegas Golden Knights. Those two teams have no real rivalry and have barely ever played each other. Neither team had an extremely popular player who would have attracted fans outside of the teams’ own fanbases.
Overall, it was a boring game, with the Kraken winning 3-0 against the Knights. This game had a record-low viewership of 1.1 million.
Another thing to take into account is how outdoor NHL games are not really that unique anymore. The NHL has had a Stadium Series, which is basically the same concept just under a different name, as well as a handful of similar kinds of games.
The broadcast rights to the Winter Classic have been transferred to Warner Bros. from NBC. This means the game will be broadcast on TNT, which affects some fans’ ability to watch the game. The game also suffers from poor and lackluster marketing.
Now, the Winter Classic is just another game.
This year’s game, featuring the rivals the Chicago Blackhawks and the St. Louis Blues, will take place on New Year’s Eve and feature performances from Chance the Rapper and the Smashing Pumpkins. The date and the inclusion of musical acts are new concepts and are being used in an attempt to boost viewership.
With these new concepts and proper marketing strategies, this game could be a success for the NHL. But only time will tell.
