It’s All About Entertaining, Great Performance By Avalanche On & Off the Ice

New Champion is One of the Many Things That Changed This NHL Playoffs

It finally happened. After years of being disappointed by early playoff exits, the Colorado Avalanche have finally won their third Stanley Cup. They had to push themselves to the limit to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning team who fought to the very last minute to have a chance at their third Stanley Cup in a row.

Although a new Stanley Cup champion was crowned, it’s not the only change in this year’s Finals. After securing a major broadcasting agreement with ESPN before the start of this season, fans could expect to see certain improvements in the presentation and marketing for the Playoffs. To start, the NHL changed the design of the Stanley Cup Playoffs logo for the first time since 2007. The new logo represents the new minimalistic style that is becoming increasingly common in sports logos. Next, the NHL also added more banners to the trophy presentation ceremony. Similar to NFL, NBA, and European Soccer presentations, the NHL included Stanley Cup banners and small firework displays while handing out the trophy to Avalanche captain, Gabriel Landeskog. While the fireworks were not new this year, improvements to the presentation ceremony are always welcome since it feels as though the NHL falls behind when celebrating the biggest trophy in North American sports. Many more small presentation details were added throughout the series like new graphics to show player stats and improved real-time data provided by AWS such as faceoff win probabilities. Although these changes may seem small, it improves the quality of presentation in which the NHL has been seriously falling behind other major sports.

Although several design changes were added to this year’s Finals, did it help increase viewership? The 2022 Stanley Cup Finals averaged 4.59 million viewers on the American network ABC. For comparison, the 2022 NBA Finals averaged 12.4 million on the same network. The NHL’s viewership was actually up 82% from the 2021 Finals average of 2.52 million on NBC, however, the 2022 Finals remained the second-least viewed Finals since 2012 if you remove Covid-19-affected seasons. Although the viewership numbers paint a complicated picture, the best statistic to focus on is that the NHL has increased viewership in the Finals in three consecutive seasons since the start of the pandemic. This shows that although ESPN has helped to improve the overall design and marketability of the NHL, there is still a long way to go if the NHL wants to truly compete with other major North American sports.

July 1, 2022 - Issue 45 of The Sport Marketeer