After posting the worst viewership under its current broadcast deals last season, the NHL had a major rebound in 2025-26.<\/p>\n
NHL viewership averaged 546,000 viewers across ESPN, ABC, and TNT\/truTV this regular season, the league\u2019s best mark since the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, per viewership data from Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal<\/a>. Incredibly, the league boosted its average audience by more than 100,000 viewers compared to last season, when the league averaged 445,000 viewers<\/a> for its regular-season games. All told, NHL viewership rocketed up 23% versus 2024-25.<\/p>\n The biggest gains came from ESPN, which posted a 48% year-over-year increase and averaged 602,000 viewers across 38 games. ABC was not far behind on a percentage basis. The broadcast network averaged 1.1 million viewers across 16 telecasts, up 33% from last season. TNT Sports notched a 21% increase itself, averaging 381,000 viewers across 72 games (including truTV simulcasts).<\/p>\n One would be remiss not to mention the NHL could be taking full advantage of an Olympic Games in which the United States took home gold for the first time since the Miracle on Ice in 1980. Typically, as we reported at the time<\/a>, such international events do not usually translate to significantly higher viewership for a sport\u2019s domestic league. However, there\u2019s reason to believe the Americans\u2019 Olympic win has fueled at least some of the NHL\u2019s higher viewership this season.<\/p>\n Per Sports Business Journal, TNT\u2019s post-Olympics games averaged 453,000 viewers, a mark that is 47% better than the network\u2019s average following last year\u2019s popular 4 Nations Face-Off event, which did not produce any noticeable audience increase.<\/p>\n It is important to note that this is the first NHL regular season to be measured under Nielsen\u2019s new Big Data + Panel methodology. It\u2019s also the first full season measured entirely after Nielsen expanded out-of-home viewing across the entire continental United States. (Last season, only games played after the second weekend in February included the additional out-of-home numbers.)<\/p>\n Regardless, the NHL\u2019s growth this season is far beyond what could be attributed solely to Nielsen\u2019s methodological changes.<\/p>\n