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In the grand scheme of things, 637,000 viewers nationwide is not a huge number for a cable channel with a significant level of distribution. Most things on TV not only beat that, but beat it a bit, and that sort of number doesn’t usually even make the top cable shows. However, the news that ESPN2 pulled that number for their coverage (produced by the NHL, but with ESPN numbers) of the NHL expansion draft for the Seattle Kraken on Wednesday night was certainly interesting, especially since the Most of the news around this draft was reported in advance, and also given that their mainnet coverage of the MLB game between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals drew fewer viewers. Here’s a comparison of Wednesday night sporting events from John Ourand from Sports business journal:
Sports television to note on Wednesdays:
AEW Dynamite on TNT: 1.148 million viewers
Primetime Oly programming on NBCSN: 773,000
PTI on ESPN: 648,000 viewers
ESPN2 Expansion NHL Draft: 637,000 viewers
Cubs-Cardinals on ESPN: 509,000 viewers– John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) July 22, 2021
On the negative side, this draft didn’t even pull any numbers from studio shows. Forgive the interruption (However, this airs on ESPN rather than ESPN2; they’re similar in distribution, but a lot of people turn on main ESPN first). He also didn’t pull the numbers from NBCSN’s early Olympic programming. On the plus side, he beat an MLB national game. And he drew more than the Vegas Golden Knights expansion draft five years ago (595,000 on NBCSN for a combined broadcast of this draft and the NHL Awards). And that’s a good sign for ESPN, as this is their first big NHL event that they are showing as part of their new contract.
And yes, as Ourand noted in a follow-up tweet, this Cubs-Cards game didn’t have a blackout on regional sports networks, so Cubs and Cardinals fans could still watch it on their RSNs. local. And most likely, so it probably mostly attracted the domestic audience that didn’t have these NSNs. But it’s always interesting to see an ESPN2 event outperform an ESPN event, especially when the ESPN event is a live game and the ESPN2 event is a draft one-team expansion (and where most of the information was). previously available to the public).
If ESPN vs. ESPN2 programming decisions were made strictly from the perspective of what they thought would attract more viewers, this result would work against that. That’s not quite the case here, as the MLB package on ESPN comes with some restrictions on where the games can be streamed. But it’s always interesting to see the expansion NHL Draft on ESPN2 overtake a live MLB game between two top teams.
This may also be further proof that draft “spoilers” don’t always damage notes as much. It’s been a debate for a long time, from the strong NFL pressure against tips to the more moderate approach of the NBA (which sees tips always happening with different language, and which hasn’t really led to obvious hearing losses).
In the case of this draft, personalities who don’t work for expansion draft rights holders Sportsnet (Canada) and ESPN (US) signaled many of their picks early on, Franck Seravalli (formerly of TSN, now of Daily Faceoff) and Pierre LeBrun (TSN / The Athletic) get a lot, other national figures get more, and local journalists get more. A largely full image was therefore available before the broadcast for those who wanted to find it. But that hasn’t stopped a significant number of people from watching this, and it perhaps shows that the league is against tips not always being so punchy.
[John Ourand on Twitter]
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