Stanley Cup Finals On American Television
NBC Will Not Broadcast Two Games Of Championship Series
Jun 2, 2009
Hockey is one of the major team sports in North America.
Yet, it is by far the least popular of the four, at least in the United States.
In Canada, hockey is the national game, the place where the sport was invented.
But not in the USA, where other team sports including baseball and football, plus auto racing that includes NASCAR, dwarf the NHL.
It doesn’t even matter that the NHL has a team in most major US cities.
The Stanley Cup playoffs and the rest of the National Hockey League’s postseason will be on free over-the-air national television on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
But south of the border, the third game of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals will be on the cable television channel, Versus, which is on most, but not all cable systems or satellite providers.
National Hockey League on NBC
The NHL caught a break when the semifinal round of its playoffs ended earlier than anticipated.
In order to get a jump on the National Basketball Association Finals, which begins Thursday, June 4, the NHL moved up the Stanley Cup Finals schedule to Friday and Sunday, May 30 and 31.
Both the Penguins and Red Wings didn’t like the move.
The players wanted a bit of a rest and time to regroup after a long hard fought 82-game regular season and three rounds of playoffs.
The teams especially didn’t like playing on back to back days,
However, the league had to take advantage of the network television opportunity in the United States.
Both the first and second games of the finals were on prime time television on the NBC network.
That major network will only show weekend games of the NHL, but not during the week because its regular prime-time lineup is more valuable.
The league had to bend to take advantage of the exposure.
The players did what was good for the league.
National Hockey League on Versus
But games three and four will be on Versus with its limited exposure.
The good news for the league is, if the series goes beyond four games, NBC will televise the rest of the series in prime-time.
There was a time when the Stanley Cup Finals were always on American prime-time television. That was before ESPN and other cable outlets came into existence in the 1980’s.
The NHL will take whatever exposure it can get. It doesn’t make as much money as the other sports. Most of the team’s revenue comes from the gate and local media outlets.
Enjoy what is left of the Stanley Cup Finals. The NHL is praying it doesn’t end too soon.
