ESPN/ABC earns most-watched Stanley Cup Final since 2019
· Yahoo Sports
Just hours after ESPN announced it had aired the most-watched NBA Finals since 1998, the network revealed the Stanley Cup Final set a pretty nice multiyear record itself.
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The 2026 Stanley Cup Final between the Carolina Hurricanes and Vegas Golden Knights averaged 5.2 million viewers across six games on ABC, making it the most-watched Stanley Cup Final series since 2019, when the St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins went seven games and averaged 5.33 million viewers across NBC and NBCSN.
The series more than doubled last year’s Stanley Cup Final viewership, which averaged 2.55 million viewers on the TNT Sports networks. Compared to the last time ABC aired the event in 2024, this year’s series saw a 25% increase (4.17 million viewers for Oilers-Panthers in a seven-game series). Hurricanes-Golden Knights is now the most-watched Stanley Cup Final to air as part of the NHL’s current media rights setup with ESPN and TNT Sports.
The Hurricanes’ series-clinching Game 6 on Sunday averaged 5.9 million viewers on ABC, peaking with 7.2 million viewers in the 10:45 p.m. ET quarter-hour, good for a 40% increase versus the last Stanley Cup Final Game 6 on ABC (4.24 million viewers).
All told, ABC set at least a seven-year high for each game of the series.
The series caps off a resoundingly successful season for the NHL from a viewership standpoint. The league posted multiyear highs for the regular season, throughout the playoffs, and now the Final.
Across 43 Stanley Cup Playoff games on the ESPN family of networks, ESPN averaged 2.2 million viewers, up 19% versus the last time it aired the Final in 2024.
No doubt, part of the increase can be attributed to the United States’ incredible gold-medal run in the Winter Olympics in February. The men’s hockey final averaged over 20 million viewers between NBC and Peacock despite an early-morning start time in North America, introducing the sport to an entirely new audience. That excitement seems to have translated to the NHL this season.
Additionally, this was the first Stanley Cup Final since 2022 to feature two American teams and air on ABC, which is the type of one-two punch the league needs in order to set ratings records under its current media rights agreement.
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