Home › Features › Ratings predictions › Is retreating from New Year’s Day the right move for the Winter Classic?
Dec 30, 2024; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Chicago Blackhawks left wing Tyler Bertuzzi (59) shoots on goaltender Petr Mrazek (34) during a practice session prior to the Winter Classic ice hockey game against the St. Louis Blues at Wrigley Field. Mandatory Credit: Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images
For the first time in its relatively brief history, the NHL Winter Classic has retreated away from New Year’s Day. The game has been played before on January 2, but only in years when that date was functionally “New Year’s Day” and featured the usual slate of bowl games associated with the holiday. This year, it moves to New Year’s Eve, punting on a head-to-head with a New Year’s Day bowl line-up that consists of three-straight College Football Playoff quarterfinals.
Football competition is a conundrum for all leagues. For the likes of the WNBA and NASCAR, which end in the fall, it means fewer viewers for the playoffs than for the regular season. For events like the NHL and NBA, which begin in the fall, it means that it takes until mid-February before one can begin to attract sports fans’ relatively undivided attention. Exceptions to that are holidays like Christmas and New Years, on which those leagues have played some of their highest-profile games. For the NBA, that has been its Christmas Day slate, which since 2008 has consisted of five games. For the NHL, that has been its annual Winter Classic, which since 2008 has been a staple of New Year’s Day.
Much has been made of the NFL stealing Christmas, but the holiday still produces the top NBA audiences of a given season. (The last season in which a Christmas game did not top the charts was 2001-02.) This year, with Christmas viewership up a whopping 87 percent from last year’s low, the holiday delivered the five largest audiences of the season. While the NFL’s margin of victory over the NBA was yet more fodder for the league’s many detractors, the Christmas audience nearly wiped out the double-digit decline in viewership the NBA experienced to start the season.
For the NHL, which is itself down double-digits, the Winter Classic had long been the most-watched game of a season — but that has changed with the game’s move from broadcast network NBC to cable’s TNT Sports. Last season’s audience of 1.1 million viewers did not even crack the top five, ranking seventh for the season behind five ABC windows and Connor Bedard’s career debut.
Last season’s record-low audience could be attributed to several factors, including the mediocrity of the host team (Seattle), a matchup of two relatively new franchises in a game that is usually steeped in some history, and a West Coast-necessitated 3 PM ET start time that put the game in direct competition with the Rose Bowl. (In the NBC days, the Winter Classic almost always started at 1 PM ET to avoid the Rose Bowl.) It also bears noting that simply airing exclusively on cable puts a cap on how many viewers one can realistically expect, especially in the current television environment.
Thus, there are some easy solutions. This year’s Blues-Blackhawks matchup fails on the team quality measure (St. Louis is mediocre and Chicago flat out bad this season), but still pairs historic rivals in a historic setting — and given the Midwest locale, could easily be scheduled for an early New Year’s Day window. TNT contractually has rights to the Winter Classic, but already under this media rights deal has swapped rights to the Stadium Series for the “Thanksgiving Showcase” that had been earmarked for ABC. With ABC not set to simulcast any of the New Year’s Day bowl games, there is a potential opening for another swap. As compensation, the league could grant TNT first pick of a conference final in years when it airs the Stanley Cup Final (albeit there is only one more of those after this season), or shift Opening Night to TNT from ESPN. There are options.
Yet instead of those changes, the NHL moved the Winter Classic back a day to New Year’s Eve, away from College Football Playoff competition. The move does not even grant the Winter Classic a standalone window, as there are still competing football games (albeit not playoff-level), not to mention a full schedule of 12 other NHL games — including one (Montreal-Vegas) that will overlap with the start.
The move makes some sense, as under the expanded playoff format, all three of the New Year’s Day bowl games will be quarterfinals and thus attract a bigger audience than the non-playoff bowls of old. Last year, there were three 1 PM ET New Year’s Day bowl games that averaged a combined 16.1 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2. Given the performance of New Year’s Day semifinals in past playoffs, it is reasonable to expect that most playoff quarterfinals could top that figure.
In the face of increased football competition — a common issue in an era of expansion for the pro and college game — backing down is often a good idea. The PGA Tour and IndyCar have adjusted their schedules to minimize, or entirely avoid, the NFL season. The WNBA has for years been advised (including by this writer) to end its season by Labor Day weekend, as had been the practice in the early days of the league.
For a league like the NHL, the key question is whether retreating to New Year’s Eve is really a better option than simply maximizing one’s viewership on New Year’s Day. In the out-of-home era, holidays like Christmas, New Year’s and even Easter are more than big enough to accommodate multiple sports. New Year’s Eve, on the other hand, has long been viewed as a ratings drag — and it is not clear anything has changed on that front in the out-of-home era.
Given the choice between New Year’s Eve on cable and New Year’s Day on any platform, even football competition is not a compelling enough reason to punt. For the NHL, it seems unlikely that the move will have the desired effect.
NHL Winter Classic: Blues-Blackhawks (5 PM Tue TNT and truTV). Prediction: 1.03 million viewers.
Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter), Threads or Bluesky.
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Are they officially moving future games to new years or was this a one time thing because of football, regular season scheduling and new years being midweek? Happy new year love the site
How about dumping the Winter Classic altogether? I think the novelty of this “event” has been gone since about 2010. Plus, once the NHL started playing another outdoor games like the Stadium Series, it cheapened the event as it’s not the lone outdoor game of the season. As someone else said, this was a made-for-TV creation by NBC and once NBC gave up hockey rights, the NHL should’ve left this game off the new media deal. I’d be surprised if this game even hit the million mark because the Blackhawks have been a disaster for years now, and the Blues are a small-market, middling team that no one cared about when they won the Cup. So I can see this game being in the 700,000-800,000 viewership range, especially in a strange 5 ET slot on New Year’s Eve on cable.
As someone else commented, the Winter Classic was an NBC creation. When it was created, the BCS was a mess and there was little importance of college football on New Years Day outside of the Rose Bowl. NBC had a great strategy for this alternative sports programming early afternoon on New Years Day. Unfortunately for the NHL, a lot has changed. College football playoffs have brought a full day of elimination games to New Years Day. The winter classic will now be an afterthought. I understand why the league has decided to move off New Years Day. However, moving to New Years Eve is a horrible scheduling move.
I think the best thing for the NHL to do is to reset the schedule. Get it away from New Years as college football has re- established itself as the sports property for the holiday.
The Winter Classic should be moved to the last weekend of January, which is the off week between the NFL conference championships and the Super Bowl. I know it’s a bit radical, but I think it would make the most sense. Now that time is usually reserved for the All Star game, but best idea would be to use this valuable time on the calendar for the NHLs biggest regular season event. Instead of being lost in the middle of the college football playoffs, you would have to go up against regular NBA and college basketball.
The NHL should schedule the game 3pm et that Sunday. Start the new tradition and they could start getting decent audiences again.
To me the best spot for the winter classic would actually be mid February, when the NBA takes its all star break (since that would be before MLB kicks off), and for NFL to end, so perfect spot to fit it in (other than the fact that the NHL has its stadium series on that weekend at times), so put 3 good games on that weekend at minimum (3 pm Saturday and Sunday, along with 8 pm Saturday night), but this season they used it on the 4 nations championship so hopefully the NHL can open the slot back up some to put more action on that weekend
Good analysis as usual, but I just can’t see ESPN/ABC wanting the Winter Classic when they could’ve theoretically taken it in 2021 to begin with. The entire point for them is to have the Rose Bowl and the other quarterfinals every New Year’s Day, stretched into New Year’s Eve as needed, except if it’s a Sunday/Monday when they will have a regular Week 17 MNF and put the college football games on dates away from the NFL. The NHL Winter Classic was an NBC creation specifically because they didn’t have any of the major bowl games and so Turner was always likely to take it when they got the Wednesday night-plus package.
Honestly, I think ESPN/ABC values the Rose Bowl (and Parade) more than it does the rest of the CFB postseason- or at least they historically did since they prioritized that over the other major bowls until the Rose Bowl finally agreed to pool rights with the other ones in return for keeping its traditional timeslot and matchup (pre-realignment) to the maximum extent possible.
Fair point — to me, as long as ESPN is going to have all of its quarterfinal CFP games exclusive to cable (which I don’t necessarily see changing), that leaves a whole day open for ABC. So I think the circumstances are different from when the deal was struck in ’21.
I’m just not sure why either ESPN or the NHL would want that though- it cannibalizes the audience/devalues the rights deal for ESPN while the NHL has to go up against one of its partner’s crown jewel rights when they don’t really need to.
Why has ESPN still not made the broadcast TV simulcasts to the quarterfinals and semi finals? (Didn’t ESPN amended the agreement), and they did simulcast the first round games, so at what point will ESPN be allowed to simulcast games over to ABC (instead of leaving ABC with those weaker CFB FCS playoff games), like to me ABC could of done something different since they now left the time slot after the rose parade (since they normally air the citus bowl there to maximize viewership), so why didn’t they simulcast any quarter final games to maximize viewership there (I don’t get that)
Hopefully they can even play. Been light rain all morning so far. Happy New Year, Doctor! Go Illini!
Happy New Year to you as well.
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