Stanley Cup ratings go up, or is it down?

Trying to make sense of the weekend sports ratings takes a greater mind than mine. (Insert appropriately cruel joke here.)

The opening game of the Stanley Cup final Saturday night took a big dive from last year's game, an 18 per cent drop, in fact. But last year, the opener was on Versus in the U.S., meaning that CBC had the game exclusively. This year, the game was on NBC and no doubt many Canadians chose to watch the American channel.

So the number of Canadians watching could be up substantially.

How many, nobody knows. So we'll call it a wash. Sunday's game was actually up 1 per cent from `08, but the same circumstances apply.

As for NBC, it scored a 3.4 rating (about 3.4 million homes) Sunday and 2.6 Saturday. That was way better than Versus did for comparable games last year, but then Versus is a tad smaller than NBC. Either way, those were good audiences for hockey on NBC.

The best news was the NBC's Stanley Cup game Sunday scored the highest among all shows in the much-coveted 18-49 age group.

It was a good weekend for the Blue Jays and for the NBA, which drew almost a quarter of a million people Saturday against the hockey game.

Here are the top English-language weekend ratings, according to BBM Nielsen Media Research overnight figures:

1. Hockey, Penguins at Red Wings, Sunday, CBC: 1,875,000*

2. Hockey, Penguins at Red Wings, Saturday, CBC: 1,726,000*

3. Baseball, Red Sox at Blue Jays, Friday, Sportsnet: 475,000

4. Baseball, Red Sox at Blue Jays, Sunday, Sportsnet: 355,000

5. Baseball, Red Sox at Blue Jays, Saturday, Sportsnet: 319,000

6. Basketball, Lakers at Nuggets, Friday, TSN: 220,000

7. Tennis, French Open, Sunday, TSN: 172,000

8. Auto racing, NASCAR Dover 400, Sunday, TSN: 162,000*

9. Basketball, Cavaliers at Magic, Saturday, TSN: 153,000

10. Tennis, French Open, Saturday, TSN: 128,000

Comments

[Stephen]

Chris, is there any thought to there being something of a distortion event of things like the NASCAR broadcasts due to the lack of TSN HD being part of the basic Rogers HD package? As much as I hate NASCAR, I have to admit that if I'm watching it, I'm going to watch the Fox HD feed rather than the non-HD TSN one. That's pretty much true of anything that appears on TSN and one of the US networks simultaneously with me, and I suspect any other HD subscriber is the same way.

Oh, and check your numbers again: the basketball game that drew almost a quarter million viewers was the *Friday* game, not the Saturday game. That only did 153k (which makes sense, as even in the US Kobe's a much bigger ratings draw than LeBron thanks to playing in the larger market).

[Steve C]

What were the ratings for the UEFA Champions League Final?

[george]

1430 TSN UEFA Championship Barca vs ManU = 215,000
1900 TSN UEFA Championship Barca vs ManU Replay = 140,000
Combined total = 345,000

Note that just the afternoon ratings beat Jays vs Baltimore (127k) on at the same time and NBA game Denver vs LA (189k) in prime time.