Olympic Hockey: Biggest TV Audience Ever in Canada

Since the Olympic hockey gold medal game has been a popular topic here this week (and bringing a lot more traffic than usual from Canada) I thought I’d share some interesting statistics released today by Canada’s Olympic broadcast rightsholders. They dug into the TV ratings vault to compare the February Canada vs. USA audience to the other classic moment in Canadian hockey: the 1972 “Summit Series” with the Soviet Union. The conclusion: the 2010 game was a much bigger event by any measure.

The game also performed remarkably well in the main US hockey markets—delivering its biggest numbers for NBC in Buffalo and Pittsburgh.

Here’s the press release as delivered by Canada Newswire.

2010 Gold Medal Game Is the Apex of TV Viewing in Canada as Legend of ‘72 Summit Series Finally Laid to Rest

- Final data confirms largest television audience ever achieved at Vancouver 2010 -

TORONTO, March 12 /CNW/ - It’s official. Just released final data from BBM Canada confirms that last month’s Team Canada gold medal win is, without a doubt, the most-watched television broadcast in Canadian history, with a final audience of 16.7 million viewers. It was also confirmed today by Nielsen that, contrary to popular Canadian legend, the recent game delivered far more viewers than Game 8 of the classic Summit Series between Canada and U.S.S.R. on September 28, 1972, which had a reported television audience of 4.26 million viewers.

  ————————————————————————————————————-
              Vancouver 2010 Salt Lake City 2002   Summit Series 1972
  ————————————————————————————————————-
            Gold Medal Game:    Gold Medal Game:          Game 8:
  ————————————————————————————————————-
              Feb. 28, 2010     Feb. 24, 2002     Sept. 28, 1972
  ————————————————————————————————————-
  Total
    Audience       16,674,000       10,300,000         4,255,000
  ————————————————————————————————————-
  English         14,129,000         8,662,000         3,311,000
  ————————————————————————————————————-
  French           2,545,000         1,638,000         944,000
  ————————————————————————————————————-
  Rating             49.8           33.9           21.0
  ————————————————————————————————————-

“There is no question the Vancouver 2010 gold medal game set an audience record for Canada, period,” said Jim MacLeod, President, BBM Canada. “Even if you take into account Canada’s larger population in 2010 compared to 2002 and 1972, the 2010 number is the largest by a comfortable margin. This just confirms the great support by Canadians for our Olympians.”

The purported television audience for the final game of the ‘72 Summit Series has become legendary, with wild, unattributed rumours claiming anywhere from seven million to an incredible 18 million viewers watching the climactic Game 8, in which Paul Henderson scored the winning goal with 34 seconds left. According to Nielsen, the game aired live at 12:30 p.m. ET on a Thursday afternoon on CBC. The country came to a halt as the nation watched, much like what happened at Vancouver 2010. But considering the Canadian population was only 22 million in 1972, suggestions of double digit audiences are improbable. CBC re-aired the game at 7:30 p.m. that night, attracting 4.07 million viewers, so even the combined audience (including the same viewers) is less than half of the audience for Team Canada’s historic 2010 win.

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