4 Nations Ratings: USA-Canada final takes over the sports world
Nobody was questioning how successful the 4 Nations Face-Off was. But on Friday, when the ratings from the United States v.s. Canada championship game were released, it was proven as a smash hit for the NHL and hockey at large.
On Thursday, the game had a record-breaking average viewership of 9.252 million in the United States, making it the most-viewed non-Olympic hockey game in the US. Combined with Canada, the game averaged 16.1 million viewers.
The tournament truly captured the attention of the public. Major public figures from both nations were interested, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and United States President Donald Trump — both expressing support for their respective nations.
Now, the question for hockey and the NHL will be how often they will want to put on a best-on-best tournament? Unfortunately, the league cannot just decide to play best-on-best international hockey every year for a few reasons.
The first reason is relatively simple, everyone who watched knows those games were violent. The league can’t risk to annually send their players out to war mid-season and risk losing a star. It is also not safe for career longevity for the individual players.
The second reason is a bit more speculative, but theoretically, the more games like this that are played, the less interesting and unique it becomes year-over-year. If it’s a yearly thing, interest will likely shrink because it looses its mystique of being rare, or in this year’s case, the first in nearly 10 years.
So, the NHL must strike a balance of regular best-on-best international play, but not too often where it becomes uninteresting or less special to fans.
Luke Graham is a digital sports content co-op for 98.5 the Sports Hub. He is currently a sophomore communications student at Northeastern University. Follow him on X @LukeGraham05.
