With NHL playoff viewership down nearly two-thirds across Canada, Scott Moore, the television executive who committed Toronto-based Sportsnet to a 12-year, multibillion-dollar broadcasting rights agreement, said he is "disappointed but not panicked" by the ratings returns a little over a week into the league's first postseason in 46 years without a Canadian team.
The first-round playoff series being broadcast on Sportsnet's cable channels and CBC drew an average of about 500,000 viewers from April 13-17. That's down from about 1.3 million over the same period last year, when five of Canada's seven teams were competing.
The drop in numbers is happening two years into Sportsnet's a $5.