Olympic Hockey – Epic Game, Epic Audience.

What a game! During Sunday’s Olympic Gold Medal Hockey Game, fans of the sport were reminded of why they loved the game while casual fans were drawn in by one of the most exciting and significant Hockey Games ever.

The Olympics are finally over and the numbers keep trickling in. The one thing that keeps sticking out is the astounding number of viewers that tuned in the Gold Medal Game on both sides of the border. Now it is up to the NHL and its sagging popularity to capitalize on those numbers and make Hockey a main stream sport in the USA once again.

The numbers are enormous indeed. CTV, the major Olympic broadcaster in Canada has reported that 80% of televisions were tuned in to Sunday’s Gold Medal Classic at some point during the game. An average of 16.6 million people in Canada (approximately ½ of the population) watched the game in its entirety. It was the most watched television program in Canadian history. In the United States NBC has reported an average viewership of 27.6 million with a peak audience of 34.8 million - the second largest audience for a hockey game since the 1980 Miracle on Ice Gold Medal match between the United States and Finland. 13.8 % of US households were watching Sunday’s classic. – astounding!

The 27.6 million viewers surpassed the 14.3 million viewers of the Masters golf tournament, the 16 million viewers of the Daytona 500, the 16 million viewers of the highest rated NBA finals game, the 17.6 million viewers of the culmination of the NCAA Final Four, the 22.8 million viewers of the highest rates World Series game last year and the 24 million viewers of the 2010 Rose Bowl.

The ramifications of Sunday’s Gold Medal game are huge for the North American markets. In an era when Hockey has fallen off the sports radar in the United States, the game served to reintroduce Americans to the beauty and passion of the Game. Hockey in the US has been without a major network broadcasting deal for the better part of two decades and the game has been hurting because of this fact. Aside from the one game per week on NBC, hockey has been relegated to the back pages of every major American newspaper publication and has been relegated to secondary Television networks such as Versus and Regional Fox TV coverage.

Hockey was center stage on Sunday afternoon and while the Gold Medal game was an obsession in Canada, it was also watched with great interest in the typically apathetic American Hockey markets. It goes without saying that the two combatants in the game were part of the reason for the incredible numbers but the fact still remains that it was the most watched program in North America on Sunday.

Now comes the test for the NHL. Can they carry the momentum of the momentous game? Time will tell.

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