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Sunday Edition

February 23, 2025

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The NHL’s mega success [[link removed]] with 4 Nations Face-Off just further crystallized an ongoing trend: People will tune in for must-watch, live appointment-viewing events in sports. But they’re becoming less motivated to tune in for regular-season games from leagues with longgggg seasons. As always, I welcome your thoughts via email [mailto:[email protected]] or on X [[link removed]].

— Dan Roberts [[link removed]], FOS EIC

Must-See Appointment Viewing Is the Future of Live Sports

Winslow Townson-Imagn Images

I can’t recall the last time my entire sports social feed was focused on hockey. But it happened twice in the past week: First when the U.S. and Canada played in Montréal [[link removed]] last Saturday night, then when they met again in the final Thursday night in Boston. Everyone in my feed was watching—and remarking on the fact that everyone else they knew was watching, too.

The 4 Nations Face-Off final pulled an enormous number of eyeballs [[link removed]]. The NHL won the week in sports. It stole the buzz from the NBA’s All-Star weekend [[link removed]], then it kept the sustained excitement going all week leading into the championship.

But it’s not so shocking that a new international best-on-best tournament (which replaced this year’s NHL All-Star Game [[link removed]]) was a hit and, as my colleague Meredith Turits [[link removed]] wrote, made the existing NHL All-Star Game “ look limp [[link removed]]” by comparison. As NHL player-turned-color-analyst P.K. Subban said on SportsCenter [[link removed]] Saturday, “I don’t think we can ever go back to All-Star Weekend. I don’t. I really believe that after this, we have to consider doing this or something like this in replace of it.” The event played off our patriotism and—here’s the key—it felt like there was something at stake.

What was at stake in the NBA All-Star Game? Nothing, especially now that the format [[link removed]] isn’t even East vs. West. Players weren’t invested, fans knew it, and the viewership reflected it: the second-least-watched All-Star Game [[link removed]], down 13% from last year.

When the NBA saw a 28% dip [[link removed]] on ESPN for its first month of this season, everyone debated why [[link removed]]. Too many three-pointers? Too many stars sitting out? Not enough rivalries and dramatic storylines? My theory was simple: the season is too long. It should start at Christmas. I’d say recent trends have continued to bear this out. Fans wait to tune in until there’s a must-see event. The NHL just gave us one.

Other leagues would kill for their own version of 4 Nations. Now the NHL is wisely doubling down [[link removed]] on this kind of competition: NHL players will compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics for the first time since Sochi in 2012, and the league is bringing back the World Cup of Hockey in 2028 [[link removed]], which will establish a rotating international best-on-best schedule that promises a nationalistic skirmish on ice every two years.

Sports fans will tune in for must-see, appointment-viewing events that others are all watching at the same time. (Those moments are when X/Twitter still shines, too, by the way, more than any other social app— sorry, Bluesky [[link removed]].)

That’s why viewership for the Super Bowl is still going up: 135.7 million people at peak of this year’s, making it the most-watched ever [[link removed]] despite the lopsided score. It’s the last bastion of communal watching on a massive scale. The Tyson-Paul fight on Netflix saw 38 million concurrent streams [[link removed]]—a wild number. And it’s why all the buzzy new upstart leagues and models have limited seasons, from Unrivaled [[link removed]] basketball to TGL golf [[link removed]] to the rumored Maverick Carter–backed international basketball league, which aims to be an “F1 for basketball.” [[link removed]]

That’s the advantage the NFL has over the NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS: scarcity of its games. You know your team plays only once a week, and you have to see it. There’s simply not as much motivation to catch an early-season NBA or MLB game.

In the next few years, I expect regular-season viewership for almost everything to keep waning. (Even the NFL saw a 2% ratings dip overall [[link removed]] this season.) On any given night, there’s too much other TV to watch, unless a game has something fresh to it that makes it must-see-live.

Of course, none of the leagues with long seasons are about to shrink. None of these huge, multibillion-dollar businesses will offer less of their product anytime soon—they want more, more, more.

So they’re striving to create newness. They’re trying to inject breaks or new formats into their existing models. Unrivaled got its biggest ratings yet on TNT last weekend [[link removed]] thanks to a new one-on-one format with a $200,000 prize for the winner. The NBA has tried with the in-season tournament (it hasn’t really hit so far [[link removed]]). MLS is shooting for the same effect, commissioner Don Garber told me this week [[link removed]]: “We have a very long season… There is the uniqueness of other tournaments that take place within our season. Hockey just did that, the NHL and the Nations Cup was brilliant, brilliant. And I think we’re all looking at that… All of us are looking for different moments to be able to keep fans’ attention.”

Hockey brought that with 4 Nations Face-Off, and there will be a longtail effect, too: I’m going to make sure to watch every game of the next Stanley Cup.

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Good Week / Bad Week 4 Nations Dominates, NBA All-Star Lags

Bob DeChiara/Imagn Images

Good week for:

4 Nations Face-Off ⬆ The NHL’s new international best-on-best tournament [[link removed]] replacing this year’s All-Star Game fired up audiences and drew explosive ratings, especially for the final matchup between the Teams USA and Canada, which became the most-watched NHL game [[link removed]] in the U.S. 4 Nations Face-Off stole the spotlight [[link removed]] from the NBA’s All-Star weekend, and paid massive dividends for the NHL as it enters its new biannual schedule [[link removed]] of international play.

Sports betting ⬆ According to the American Gaming Association, legal sports wagering in 2024 reached $13.71 billion in revenue [[link removed]], up 25.4% from the previous year. Sports betting handle was up 23.6% to $147.9 billion from 2023. Sports betting is legal in some capacity in 38 states and D.C.

Bad week for:

NBA ⬇ While the NHL’s experiment with 4 Nations Face-Off was a success, the same can’t be said for the NBA’s new, tournament-style All-Star Game format. The game drew 4.7 million viewers, the second-least-watched of all time [[link removed]]. All-Star Saturday Night couldn’t deliver either, with just 3.3 million viewers, the least-watched version of the event despite an electric performance from Mac McClung in the Slam Dunk Contest [[link removed]]. Unfortunately, the hits kept coming as the Spurs announced Thursday that Victor Wembanyama will miss the rest of the season [[link removed]] due to a blood clot.

Manchester United ⬇ The Premier League club announced a 12% decline [[link removed]] in revenue for its fiscal second quarter ending Dec. 31. The revenue drop can be attributed to missing the Champions League. The club does not look like it’s going to make the Champions League again as it sits in 15th in the table. Manchester United plans to lay off 100 people less than a year after it laid off 250 staffers.

Sunday Read The Artists Creating Hockey’s Iconic Goalie Masks

Charles LeClaire/Imagn Images

At 4 Nations Face-Off, the players put on a show—but so did the artists behind each goalie’s personalized mask. Across hockey, netminders wear meticulously created personal masks that take tens of hours to create and cost thousands of dollars. FOS contributor Eric Alt [[link removed]] talked to some of the leading designers, and writes that players and artists are collaborating [[link removed]] on looks that have sometimes become even more recognizable than the athletes wearing them.

Sunday Watch The FOS Interview: Don Garber

Front Office Sports

As Major League Soccer prepares to kick off its 30th season, league commissioner Don Garber joins FOS editor-in-chief Dan Roberts [[link removed]] to discuss the continued growth of the league with the newly minted San Diego FC, the global streaming deal with Apple TV, the potential shift in MLS season schedule to match other major soccer leagues, and more.

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