TNT Sports, the WBD-owned US linear network, has delivered its strongest year of regular-season NHL ice hockey coverage to date, with the 2025-26 campaign growing by double digits percentage-wise year-on-year.
Through 71 nationally televised regular-season games, NHL viewership on TNT Sports grew 19%, and attracted a cumulative 20.4 million viewers, up 37% year-on-year.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
This marks a strong rebound for the NHL, after the 2024-25 season slumped to the lowest regular season-average yet across TNT Sports and other rightsholder ESPN.
ESPN too managed a more successful season than 2024-25, with its first 49 games averaging 790,000 viewers, up 30% year-on-year.
Its final ‘NHL on ABC’ broadcast of the season, a programming block shared with sister-network ABC, drew over 1 million viewers, with the Tampa Bay Lightning defeating the Boston Bruins, and the Las Vegas Golden Knights defeating the Colorado Avalanche.
Much of the turnaround has to do with the transformative effect of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, which saw NHL players return to the Olympic fold, which had a marked impact on league viewership.
Post-Olympic regular-season coverage averaged 435,000 viewers per game, up 47% on the average viewership after the mid-season NHL Four Nations Face-Off national team tournament.
Although the Four Nations Face-Off took place at a similar stage in the 2025 season to the Olympics in 2026, and had a galvanizing effect on that year’s viewership, the boon of the monolithic Olympic Games being even greater illustrates the prestige of the tournament, and additionally, the benefits of NHL hockey’s return to the fold.
Indeed, the post-Olympic period was the highest-averaging post-Olympics/All-star game period in TNT’s rights stewardship so-far.
This year is the fifth of TNT’s rights agreement with the NHL, and although two years remain on the (reported) $225 million per year contract, TNT Sports chief executive Luis Silberwasser has already stated his intention to seek a renewal.
At the beginning of April, Silberwasser said in an interview with digital publication Puck: “We are extremely interested in continuing our relationship with hockey,” adding that he is willing to do so on a timeline set by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who himself said that renewal talks have already been opened with TNT."
Though TNT parent WBD is undergoing acquisition talks with Paramount, with a deal seeming likely this year, any merger with Paramount-owned CBS Sports would only aid TNT’s efforts to retain the ice hockey major league
TNT’s post-season NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs coverage will begin on April 19.
