Quote:
Originally Posted by sylar
Pittsburgh/Philly/Boston all had an astronomical gate. You'd have to do a lot to match that in StL.
Ummm, no they wouldn't. (and honestly, BOS and PHI couldn't fit THAT many into their ballparks...less than 50k each).
STL would sell-out super easily and it wouldn't be close. Have you guys ever been there or anything? Sounds like maybe you are not from the region and are just making assumptions about a midwestern city and fan-base you perhaps don't know as much about. I wouldn't be saying that at all except for how ludicrous the idea is that STL would have to do a lot more to somehow pull off a Winter Classic.
STL is seriously a pretty good hockey market. I thought everyone kind of knew that but maybe it's some midwestern secret or something. Way better than Nashville, Carolina, etc imo.
STL TV ratings ranked 5th among US based NHL teams.
Blues playoff game drew an 11.0 TV rating this past April....for Game 3 on a Monday night. Rangers drew a 3.3 in NYC on MSG to compare although obviously their 3.3 represents way more total people than an 11.0 does in St. Louis.
The whole 5-game series with SJ had a 9.7 rating.
Blues drew a 5.56 rating for a regular season game in January against VAN in January.
On April 21, the Blues game on FS-Midwest had a 9.0 which was higher than the combined prime-time averages of three major network stations KMOV, KSDK, KTVI (combined 8.4)
http://blues.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=629716
By comparison, Nashville, in a pretty small market and with a good team, had playoff ratings mostly around 4. That's less about 100,000 people watching on TV.
US local ratings for this year. LOL at the Panthers at the bottom. An anemic 3000 households... but 40% improvement!!! Haha.
And while the market-sizes are different, the fact is that slightly more households watch STL games on TV than watch Buffalo Sabres games (44k to 42k). Buffalo has a good fan-base. And so does STL.
TOP 5
--------------------------------- AVG. NO. OF HHS (000s)
Pittsburgh Penguins Root Sports 7.89 92 -9%
Buffalo Sabres MSG 6.55 42 -6%
Boston Bruins NESN 4.72 112 +56%
St. Louis Blues FS Midwest 3.51 44 +14%
Detroit Red Wings FS Detroit 3.48 64 -14%
BOTTOM 5
Los Angeles Kings FS West 0.37 21 -16%
New Jersey Devils MSG Plus 0.34 25 -28%
Anaheim Ducks Prime Ticket 0.30 17 -19%
New York Islanders MSG Plus 0.25 18 -26%
Florida Panthers FS Florida 0.21 3 +40%