Connor McDavid Helps ABC Sell Out First 5 Games of Stanley Cup ...

As ABC gets set to host its second Stanley Cup Final under its seven-year, $2.8 billion contract with the NHL, the broadcaster has already sold out its available commercial inventory for the first five games.

According to Jim Minnich, who serves as senior VP, revenue and yield management at Disney’s advertising unit, the first five frames of the Edmonton Oilers-Florida Panthers series have been picked clean by advertisers, and time in Game 6 is going fast. Speaking with Sportico on a Zoom call Friday morning, Minnich said about 30 units remain up for grabs in a possible sixth broadcast, which, if necessary, will air on ABC Friday, June 21.

Vegas oddmakers favor a six-game series, but clients naturally will be reimbursed if the Final comes up a little short on the duration front. Minnich said his team booked the last available spot in Game 5 “several weeks” ago, while noting that much of the inventory in this year’s Final was sold in last spring’s upfront bazaar. 

“We had a couple of units left in late April, maybe early May, but as soon as the Rangers started [advancing] from round to round, people started grabbing those last remaining avails,” Minnich said. While New York’s exit from the postseason may have cast a pall over much of that market’s 7.6 million TV homes, the Oilers-Panthers showdown should still manage to outdraw last year’s Final, which averaged 2.63 million viewers across the TNT Sports cable portfolio.

“We believe there will be growth in the audience, albeit modest,” Minnich said, a nod to the inevitable erasures that occur whenever a Canadian team advances to the Final. Which isn’t to say that a long series won’t go a long way toward offsetting the impact of hosting what amounts to a single-market Final; back in 2011, when Boston faced Vancouver in a seventh game on NBC, no fewer than 8.54 million viewers watched the action unfold.

Since the NHL returned to Disney in 2022, the league has enjoyed significant growth in its national TV ratings. ABC’s first Stanley Cup Final since 2004 averaged 4.6 million viewers, nearly doubling NBC Sports’ deliveries (2.41 million) the previous year. Through the first three rounds of this postseason stretch, NHL ratings are the highest they’ve been since 1996, thanks in large part to Disney’s coverage of the six-game Rangers-Panthers conference final. Per Nielsen, that Eastern Conference shootout averaged 2.3 million viewers, up 42% versus TNT Sports’ analogous Panthers-Hurricanes sweep a year ago.

The NHL’s recent hot streak coincides with a flood of new advertisers who have snapped up time in this year’s Final. Of the 80 sponsors that have secured in-game spots—a figure which represents a 25% increase compared to the 2022 Final—51 are making their first foray into the league’s championship series.

Minnich said demand in the Final was heightened by a strong spring scatter market. As more newcomers jumped into the mix, many returning advertisers heavied up their own buys in a sort of preventative measure. In other words, with so much new money in the mix, the old guard found it prudent to take steps to ensure they wouldn’t be squeezed out of a fifth, sixth, or—from our lips to Wayne Gretzky’s ears—seventh game.

ABC’s deep client bench is a tacit acknowledgment of sports TV’s changing demographics. “We’re starting to see brands come in that are more adult buys, more female-skewing buys,” Minnich said. “You’re seeing cosmetic and beauty brands, which are new categories, as well as furniture and mattresses and home materials. They’re not male-only brands, and it’s not limited to the Stanley Cup Final. We’re seeing that evolution taking place in the NBA as well.”

In addition to the usual in-game spots, advertisers such as Geico, Chipotle, Apple and Audi also have lined up a number of clutter-free integrations. For example, Apple is leveraging its NHL investment to showcase its “Siri Driver” feature, while Audi is one of the sponsors of the “Starting Goalies” featurettes first launched by Disney two years ago.

As has been the case throughout the season, some of the heaviest spenders in the Stanley Cup Final include automakers (Lexus, Honda), telcos (AT&T, Verizon), insurance companies (Geico, Liberty Mutual) and fast-food chains (Taco Bell, Domino’s, first-timer Sonic). Many of the aforementioned brands also have shelled out for premium presenting sponsorships, including Verizon (pre-game show), Geico (in-game presenter) and Lexus (intermission report).

In addition to securing positions in the spring’s second-biggest sporting event, Disney’s NHL clients have seen their engagement stats jump throughout the playoffs. As of May 20, fans who watched the in-game spots during the playoffs on ESPN/ABC/ESPN2 were 16% more likely to search for these brands than people who saw the same ads during primetime broadcast and cable programming. All told, it would take two-and-a-half primetime spots to match the value of a single ad that aired during Disney’s NHL playoff coverage.

As much as the presence of the Oilers may prove to be a drag on ABC’s ratings, a long series should smooth out a lot of the rough edges of hosting a single-market Final. If nothing else, the fact that the greatest player on skates will finally get a chance to strut his stuff on hockey’s biggest stage has Minnich fired up.

“It’s exciting to see an historic player like Connor McDavid break through,” he said. “I think the world is waiting to see him prove himself, and in the moment. What he’s doing is groundbreaking, and we’re all excited to see what he can do against Florida.”