VANCOUVER -- The gold-medal hockey game between Canada and the United States is likely to break television-ratings records, based on Vancouver 2010 viewing trends for hockey.
According to CTV, last Sunday's round-robin showdown between the United States and Canada drew an average audience of 10.6 million viewers, becoming the most-watched sports program on record in Canadian television history. Peaking at 13 million viewers, the game was watched in part by nearly two in three Canadians, or 21.5 million viewers (64.3 per cent of the Canadian population).
Team Canada's win over Slovakia on Friday peaked at 12.25 million viewers and averaged 9.7 million viewers, the third most-watched sporting event of these Olympics. There were more than 8.4 million viewers on CTV alone.
In 2002, the only time Canada has played for a men's hockey gold medal during the NHL's Olympic hockey era, the rights holder - CBC - was rewarded with a record viewing audience for the final game.
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Officially, 8.662 million viewers tuned in to see Canada defeat the United States and end a 50-year gold-medal drought. Ultimately, the audience peaked at 10.5 million during the medal ceremony. That was almost two million viewers more than the previous high - Game 6 of the 1992 World Series - and miles ahead of the record for a non-sports event, the 1998 Academy Awards (6.605 million viewers).
Keith Pelley, president of the Olympic broadcasting consortium, knows he has a potential winner on his hands.
"Without giving a definitive number, I think the numbers could be scary large," Mr. Pelley said before the Games, adding that pre-Olympic surveys suggest up to two-thirds of Canadians would tune in to watch the Vancouver Olympics on television.
"The streets in Canada will be quiet. That's what happened in Salt Lake City and this [will] bring it to a whole new level. The Games in your own country transcend sport, and hockey often in this country transcends sport. If you put the two of them together, the potential is just gargantuan. It is something that we're counting on happening."
Mr. Pelley did not want to discuss how much the network was charging for a 30-second ad spot during the men's gold-medal game. Industry sources say it could be upward of $300,000 for 30 seconds, a staggering fee by Canadian broadcasting standards.
Earlier this month, Super Bowl ads - generally among the costliest in the industry - fell on a year-over-year basis, from the $3-million charged for the 2009 game to a range of between $2.5-million and $2.8-million for the game between the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints, according to TSN Media Intelligence, which measures and analyzes advertising data. A slumping U.S. economy was identified as the primary culprit for the decline.
"We were very fortunate to be selling the biggest event of this century," Mr. Pelley said. "I think we would have felt [the economic slump] a lot more if the Games weren't in Vancouver. The fact that they are here in Canada, even with the economy being what it is, if an advertiser wanted to be involved in one specific area, or one specific project, this is the one."
