For decades the NBA and NFL have been overshadowing the National Hockey League (NHL) and Major League Soccer (MLS). The NFL and NBA get more viewers than the other two.
The NHL gets at least 300 thousand to 400 thousand viewers a year. The MLS gets at least 200 thousand a year. While the NFL at least 15 million a year and NBA get at least 1.5 million a year.
Why do they get more viewers than the other leagues? Well, there are multiple reasons why this happened. The first reason is the time on television
The NFL and NBA get more time on national television than the other two leagues.
Whenever it is the game day on Thursday, Sunday or Monday the majority of the games will be on a national television channel for everyone to see.
The same goes for the NBA. They get almost the same amount of national broadcasts such as ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV while the NFL gets NBC, CBS, FOX, ESPN and ABC.
As for the NHL, they get ABC, ESPN and TNT. The MLS gets FOX, FS1, TUDN and UniMas. But regardless of how many channels they both have, it still doesn’t solve the issue with the overshadowed leagues.
So the NHL and MLS should get more TV coverage in the United States.
Hockey and Football (aka “Soccer”) have dedicated fan bases, extremely wild environments and hold massive fan bases around the world.
Hockey and Football are each estimated to have more than one billion fans worldwide so why hasn’t the United States jumped on the popularity of these sports and put them in more coverage?
The World Cup had 1.5 billion viewers watching the World Cup while only 113 million watched Super Bowl LVII, so it’s clearly popular and marketable to a general audience.
When you hear the chants the NHL and the MLS have, compared to other sports like the NFL or NBA, it harbors an environment that is breathtaking and gives amazing crowd reactions.
The NHL and MLS crowds are at a different level compared to any of the American sports, for better or for worse.
MLS and the NHL are both growing in the United States, which is one of many reasons why the United States TV companies should push these two sports more into the limelight.
You’ll get more viewers overall, than any of the American sports, the crowds will be way more lively and you can get more diversity in sports.
Fans of the NHL and MLS should push and put pressure on these streaming/TV companies to push more of these games into American prime-time TV because of how much money these sports can generate.
These two sports can create new fans in the United States and bring a new audience to these awesome sports.
