Shots fired. UFC president Dana White recently voiced his opinion on the NHL’s marketing prowess, and it wasn’t kind.
The Nelk Boys, a Canadian-American entertainment company specializing in vlogs and pranks with a social media following in the millions, recently released a video in which White talked sports marketing with them. When discussing the NHL spurning the Nelk Boys for a potential partnership, White went off.
“They have no idea where this younger generation is, how you reach them, any of that s---,” White said.
White also cited some statistics, claiming that the NHL “did 25 million video views” during the conference finals whereas his new fight promotion, Power Slap, did 90 million.
The comments come just as news of some historically bad U.S. TV ratings for the 2023 Stanley Cup Final has been trickling out. The 2.72 million people who watched the deciding Game 5 between the Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers represented the smallest audience for a Game 5 in the Final in 29 years. Even that number is deceiving because the previous “low” came in 1994 when the ESPN’s coverage in New York was blacked out with the Rangers competing in the Final and their games being aired on MSG Network, according to Sports Media Watch.
The audience for Vegas’ victory Tuesday was the smallest for a Cup-clinching game in 30 years. The series’ average viewership of 2.6 million viewers represented a 43 percent drop from the average of 4.6 million taking in the Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning last season.
The drop could be attributed to the relatively obscure markets meeting in the Final, however, as the average audience for games in the first three rounds of the playoffs represented a five-year high.
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