Prior to the start of the Milan Cortina Paralympics, NBC Sports senior producer Alexa Pritting told SBJ that she hoped the planets would align so the sled hockey gold medal game last Sunday would feature Team USA versus Canada. Round 3, she called it, after the Olympic men and women’s hockey tournament concluded with USA-Canada meetings in the gold medal games. The sled hockey final aired live on NBC at 11am ET on Sunday -- a showcase spot on a broadcast network -- and the viewership numbers turned out to be a record.
Team USA’s 6-2 win over Canada averaged a Total Audience Delivery of 1.2 million viewers across NBC, Peacock and CNBC, making it the most-watched sled hockey game on record. The network said it topped the prior record of 869,000 viewers set at the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games. The peak for the game was 1.4 million viewers at its conclusion (12:45-1pm ET). It was Team USA’s fifth consecutive sled hockey gold medal.
“We are proud of the advancements we have made in our coverage of the Paralympics and thrilled people tuned in to watch some awesome hockey in the gold medal game,” Pritting told SBJ. “This is a great launching point for LA28, and I am excited to see how much further we can go when the Games come to the United States.”
NBC said full viewership for its Paralympics coverage would be out later this week. Through the first weekend of competition, the coverage had averaged 1.1 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, up 27% from the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics through the comparable point.
