NBA, NHL Playoff Ratings Have Lacked Help From Biggest Markets

With a relatively exciting first round this year, the NBA Playoffs haven’t lacked for positive attention or great TV ratings in 2025. But the same can’t be said about the NHL, which found audiences lacking during round one despite five series going at least six games, and two going the full seven.

We recently discussed the NHL’s struggles, and how the league may be better off embracing streaming entirely. And while the NBA shouldn’t be looking down that path just yet, the issue both leagues face comes from a lack of long playoff runs from the bevy of teams sitting in its top two TV markets, New York and Los Angeles.

In fact, since the Lakers took home the NBA’s 2020 bubble title, no team from L.A. or New York has made it to the NBA or NHL’s respective championship rounds. And just four have made it to the conference finals (with the Knicks, facing a tough East semifinals matchup with Boston Celtics, being the only remaining opportunity to advance that far this year).

But if you look at the breakdown above, it’s a sea made up largely of first-round exits (38%) or complete misses (40%) for New York and L.A.-area squads.

For the NHL, you could argue this is a much bigger deal. Two of the league’s most popular teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens, play in Canada, and the postseason field is regularly littered with teams either in small markets or non-traditional markets. As the conference semifinals start this week, there are still three Canadian clubs (Maple Leafs, Jets, Oilers) remaining, with the Dallas Stars and Washington Capitals sitting as the only “big market” clubs.

This dynamic is nothing new for the modern NHL, which regularly has a postseason full of Canadian teams and lately, an abundance of recent success for teams from Texas (the Stars) and Florida (Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers). But that has also been offset by relatively consistent success for clubs like the New York Rangers and Boston Bruins in recent years, and both missed the playoffs entirely.

The NBA, on the other hand, has never completely relied on the Knicks given the team’s limited high-level success historically (and I say this as a Knicks fan myself). Rather, it’s long been the Lakers and Celtics guiding the ship from a fan interest and TV perspective, with the Golden State Warriors serving as an additional draw lately, along with whichever team LeBron James has been on.

Notably, LeBron’s team since 2018-19, the Lakers, were knocked out in round one. The Warriors, however, remain in the field, as do the Celtics and Knicks (covered above). A Warriors vs. Celtics Finals would likely mean bigger TV audiences — as it did in 2022 — but these Warriors are the 7-seed in the West and likely have to get through the 68-win juggernaut Oklahoma City Thunder to get back to the NBA Finals.

The Celtics, for their part, remain the favorite to advance in the East. But if they fail in the Eastern Conference Finals, it will come at the hands of a small-market squad: Either the Indiana Pacers or Cleveland Cavaliers. So there’s a real chance we could see an NBA Finals between teams from Oklahoma City and Cleveland or Indianapolis.

For the NBA, such a matchup wouldn’t have the same negative impact as it would on the NHL (for instance, the Nuggets vs. Heat Finals dipped less than 6% YoY). But it does highlight what both leagues have lacked: Help from its biggest markets lately. Celtics-Warriors draws a significant audience. Yet Knicks-Lakers draws an even larger TV crowd, yet the league hasn’t seen that since the 1970s.

The NHL’s New York vs. LA matchup was more recent, when the Kings and Rangers faced off back in 2014. Those ratings were paltry (just under 5 million viewers on average) in the big scheme of live sporting events, but large vs. all of TV and considering the fact that some games were relegated to the now-defunct NBC Sports Network.

Whether today’s version of NY vs. LA in either sport is “needed” is debatable. But it’s indisputable that NY/LA matchups would be a positive for the leagues. Without them, even just more deep playoff runs would offer benefits that have lacked post-pandemic.