NHL, TNT Pinning High Hopes on First New Year’s Eve Winter Classic

When the puck drops in Chicago on New Year’s Eve, TNT is hoping for a visually stunning night that’ll pay dividends as it barrels toward its post-NBA era.

Inside the ivy-covered walls of Wrigley Field, the network will be broadcasting its fourth NHL Winter Classic, the outdoor regular-season game that this year will feature the hometown Blackhawks against the Blues. It’s the first time the event has returned to Wrigley since 2009.

It’s also the first year the Winter Classic organizers have pivoted from the traditional New Year’s Day scheduling, due in no small part to competition from the six college football bowl games. This year’s game will slot into a Dec. 31 broadcast date with a 4 p.m. local start time.

At a press event earlier this month, NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer said they’ll likely give New Year’s Eve a shot for the next few years. 

The league and network both hope a clearer broadcasting window will mean more eyes. Since acquiring NHL media rights from NBC in 2021, Warner Bros. Discovery has yet to surpass two million viewers for the Winter Classic, and the Jan. 1, 2024, matchup between the Seattle Kraken and Vegas Golden Knights averaged 1.1 million viewers on TNT and truTV, an all-time low for the event that started in 2008. 

The date change also could be advantageous for an event trying to bill itself as entertainment as much as sporting event. “I would argue it becomes a little bit of a larger celebration on New Year’s Eve,” WBD Sports EVP and chief content officer Craig Barry tells Front Office Sports.

Indeed, a key piece of boosting those numbers will be courting the casual fan whom the network hopes to convert into a regular viewer. Hockey is a cult sport, and its die-hard followers already see games across the league as appointment viewing. But roping in the occasional viewer is where the challenge—and growth opportunity—remains.

As the “pinnacle of hockey celebration,” Barry says the Winter Classic is part of capturing those irregular viewers, as the network will produce the event with an eye toward a wider audience. They’re investing in new production elements, including wireless player mics and cameras that “will bring the fan closer to the sheet.” If all goes right, the tech could help carve a path of accessibility into a whiplash-fast sport (and one some people say they simply can’t follow on TV). On Max, they’ll also air an ASL alt-cast, a format they tested for the first time during this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs. 

TNT has increasingly made hockey a portfolio priority since 2021, and this year saw particularly strong returns with the Stanley Cup playoffs. Combined with additional games on ESPN, the league’s overall viewership is growing, creeping closer toward the NHL’s best season in 2015–2016. But TNT has not seen consistent hockey-stick growth with the sport overall, and season-to-date, the network tells FOS viewership is down 24% versus last year.

This month’s Winter Classic will be a key moment for TNT, which is in a state of transition after losing rights to the NBA earlier this year. “It’s a major tentpole in our portfolio,” says Barry. “It is arguably like All-Star weekend for NBA. … This is how we treat it for the NHL, like it’s a massive celebration. And unlike All-Star weekend, it’s actually highly competitive, and from a fan standpoint, and it has a certain amount of urgency and stakes connected to it.”

In its growth strategy, it’s taking a page from its own playbook with a personality-driven in-studio programming strategy that mimics the beloved Inside the NBA. “We’re able to sprinkle that same DNA on hockey,” Barry tells FOS.

The profile of NHL on TNT has grown due in large part to the crew that includes Paul Bissonnette, Wayne Gretzy, Anson Carter, Liam McHugh, and Henrik Lundqvist. Barry says the hockey studio show has many of the “intangibles” that made Inside the NBA so successful, both in terms of personalities and an off-the-cuff approach to commentary. In the past month, fans have increasingly passed around clips of Bissonnette sparring with Bruins forward Brad Marchand, an ongoing banter that’s turned into social media gold. 

Morgan Weinbrecht Thomas, the studio director behind NHL on TNT, came up as an AD under Inside the NBA producer Tim Kiely. She tells FOS the hockey show’s approach has the same “fabric and fiber” of Inside the NBA—the broadcast has a personality in its own right. “It’s just these moments of life. Things that you didn’t stage, things that you didn’t try to force happen,” she says. “It isn’t that we were trying to manufacture something or edit anything. It just arrives.”

Wrigley Field’s iconic setting—one that the NHL has worked hard to enhance for television this year—could prove ideal for the Winter Classic. “You could put a cellphone out on Wrigley and have iconic shots because it’s Wrigley,” Thomas says.

TNT will use both the interior and exterior of the stadium in its broadcast—expect to see Darren Pang inside the Wrigley scoreboard, and Jackie Redmond on the rooftops overlooking the field. Thomas says they’ll also bring in augmented-reality elements to their drones and super cam for both the studio show and game itself. TNT will cover the auxiliary events outside, including the pregame Smashing Pumpkins show, plus a 60-minute walkup show on iconic Gallagher Way. It’s the first time they’ll be outside the venue, says Barry. “We want to make sure we’re leaning in to Wrigley as a character of this event.” 

If all goes well, TNT believes its production will be magnetic enough to keep eyes on a game that will feature two of the league’s weakest teams, both of which have already fired their coaches this year. Host Chicago has one of the worst records in the NHL, and star Connor Bedard hasn’t barreled out of the gate at the Calder Trophy–winning pace he did last year—two elements that TNT says have suppressed this season’s viewership thus far.

The unimpressive records of the teams likely won’t dim appeal if the studio crew can nail the broadcast inside the venue and out. Bedard, who is no stranger to TNT’s studio show, will still play a key role; both Thomas and Barry say Bissonnette’s close ties with the forward will be central to the programming. (Thomas adds their relationship runs deep outside of hockey; Bissonnette and Bedard recently hiked a mountain together this summer, just for fun.) 

Among the characters on and off the ice, perhaps TNT has figured out the alchemy to make the Winter Classic appointment viewing for all.