Canada’s 5-4 win over Russia in the IIHF World Junior Championship’s gold medal game may have produced some anxious moments for fans, but it was smiles all around for Bell Media executives.
According to preliminary overnight data from Numeris, an average audience of 7.1 million Canadians tuned into TSN and its French counterpart RDS to watch yet another classic between international hockey’s greatest rivals.
The combined English and French audience for Monday’s game was 6% larger than that for the 2011 gold medal game between Canada and Russia, which drew 6.7 million viewers. The TSN broadcast alone attracted 6 million viewers, making it the most-watched program on English television since CTV’s March 2 telecast of the 86th Academy Awards.
More than 13.4 million people watched at least part of the game, with audience levels peaking at 9.7 million viewers during the dying seconds, as Canada hung on for a 5-4 win after seeing the Russians storm back from a 5-1 deficit.
According to Bell, more than 19.4 million Canadians watched at least some of its 11 days of tournament coverage across its two specialty services, a 14% increase from the last time the tournament was played in Canada in 2012. In total, Canadians consumed more than 105 million hours of content across the two channels.
Team Canada’s seven games during the tournament – all wins – attracted an average of 3.8 million viewers, an all-time high. TSN has broadcast the annual tournament for 25 years, helping transform it into a marquee event on the Canadian sports calendar.
The tournament was also a digital hit, with TSN’s digital platforms generating more than 16 million page views and 1.9 million video views, and TSN GO recording 427,000 streams, three times its normal engagement. TSN.ca recorded 27,000 unique views for its multi-camera view of tournament games.
The TSN.ca website generated 1.8 million page views on Monday alone, a 65% increase from Canada’s previous win in a medal game in 2012.
Between Dec. 26 and Jan. 5, the @TSNHockey Twitter account delivered more than 20 million impressions against content relating to the World Junior Championships, while its #BigPlay Twitter Amplify program – created in partnership with Canadian Tire – raised $45,657 towards giving youngsters the opportunity to play minor hockey.
TSN’s #HereWeGo tournament hashtag also trended on multiple days throughout the tournament. In Quebec, RDS.ca generated 1.6 million page views, while its Facebook page had more than 80,000 interactions during the tournament.
