Here's How Turner Sports and ESPN Grew Female NHL Audiences by Double-Digits

In the first year of the NHL’s new TV rights deal with Turner Sports and Disney, the networks are not only seeing total audience gains over former rights holder NBC Sports, but an increasingly young and diverse audience—one that has considerably more women than last season. As playoffs get under way, Turner Sports is averaging 361,000 viewers across 51 telecasts on TNT, up 26% over now-shuttered NBC Sports Network. But female viewership for NHL on TNT’s regular season live game coverage has increased 56% vs. 2020-21 NHL regular games on cable. At ESPN, across 18 games, the number of women watching is up 73% versus NBC Sports Network, and 11% on ABC versus NBC. “We are so blessed to have our partnership with the networks, especially with TNT who is drawing this younger and more female audience, it’s right in line with our objectives as a brand,” Heidi Browning, CMO of the NHL, told Adweek. “ESPN has phenomenal female talent on air, on ice level and in leadership positions.” A lot of that growth is coming from making the games as accessible as possible and reaching audiences outside of linear through digital platforms and social media. “Hockey and the NHL have been put on a much larger stage through this partnership, but it’s not enough to just leave the partnership on that larger stage, we have to make sure it’s accessible,” Jen Zudonyi, senior director of brand and consumer marketing at WarnerMedia, told Adweek. “Our charge as a partner of the NHL is to keep propelling the game forward and driving growth with this broad, nuanced audience. And that means telling all different types of stories that different types of fans want to hear.” Behind the scenes, the team at Turner has a research group that is “constantly” listening on social and looking at ratings statistics to identify trends to help promote the NHL, such as this increase in female viewership. “The strategy is to reach, in this first season, the broadest audience possible, but know that broad audience has its nuances,” said Zudonyi. “When you look at the ecosystem that we've built, it's a one-stop-shop for fans ... to get into hockey. Not only get into hockey, but to find different ways to engage with hockey,” she added. The strength of digital Digital platforms, like TikTok, Twitter and YouTube, have been a huge resource for the NHL, Turner and ESPN alike. At the beginning of its NHL partnership, Turner Sports signed creator Nasher, who will be doing livestreams on the B/R app attached to almost every Turner Sports playoff game. “We're constantly looking for strategic ways to integrate the social, digital and linear brands,” said Zudonyi. “That is the strategy, and that will continue to be the strategy. It won't just be let's take this NHL property and think of it as a linear property only. It will be how can we reach across the aisle?” For Turner, those properties include HighlightHer, B/R Kicks and B/R Open Ice, among others. “We’re uniquely positioned to reach the broadest possible audience and that includes women and that includes non-binary people and includes every different type of fan that there is,” said Zudonyi. ESPN created a TikTok account specifically for the NHL, which Laura Gentile, evp of commercial marketing, networks and ESPN, said was influenced by both the female-skewing and younger-skewing audiences on the platform. The NHL has a partnership with TikTok, and Browning said that 37% of the its followers are female, featuring content like live music streams, interviews with players and more custom content. “These are the things that really matter, not only to female fans but young fans. They want to know the whole athlete,” said Browning. The sweet spot for the NHL comes from a combination of linear and digital properties, with both driving engagement on the other. “We've focused a lot on those connection points,” said Browning, pointing to programs like #StanleyTweets. “It goes from broadcast to digital, to real life, back to digital. Those are the kinds of programs that we were trying to implement moving forward, and we know that female fans really love to engage, really love to show and share their voice and their perspective.” Marketing dollars are moving Based on these growing audiences, Turner Sports has shifted the way its spending its marketing dollars as it navigates its first year as partners with the league. “Most of our market dollars are going toward bringing in fans that might not be constantly watching on linear, might not be heavy linear viewing audience, that audience tends to skew a bit older, more male, a bit less diverse,” said Zudonyi. “All of my effort, all of my resources, time budget, creativity is going to go toward the audiences that might not only be engaging on linear television.” ESPN also sees a further opportunity to invest in these underserved audiences, and launched campaigns across all of the Walt Disney properties, including ABC, National Geographic and Hulu. “We basically pulled out all the stops to get in front of women in any way possible,” said Gentile. “It's just a super exciting opportunity to see this kind of growth in year one. We feel like gosh, there's just more investment has to be made and more focus has to be paid to women and we’ll continue to grow hopefully the universe of fans for the NHL.” Looking to next season There’s still plenty of room to grow audiences in the NHL, and looking towards future seasons, Turner Sports, ESPN and the NHL think they can drive even more engagement. “Women are a huge part of an overall emerging strategy that we’re very bullish on,” said Zudonyi. “As we think about the ’22-23 season, we're going to make sure that we're understanding a bit more deeply why that 56% increase is happening, and where fans were female fans are watching, and then make sure that we're showing up in in those places.” While Turner Sports and ESPN are definitely not new to sports, there’s been plenty to learn in the first season of having the NHL. “We're not going to market the NHL through a traditional linear marketing lens,” said Zudonyi. “That's probably the biggest learning—every decision we make needs to be with the fan at the center of that decision-making process.” Gentile and Browning echoed Zudonyi’s sentiments on approaching marketing with the fan at the forefront. “We have a lot of women in the booth, especially in the playoffs,” said Gentile. “From day one, we've really looked at hockey as an opportunity to grow a female audience, but also do so with a message that spoke to all fans.” Gentile sees local markets as an opportunity to create even more local fans. “We know that there’s hockey moms in pretty much every community, so how can we get even more local and specific?” said Gentile, noting that she and Browning have been in discussions on how to double down with team communities. “It’s just also an opportunity from a participation standpoint. More and more girls playing ice hockey themselves, so we have the opportunity to market the game to a younger generation and just grow a next generation of fans,” said Gentile.