Gary Bettman And The NHL 1, Everyone Who Made Fun Of Him For Putting Game 4 On The Same Day As NBA 0

(Ed note: Sorry for getting this up late to you. I had nothing prepared Sunday night and after a long day of work yesterday, I decided I would just take the day off from blogging yesterday.)

So maybe Gary Bettman was not as dumb as we think. If you recall a while back I said that Game 3 of this year's Stanley Cup Finals was the highest rated program on Versus ever. Well that is no longer the case. That honor now belongs to Game 4 of this year's Stanley Cup Finals. Yes, the same Game 4 that was held on the same day of Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Yes, it actually garnered more viewers than Game 3 of the Stanley Cup which had no basketball running up against it. From a Versus Press Release via Puck The Media.

VERSUS, the exclusive cable television home of the National Hockey League (NHL), garnered a 2.8 national HH rating and averaged 3,448,431 viewers for its Game 4 telecast of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final on Thursday, June 4, when the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Detroit Red Wings at Mellon Arena to even the series 2-2. The game, which peaked at a 3.4 HH rating between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m., was the highest-rated and most-watched Stanley Cup Final game on cable since 2002. VERSUS, for the 8:00-10:45 p.m. time period, was the top-rated cable network in the country among all key male demos.

VERSUS’ coverage of Game 4 was highest-rated and most-watched telecast ever in network history, beating the previous high set just two days earlier on Tuesday, June 2, for Game 3 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final (2.6 HH rating and 2,955,348 average viewers). Compared to the average of VERSUS’ two Stanley Cup Final telecasts last year (1.9 HH rating and 2,479,977 average viewers for Games 1 & 2), the network saw 42-percent growth in HH ratings and a 30-percent increase in viewership for the two telecast average of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final (2.7 HH rating and 3,211,572 for Games 3 & 4).

And while those numbers certainly do not compare to the numbers that the NBA draws for its finals, that is not what Gary Bettman is worried about. As long as there is a growth in his numbers, despite the fact that 10 million people are watching the Lakers annihilate the Magic, he could careless. So as the title says:

Gary Bettman, Versus, and the NHL: 1
Everyone who laughed at him and never thought that anything like this was possible: 0.

Once again, Game 4, the game that conflicted with the NBA, was watched by more people than Game 3, the game that had no conflict at all!