Political ads find ice time — and eyeballs — during NHL playoff broadcasts
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OTTAWA — With election day on Monday fast approaching, political parties are looking for their last chance to advertise their cause.
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Luckily for them, they can do it on one of the biggest stages in Canada: the Stanley Cup playoffs. And it also comes at a moment when interest in hockey is peaking.
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This year's Stanley Cup playoffs features five out of the seven Canadian teams, which is the most since 2004. It's also coming on the heels of the Four Nations Faceoff tournament, which saw heightened national attention due to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and rhetoric about Canada.
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On top of that, last year's Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers was the most-watched broadcast in Rogers Sportsnet's history.
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'There are only two things that cause people to watch live television in numbers anymore,' said Mitch Heimpel, who was an advisor to former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole campaign and is an avid hockey-watcher. 'One is big live news events and the other is live sports.'
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'There were some echoes in these ads of the 2015 campaign when the Blue Jays were in the playoffs in October, where there were political ads laced throughout commercial breaks,' Heimpel continued.
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The battle of Ontario, which pits the Ottawa Senators against the Toronto Maple Leafs, is particularly crucial for advertising campaigns, as Ontario is home to many of the key battleground ridings parties are looking to win.
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The Conservatives have aimed ads at an older audience, as they try to pry those voters away from Liberal Leader Mark Carney. One of the ads features two older men golfing and discussing why they will be voting for the Conservatives. The video has also gone viral over social media, amassing over 4.6 million views on X.
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'The two guys in that ad are not empathetic characters in a political ad for anybody under the age of 60,' Heimpel said.
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The Liberal have notably excelled in the polls among older generations. According to Nanos' election tracking, 53 per cent of people polled aged 55 and over preferred Carney's Liberals, while only 33 per cent preferred the Conservatives.
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'The polling has demonstrated that the boomers are generally more in play and susceptible to arguments about the United States and Trump's impact on the economy,' Heimpel said. 'Those boomer men who have typically been dialed-in Conservative voters are, for the first time in years, the subject of competition in this election.'
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