Sports TV ratings, etc. Random sports talk

I was reading a couple of things this morning and one of them said that Nascar viewership was down 45% since 2005 but I find that hard to believe. I am not saying it is wrong just that it is hard for me to believe. Another thing I read was that even though the Superbowl was down in viewership this year ad revenue was the second highest ever trailing last year and last year went into overtime.

Back to the Nascar -45% thing does anyone know if that is the real deal? I figured most of the fans that jumped on in the 90's was gone by 2005 so thats why the big drop is hard to believe.
 
Most are saying NFL dropped from 7-12% this year depends on who is reporting it and Nascar was around 12% last year
 
AtomicPunk55 said:
I was reading a couple of things this morning and one of them said that Nascar viewership was down 45% since 2005 but I find that hard to believe. I am not saying it is wrong just that it is hard for me to believe. Another thing I read was that even though the Superbowl was down in viewership this year ad revenue was the second highest ever trailing last year and last year went into overtime.

Back to the Nascar -45% thing does anyone know if that is the real deal? I figured most of the fans that jumped on in the 90's was gone by 2005 so thats why the big drop is hard to believe.
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I think that's accurate.

NASCAR grew in the 90s but it grew even more in the early 2000s when it moved away from TNN and on to Fox and NBC. In 2005-2006 (my senior year in high school), NASCAR was still extremely popular. All the cool kids at my school still wore Dale Jr or Kevin Harvick jackets and t-shirts. It started to decline in the late 2000s but really fell off in the past four years or so.

I mean, my interest has declined rapidly. This past year was the hardest between Truex and Busch dominating and the races (and championship) being extremely hard to follow because of the stages. And if you tune in to a race late, forget about it. Race recaps are apparently so 2005.
 
all of them have been declining according to Neilsen

DSGIu5AWsAA3TRG.jpg
 
AndyMarquisLive said:
I think that's accurate.

NASCAR grew in the 90s but it grew even more in the early 2000s when it moved away from TNN and on to Fox and NBC. In 2005-2006 (my senior year in high school), NASCAR was still extremely popular. All the cool kids at my school still wore Dale Jr or Kevin Harvick jackets and t-shirts. It started to decline in the late 2000s but really fell off in the past four years or so.

I mean, my interest has declined rapidly. This past year was the hardest between Truex and Busch dominating and the races (and championship) being extremely hard to follow because of the stages. And if you tune in to a race late, forget about it. Race recaps are apparently so 2005.
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Wow if that 45% is accurate that is a big time huge drop. I know what you mean about the Nascar cool factor as people used to wear Nascar stuff and also had it on their vehicles. I keep watching but I don't feel like I am entertained like before as I really really liked ESPN in the 80's and 90's but either I changed, Nascar changed or we both did. Got my fingers crossed that this year will be real good.
 
StandOnIt said:
all of them have been declining according to Neilsen

DSGIu5AWsAA3TRG.jpg
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After reading that the chart was only talking about over the air broadcasts and then the fine print Im thinking it might not show a real picture. Now Im not arguing about ratings going down but you really need to show cable and over air to get to the nitty gritty. Chart was still interesting.
 
AtomicPunk55 said:
Wow if that 45% is accurate that is a big time huge drop. I know what you mean about the Nascar cool factor as people used to wear Nascar stuff and also had it on their vehicles. I keep watching but I don't feel like I am entertained like before as I really really liked ESPN in the 80's and 90's but either I changed, Nascar changed or we both did. Got my fingers crossed that this year will be real good.
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The smaller the tracks, the better the racing.
 
AtomicPunk55 said:
After reading that the chart was only talking about over the air broadcasts and then the fine print Im thinking it might not show a real picture. Now Im not arguing about ratings going down but you really need to show cable and over air to get to the nitty gritty. Chart was still interesting.
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I don't need to really do anything dude. You can munch and chew and sidestep and make it come out to whatever you want. Those are Nielsen ratings and the sources are listed. Believe it or not.
 
StandOnIt said:
I don't need to really do anything dude. You can munch and chew and sidestep and make it come out to whatever you want. Those are Nielsen ratings and the sources are listed. Believe it or not.
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Hey man I am sorry as I didn't mean you needed to anything at all and my bad. My point was that the graph leaves cable sports programming out of things plus the only college football games counted are on CBS and that leaves out most of the story. I wasn't trying to munch anything or do the 2 step or things like that as was just trying to get a handle on stuff.
 
AtomicPunk55 said:
I was reading a couple of things this morning and one of them said that Nascar viewership was down 45% since 2005 but I find that hard to believe. I am not saying it is wrong just that it is hard for me to believe. Another thing I read was that even though the Superbowl was down in viewership this year ad revenue was the second highest ever trailing last year and last year went into overtime.

Back to the Nascar -45% thing does anyone know if that is the real deal? I figured most of the fans that jumped on in the 90's was gone by 2005 so thats why the big drop is hard to believe.
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2005 was the peak for NASCAR.

page-5-nascar-chart.ashx
 
AtomicPunk55 said:
Hey man I am sorry as I didn't mean you needed to anything at all and my bad. My point was that the graph leaves cable sports programming out of things plus the only college football games counted are on CBS and that leaves out most of the story. I wasn't trying to munch anything or do the 2 step or things like that as was just trying to get a handle on stuff.
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I can't seem to find the comment at the moment, but the creator (Andrew Maness) had said on reddit that he chose CBS because they have a consistent package (mostly SEC at 3:30) while the other networks have had varied conference agreements and time slots. That does leave a lot of information unattended to. You're right that a ton of important sports programming has shifted from OTA to cable, and something else is that sports television in general has become much more saturated through the years. Average ratings may change but there are so many games on TV now that a lot of these sports cannibalize themselves in comparison to what their old ratings were. For instance, there were more minutes of college football viewed than ever before this past season but several of the networks were down just because games have been spread so thin across so many networks. FOX, FS1, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ABC, CBS, NBC, and God knows who else all regularly televise college football these days. This goes for just about every sport except for the NFL, and even they have gotten into saturating their television schedules with TNF, the early London games, the Special Saturday Editions of Thursday Night Football o_O, and so on.
 
FLRacingFan said:
I can't seem to find the comment at the moment, but the creator (Andrew Maness) had said on reddit that he chose CBS because they have a consistent package (mostly SEC at 3:30) while the other networks have had varied conference agreements and time slots. That does leave a lot of information unattended to. You're right that a ton of important sports programming has shifted from OTA to cable, and something else is that sports television in general has become much more saturated through the years. Average ratings may change but there are so many games on TV now that a lot of these sports cannibalize themselves in comparison to what their old ratings were. For instance, there were more minutes of college football viewed than ever before this past season but several of the networks were down just because games have been spread so thin across so many networks. FOX, FS1, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ABC, CBS, NBC, and God knows who else all regularly televise college football these days. This goes for just about every sport except for the NFL, and even they have gotten into saturating their television schedules with TNF, the early London games, the Special Saturday Editions of Thursday Night Football o_O, and so on.
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I really thank you for sharing all this info as I gotta say I had not even thought about some of it. I know what you mean about cannibal thing because sometimes there seems to be so many college ball games on it is hard to make a pick of what one to watch. To me it seems like the NFL is watering things down for all the reasons you mentioned. Thank goodness they don't have those double bye weekends anymore as there might only be one game on at 4pm hahahah.
 
Looks like the NFL peaked in 2015, the last two years are showing declines. This article had an abundance of whys

NFL TV Ratings Down Roughly 10% From Last Season


Overall NFL ratings for this season dropped by 9.7% compared to last season, according to data released by Nielsen on Thursday. This represents and even bigger slide than the 8% dip in ratings from 2015 to 2016.

Virtually every noteworthy NFL game program saw its viewership decline. NBC's Sunday Night Football dropped from 20.323 million to 18.175 million, ESPN's Monday Night Football from 11.390 million to 10.757 million and Thursday Night Football (which aired on NFL Network as well as CBS or FOX) from 12.438 million to 10.937 million.

Also concerning for league and television executives is the lack of blockbuster games that score at least a 15.0 household rating. Only the Week 16 matchup between the Steelers and Patriots reached that mark, while three games did so in 2016 and 15 games did it in 2015.

https://www.si.com/tech-media/2018/01/04/nfl-tv-ratings-decline-ten-percent-colin-kaepernick-thursday-night-football

 
Interesting details here about the new ESPN Plus standalone streaming app / service. It will start at $4.99 per month and will debut sometime this spring. Only limited live sports content will be available except to those who already have existing cable / satellite subscriptions. I imagine that they will begin structuring rights deals to be able to provide more content to Plus only subscribers, but they are trying to thread a difficult needle here. How do they make the digital only service attractive enough to be lucrative without accelerating the decline of the existing core business?

In terms of revenue and profit, the dire "ESPN is dying" talk is not happening. Disney's broadcast networks like ABC are declining sharply, while the cable networks are only down 1-5% depending on the metric.

http://awfulannouncing.com/espn/bob-iger-espn-plus-price-point-future.html

P.S.:

Spare me the "I don't watch ESPN because of their liberal politics" responses. This post is made in the sports TV ratings / industry thread, intended for sports fans who watch sports, regarding the largest entity in the industry.
 
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gnomesayin said:
Interesting details here about the new ESPN Plus standalone streaming app / service. It will start at $4.99 per month and will debut sometime this spring. Only limited live sports content will be available except to those who already have existing cable / satellite subscriptions. I imagine that they will begin structuring rights deals to be able to provide more content to Plus only subscribers, but they are trying to thread a difficult needle here. How do they make the digital only service attractive enough to be lucrative without accelerating the decline of the existing core business?

In terms of revenue and profit, the dire "ESPN is dying" talk is not happening. Disney's broadcast networks like ABC are declining sharply, while the cable networks are only down 1-5% depending on the metric.

http://awfulannouncing.com/espn/bob-iger-espn-plus-price-point-future.html

P.S.:

Spare me the "I don't watch ESPN because of their liberal politics" responses. This post is made in the sports TV ratings / industry thread, intended for sports fans who watch sports, regarding the largest entity in the industry.
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ESPN getting the regional networks in Disney's acquisition of Fox is huge too.
 
StandOnIt said:
Looks like the NFL peaked in 2015, the last two years are showing declines. This article had an abundance of whys

NFL TV Ratings Down Roughly 10% From Last Season


Overall NFL ratings for this season dropped by 9.7% compared to last season, according to data released by Nielsen on Thursday. This represents and even bigger slide than the 8% dip in ratings from 2015 to 2016.

Virtually every noteworthy NFL game program saw its viewership decline. NBC's Sunday Night Football dropped from 20.323 million to 18.175 million, ESPN's Monday Night Football from 11.390 million to 10.757 million and Thursday Night Football (which aired on NFL Network as well as CBS or FOX) from 12.438 million to 10.937 million.

Also concerning for league and television executives is the lack of blockbuster games that score at least a 15.0 household rating. Only the Week 16 matchup between the Steelers and Patriots reached that mark, while three games did so in 2016 and 15 games did it in 2015.

https://www.si.com/tech-media/2018/01/04/nfl-tv-ratings-decline-ten-percent-colin-kaepernick-thursday-night-football

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Peyton Manning's retirement had an effect too. I'd expect Tom Brady's eventual departure to do the same.
 
The more I read about TV ratings the more confused I am getting (please no wisecracks) because stories are saying that the age group that watches a sport or show is important. I read where the NFL doesn't like lower ratings but ad revenue is still good so things are basically still OK. Also networks like NBCs and FS1 could be doing OK with Nascar if they were able to jack up there price to cable and satellite companies. They said that auto racing is very expensive to put on TV so that comes into things to. The more I read the less I know hahaha.
 
If I am wrong about all this then please tell me but have some mercy hahaha. From what I have read a whole bunch of things like Coke, Special K plus sports and entertainment shows have got older people consuming and that is because the baby boomers are a big part of the population and the young boomers are mid-late 50's and older ones in the 70's. If I am understanding things right (could be iffy hahaha) some products are popular or unpopular with younger generations so one way you can check on how good your product is doing is to figure out the average age of the customer.

If your customer is getting younger you are a superstar and if it is getting old at the same time of the population that is just how it is but hopefully there are young people coming in and buying what youre selling. Another group would be a product that has customers that are getting older quicker then what the average is and what that means is you got a good group of customers but young people arent being added. One product I can think of that lost its customers is the Mercury Grand Marquis. Those were popular vehicles with retirees but after awhile those customers became less and less and demand went real low and no more Grand Marq.

When it comes to sports I got no clue how things are or how they go about figuring it out. If I had to make a guess I would say the Nascar and the NFL are probably similar in the breakdown of fans with the main difference being that the NFL has millions more fans then Nascar and others. Soccer seems to be on the younger side of things while golf seems to be on the older side. Thats all I think I know and sorry if I bored you to tears. I feel like I wrote a book hahaha.
 
AtomicPunk55 said:
If I am wrong about all this then please tell me but have some mercy hahaha. From what I have read a whole bunch of things like Coke, Special K plus sports and entertainment shows have got older people consuming and that is because the baby boomers are a big part of the population and the young boomers are mid-late 50's and older ones in the 70's. If I am understanding things right (could be iffy hahaha) some products are popular or unpopular with younger generations so one way you can check on how good your product is doing is to figure out the average age of the customer.

If your customer is getting younger you are a superstar and if it is getting old at the same time of the population that is just how it is but hopefully there are young people coming in and buying what youre selling. Another group would be a product that has customers that are getting older quicker then what the average is and what that means is you got a good group of customers but young people arent being added. One product I can think of that lost its customers is the Mercury Grand Marquis. Those were popular vehicles with retirees but after awhile those customers became less and less and demand went real low and no more Grand Marq.

When it comes to sports I got no clue how things are or how they go about figuring it out. If I had to make a guess I would say the Nascar and the NFL are probably similar in the breakdown of fans with the main difference being that the NFL has millions more fans then Nascar and others. Soccer seems to be on the younger side of things while golf seems to be on the older side. Thats all I think I know and sorry if I bored you to tears. I feel like I wrote a book hahaha.
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Obviously you want to attract and appeal to younger demos since tastes are usually more malleable whereas older demos are generally more set in their ways - of course, older viewers are also generally going to have more free time and disposable income. Really depends on what kind of product you're trying to market and who you think you need to appeal to.
 
AndyMarquisLive said:
The problem for me is that his championship really exacerbated everything that's wrong with NASCAR racing right now to me. His success was pretty limited to just the 1.5-mile tracks, and he was able to make it through every round of the playoffs and win the championship because there are too many of those tracks.

And it's funny because "1.5-mile tracks" is what everyone's used to write-off the significance of Jimmie Johnson's Reign of Terror... even though Jimmie Johnson was consistently winning at superspeedways, short tracks and one-mile tracks as well as at the Brobdingnagians.
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Gotta disagree here. With exception of Talledega Truex finished in the Top 5 in every race of the chase
 
Mispeedway15 said:
Gotta disagree here. With exception of Talledega Truex finished in the Top 5 in every race of the chase
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Take the 1.5-mile tracks out and he doesn't win the championship IMO. Top-three, absolutely. Championship, IDK, doubt it.

His unprecedented and historic dominance was because those tracks are an overwhelming portion of the schedule.
 
AndyMarquisLive said:
Take the 1.5-mile tracks out and he doesn't win the championship IMO. Top-three, absolutely. Championship, IDK, doubt it.

His unprecedented and historic dominance was because those tracks are an overwhelming portion of the schedule.
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last 9 out of ten races were top 5 finishes. Exception Dega. your nutz
 
AndyMarquisLive said:
Take the 1.5-mile tracks out and he doesn't win the championship IMO. Top-three, absolutely. Championship, IDK, doubt it.

His unprecedented and historic dominance was because those tracks are an overwhelming portion of the schedule.
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It's an excellent strategy tho. 1.5 milers are the most common style of track on the circuit, so it makes sense to try to make that type of track your best program.
 
StandOnIt said:
last 9 out of ten races were top 5 finishes. Exception Dega. your nutz
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"Top-5 finishes," not wins.

He performed better on the 1.5-mile tracks than any other track. Just a fact.

Kyle Busch won three of the five races not held at 1.5-mile tracks. Truex won none of them.

It's not "nutz" to assume that, had the championship come down to a "short track" (using NASCAR's absurd definition of a track a mile or smaller), Kyle Busch would be champion.
 
Johnny G said:
It's an excellent strategy tho. 1.5 milers are the most common style of track on the circuit, so it makes sense to try to make that type of track your best program.
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Agreed.

I'm really not knocking Truex here. I'm saying his dominance exacerbated NASCAR's biggest problem, which is the majority of the schedule consisting of one type of track.

Truthfully, if you take the same scenario but put Joey Logano or Denny Hamlin in this, most fans would've been bitching about how boring it was and echoing my thoughts.
 
AndyMarquisLive said:
"Top-5 finishes," not wins.

He performed better on the 1.5-mile tracks than any other track. Just a fact.

Kyle Busch won three of the five races not held at 1.5-mile tracks. Truex won none of them.

It's not "nutz" to assume that, had the championship come down to a "short track" (using NASCAR's absurd definition of a track a mile or smaller), Kyle Busch would be champion.
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huh? he won three of those out of the 9. You might apply some of your stick and ball to that to find out what kind of a batting average and RBI's that would be.
 
StandOnIt said:
huh? he won three of those out of the 9. You might apply some of your stick and ball to that to find out what kind of a batting average and RBI's that would be.
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He won three of the five playoff races not held at 1.5-mile tracks. LOL.

Truex had one win last year that wasn't at a 1.5-mile track.

Seriously, if we were talking about Joey Logano and not Truex, one of the nicest and most liked drivers in the history of the sport, y'all would be agreeing with me. I'm simply not letting my like for someone cloud my beliefs about the stale schedule.
 
StandOnIt said:
Then you need to say that about 7 time too around the foot in your mouth.:D
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You mean Jimmie Johnson, the guy who was winning at Dover, Martinsville and Richmond pretty regularly during his Reign of Terror?

Really, this is just like the other thread.

I like Natalie Decker and think she's a good driver. Even said my opinion of her is high in spite of her poor performances out here (mainly b/c I think that's more to do with the car than driver). I hope she wins at Nashville in a few weeks. But I don't think it's fair to say her fifth place finish is proof she's "the real deal" nor do I think her accident is proof she's not good. I just think that race was an anomaly because of the carnage.

And everyone knows I'm right that they'd be bashing Danica if she finished top-five under the same circumstances. A lot of people bash her for winning at Motegi because certain circumstances allowed for it. But they're in total denial.
 
Truex's season long cumulative average start was 6.8 and ave. finish was 9.4. Johnson never matched that in any of his championships
 
NBA Game Viewership At Best Level Since '12-13 Season
- Austin Karp

Heading into All-Star weekend, NBA game viewership on national outlets is on pace for the league’s best average since the '12-13 season. For telecasts across ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV, games are averaging 1.4 million viewers, up 15% from the same point last season. NBA games on RSNs also are performing well, with those games up 9% to date. Both ESPN and TNT are on pace for the nets’ best NBA viewership since '13-14, while NBA TV is looking at its best season average on record.
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https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Closing-Bell/2018/02/15/NBA-viewers.aspx
 
College Football Ratings and Attendance Declined; NBA Ratings Are Up — Does Politics Matter?
All of these data points raise more questions than answers. Could it be that football’s underlying issues with concussions and player safety are far more important to its popularity than we currently understand? Or is it as simple as the NBA — compared to football — is putting a historically-good product on the screen? After all, this season features a superteam (the Warriors), a number of compelling challengers, a series of crazy dramas, and likable stars who reach out relentlessly to fans on social media.

https://www.nationalreview.com/blog...eclined-nba-ratings-are-does-politics-matter/
 
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