• The KillerFrogs

ESPN Hemorrhaging

C

Chieves

Active Member
fwfrog said:
Are you saying that in a given week that more people attend pro games and view pro games than college games? I’ll bet that college beats them in both categories, hands down.
Click to expand...

16 games (at the most) in the NFL divides up eyeballs up much less than the 60 or so games that FBS (and ONLY FBS!) puts on each week. Just think DFW- it's a Cowboys town, but how many different universities are represented in that mix? Plus factor in the folks that never went to college.

College might beat NFL on a total basis per week, but a single game has to be in a perfect storm to match an average NFL broadcast. And I'm saying this as somebody who couldn't be more bored by what the pros put out each week.
 
Zubaz

Zubaz

Member
fwfrog said:
Are you saying that in a given week that more people attend pro games and view pro games than college games? I’ll bet that college beats them in both categories, hands down.
Click to expand...
Of course not. There are 14-15 NFL games in a given week, compared to 50+ college football games.

What I'm saying is that in terms of ratings, people watching any single game, College isn't anywhere close to the NFL in most cases. Look at any given week where the most watched broadcast games in college draw about a 3.0, and compare it to Monday Night Football, on cable, drawing double that. The CFP drew a 18 rating, that's slightly above average for a regular Sunday NFL game. To say nothing of the NBC Sunday Night broadcasts that, despite being significantly down in 2017, were still well over a 10.0 for regular season games. By that measure, NFL is still far and away the most popular sport in the country, and it's not particularly close.
 
cheese83

cheese83

Full Member
Wexahu said:
I think making CC games de facto playoff games is a terrible idea. Schedules are too imbalanced within the conferences for that game to mean any more than what it really is, an extra regular season game meant to make money. It helps the team that wins and hurts the team that loses, that's good enough.

The fact that non-conference games don't count toward conference standings also stands in the way of the CC games as playoff games structure.

Given that there are almost 130 teams and wildly unbalanced schedules, trying to come up with an 8-team playoff system that is all black and white and wouldn't be subjective to a "committee" or computers is not possible. So they should quit trying. If we want the best teams in a playoff but we want to expand it to 8 teams, just keep everything like it is and make it 8. If they want to have a rule that no league can have more than 2 teams, fine I guess, but IMO if three teams from the same league have among the 8 best resumes, they should all get in. It wouldn't happen all that often (and yes, I realize the SEC would've had 3 this year but it was an unusually top-heavy league).
Click to expand...

Wel
Todd D. said:
Of course not. There are 14-15 NFL games in a given week, compared to 50+ college football games.

What I'm saying is that in terms of ratings, people watching any single game, College isn't anywhere close to the NFL in most cases. Look at any given week where the most watched broadcast games in college draw about a 3.0, and compare it to Monday Night Football, on cable, drawing double that. The CFP drew a 18 rating, that's slightly above average for a regular Sunday NFL game. To say nothing of the NBC Sunday Night broadcasts that, despite being significantly down in 2017, were still well over a 10.0 for regular season games. By that measure, NFL is still far and away the most popular sport in the country, and it's not particularly close.
Click to expand...

Ratings are tough to compare since most college games are on regional cable channels vs the NFL having multiple games on free channels.

Imagine the number if the Champ game was on ABC.

Interesting fact but saw that the big 12 champ game was a 3.8 with 6 million viewers compared to the SEC champ game at 8 and 13.5 million viewers.
 
W

Wexahu

Full Member
Todd D. said:
Of course not. There are 14-15 NFL games in a given week, compared to 50+ college football games.

What I'm saying is that in terms of ratings, people watching any single game, College isn't anywhere close to the NFL in most cases. Look at any given week where the most watched broadcast games in college draw about a 3.0, and compare it to Monday Night Football, on cable, drawing double that. The CFP drew a 18 rating, that's slightly above average for a regular Sunday NFL game. To say nothing of the NBC Sunday Night broadcasts that, despite being significantly down in 2017, were still well over a 10.0 for regular season games. By that measure, NFL is still far and away the most popular sport in the country, and it's not particularly close.
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to see what the difference in the "value" of a college football audience vs. an NFL audience would be to these networks. You'd have to think that, given a college audience would on average be more educated and thus have more disposable income, that that viewer would be worth quite a bit more to advertisers. I wonder if they even break it down to that level. Surely they would, but it'd be interesting to see what the breakpoint would be.
 
Zubaz

Zubaz

Member
cheese83 said:
Ratings are tough to compare since most college games are on regional cable channels vs the NFL having multiple games on free channels.
Click to expand...
Even the CBS, Fox, and ABC broadcasts don't touch regular season NFL. Regular season afternoon games do about a 9 or 10 rating, with the Sunday Night marquee game drawing in the teens. Highest rated broadcast for NCAA on broadcast is usually in the 5's and 6's.

cheese83 said:
Imagine the number if the Champ game was on ABC.
Click to expand...
Don't really have to imagine, as it was on broadcast television before 2011. It pulled between a 16 and a 21, which is of course dwarfed by the NFL's championship game (but then again, so is literally everything else).
 
Gary's Shirtless Revenge

Gary's Shirtless Revenge

Full Member
There isn't a business or TV executive in the world right now who, on a 10-year bet, would take the NFL as a business over "college" in the aggregate. Now, being in the college business is hard because of how segmented it is, but folks like ESPN are going to have incredibly leverage to go all-in over the next 5 years when all the bidding for the next 10-15 years will happen.

One example: A portion of the college business, basketball, will be the single most profitable "property" that ESPN will own and produce this year. Way more than football. They LOVE the CBB business.
 
F

FBallFan123

Active Member
Maury Brown has an article on Forbes up about the ESPN and FS1 total viewership for last year.

Rich Greenfield tweeted the relevant chart from the article....which shows FS1 up 2% from 2016, ESPN down 7%, ESPN2 down 22% and NBCSN down 18%.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mauryb...-modest-total-viewership-growth/#1bf92171681b

As ESPN And NBCSN See Drops, FS1 Sees Modest Total Viewership Growth

Forbes said:
But for 2017, Nielsen's calendar year saw 53 weeks within it adding an extra week over 2016 adding an extra week of programming. For the analysis presented here, I have normalized the data by using the traditional calendar year--52 weeks compared to 52 weeks. Why does this matter? ESPN, using the traditional Nielsen calendar year, shows an increase in total day viewership. By adding the extra week, ESPN garnered additional college Bowl game coverage. ESPN's accounting is not inaccurate for the purposes of industry standard, but it also does not present a true apples-to-apples comparison.
Click to expand...


Forbes said:
For context, the declines saw by ESPN2 were largely shaped by moving key opinion-based studio program First Take off the secondary channel and moving it to the #1. Still, while ESPN2 saw a 22% decline, ESPN did not feel exceptional benefit. Overall, ESPN saw a 7% decline in total average.
Click to expand...



 
Last edited:
WhiteHispanicFrog

WhiteHispanicFrog

Curmudgeon
The Artist Formerly Known as PhormerPhrog said:
No kidding. They'll be rebranding one of the channels as FAKESPNEWS.
Click to expand...

473CD3D5-C9E2-4B1F-AFD2-62B6878AA308.gif
 
Zubaz

Zubaz

Member
I had no idea 538 was even an ESPN property. Is it really even "political commentary" though? Seems Nate tries to keep that site very data-driven.
 
Zubaz

Zubaz

Member
FBallFan123 said:
Just looking at their recent twitter activity, it looks heavily devoted to politics...





Click to expand...

That seems more data driven than ideology doesn't it? I mean yes they post on "political" things, but they do so largely neutral and from a stats perspective, rather than from an advocacy standpoint that I think a lot of folks get more frustrated with.
 
Pharm Frog

Pharm Frog

Full Member
Todd D. said:
That seems more data driven than ideology doesn't it? I mean yes they post on "political" things, but they do so largely neutral and from a stats perspective, rather than from an advocacy standpoint that I think a lot of folks get more frustrated with.
Click to expand...

538 can be as political as it gets when it wants to and I suspect that you know that. Just because they use "numbers" doesn't make it apolitical otherwise we'd have to assume all polling is apolitical and that would be a very dumb assumption. The rating services I've seen indicate anywhere from "slightly left of center" to "left of center".
 

Latest posts

Top