People will realize the names they hear all the time. Chelsea has a decent following in this country - not as much as Man United but you could argue, among English Speakers, just as much as Real Madrid and Barcelona. That's why I thought England vs Spain would have been the best matchup. And I think Ronaldo has a higher Q rating here than Messi.
As long as Bayern continues to ignore the U.S. during pre-season, Bayern will continue to be a weak brand in the U.S. Factoids: 1. U.S. viewership of Bayern matches in the Bundesliga: less than 100,000 viewers each match. 2. U.S. media rights fee for the Bundesliga: only about $1 million/season (GOLTV/ESPN Deportes + DISH Network combined.) For comparison: La Liga currently earns $8 million/season but will earn over $40 million/season in the next deal starting August 2012. EPL currently earns about $20 million/season but is expected to earn at least $50 million/season, if not closer to $80-100 million/season, starting August 2013.
The players union have submitted a request today to lift the ban on 6 players from both teams who are scheduled to miss the final. I think UEFA needs to amend the situation. The fans want to see the best players during the final. A player should only be banned for a real reckless foul from the final...Not from stupid yellow cards, and RED card for stupid judgement. The fans and broadcasters want to see the best players during the final. I wouldn't be surprised UEFA makes a ruling in favor of lifting that ban...
We should expect great numbers from the 2nd round of UEFA Semis... The Real Madrid vs. Bayern Munich should bring record numbers for F/X (especially with the game going into overtime and penalty kicks). I wouldnt be surprised to see numbers in the 600K+. This doesn't include the replays on FOX Soccer (Add another 100K-200K with the two replays on FOX Soccer) Fox Soccer and FOX Deportes will probably score 400K-450K and 700k+ respectively for the Barcelona vs. Chelsea match (Some more with the replays)
Why would UEFA even consider this? These are the rules. They are also present in the World Cup and the Euros. The teams knew the rules. The players knew the rules. It is what it is. When has this ever happened before?
In the World Cup and Euros once you reach the Semifinals your card count gets cleared completely. In the champions league it doesn't.
Just an FY1... ESPN2 has picked up two more La Liga games for this week...Spanish feed is going to be used for the English feed from the press release... Sun, April 29 5:55 a.m. Real Madrid vs. Sevilla (La Liga) ESPN2 / ESPN3/ESPN Deportes Wed May 2 1:55 p.m. Barcelona vs. Malaga (La Liga) ESPN2 / ESPN3 / ESPN Deportes
From @DarrenRovell via Twitter: Barcelona vs Chelsea on FOX Soccer - 437,000 viewers (ages 2+) Real Madrid vs Bayern Munich on FX - 627,000 viewers (ages 2+) == From @TVSportsRatings via Twitter: Man City vs Man United on ESPN U.S. - 1 million viewers (ages 2+), 88% male, median age of 28
This pretty impressive... F/X just broke another record from the week before...I had mentioned that we should see 600K+ on F/X for 2nd leg of Real Madrid vs. Bayern game... This is not including numbers from FOX Deportes... A great week for Soccer in the United States...These are great numbers for weekday games...
Last week updates: EPL (Liverpool/Fulham) on ESPN2 Tuesday: .22 Men 18-49 and 218k viewers. Some observations...College Students are more interested in EPL and International Football. MLS still has a long way to go. Once MLS succeeds in bringing more college male students, then it will improve the overall TV ratings for MLS. Some great numbers from TVSportings Twitter updates... EPL audience was 20% non-white. In 1Q, ESPN audience was 31% non-white on average. Among male college students living away from home, EPL on ESPN had a 10.15 rating. MLS on NBCS had a .28 Median age for Sat afternoon MLS on NBCS was 46 years. EPL on ESPN Monday afternoon was 28 years. There were 2 million Men 18-24 available during MLS time period. 1.7 million for EPL. (this means even with a lesser number available, EPL still pulls more from this demographic vs. MLS.
LA/NY (ESPN)- 508K Seattle/Union (NBC)- 98K Basically the exact opposite of what I predicted. I figured LA vs NY would get less than 300K and Seattle/Union over 200K with 150K at the very least.
Programing Alert... ESPN2 has decided to show the Barcelona vs. Real Betis game @ 3:55 PM (EST) on Saturday May 12th... And Sunday, we have the double-header on ESPN2....
F/X probably pulled another 0.4-0.5 in the overnight ratings... Final ratings should be about 0.4 for ESPN2 (550K-600k viewers) ESPNDeportes another 100K MLS ratings will probably stay around 0.3 (350k-400K viewers)/Add 50K or so from ESPNDeportes FX probably pulled about 400K-500K FX Deportes pulled 100K-200K The combined viewership for the other platforms probably reached 200K-300K
perhaps the other caveat is: Man City is not Man United. Hiestand: NBC needed more golf star power Sunday – USATODAY.com I wonder if an actual Red Zone type show would work or if it would be too labor intensive. Something like Soccer Saturday but with actual highlights. I feel the nature of the sport doesn't lend itself to this, but it may be something the average American sports fan could appreciate.
Red Zone like programs for soccer have existed for decades in Germany, Italy and France so it's definitely doable. The main problem probably is that in the US (like in the UK) there's no station that holds rights to all EPL games. Maye AJ can do a LaLiga simulcast.
From Sports Business Journal reporter John Ourand via Twitter: Man City vs QPR - 600000 viewers on ESPN2, 189000 Hispanic viewers on ESPN Deportes (via NTI-Hispanic subset, data not always reliable due to small sample size) Sunderland vs Man Utd - only 161000 viewers on FX (did not report # of viewers on FOX Deportes) Tottenham vs Fulham - 73000 viewers on FOX Soccer Chelsea vs Blackburn - 53000 viewers on SPEED (complete waste of bandwidth)
MLS viewership data from Sports Business Journal reporter John Ourand via Twitter: Philadelphia vs NY Red Bulls - 275000 viewers on ESPN2 Houston vs DC - 120000 viewers on NBC Sports Network
275k for Philly-RBNY after City-QPR. Is that pretty good for MLS on ESPN2 on a Saturday afternoon? Lead-in help?
Very average for MLS on ESPN2. MLS has been stuck in the 200000-300000 range on ESPN2 seemingly forever. Not anywhere close to being good enough for MLS to stay on ESPN2 after 2014. Won't matter much to MLS as long as NBC Sports Group (Comcast) is willing to work with MLS going forward.
It was the lowest rated ESPN2 this season by a long way. Ratings combined on ESPN/ESPN2 are up nicely from last season Here is the full set of data from this season that we are tracking on the MLS board ================= All times listed below are eastern ================================ 2012 Season NBC Sports Network Game 1: 82k (Dal vs NY). Sunday 3:00pm. 3/11/2012 Game 2: 124/145k (2.5 hour/two hour) (Phi vs Colo) Sunday 4:00pm. 3/18/2012 Game 3: 107k (2.5 hour) (Sea vs Hou) Friday 10:00pm 3/23/2012 Game 4: 76k (DC vs Dal) Friday 7:30pm 3/30/2012 Game 5: 123k (2.5 hour) (LA vs NE) Saturday 11:00pm 3/31/2012 Game 6: 126k/139k (2.5 hour/two hour) (Phi vs Col) Saturday 4:00pm 4/14/2012 Game 7: 79k (2.5 hour) (Chi vs Tor) Saturday 3:30pm 4/21/2012 Game 8: 70k (2.5 hour) (NY vs NE) Saturday 3:30pm 4/28/2012 Game 9: 96k (2.5 hour) (Sea vs Phi) Saturday 4:00pm 5/5/2012 Game 10: 120k (2.5 hour) (Hou vs DC) Saturday 4:30pm 5/12/2012 Average (2.5 hour) 100k ESPN2 Game 1: 337k (Por vs Phi) Monday 9:30pm 3/12/2012 Game 2: 344k (DC vs NY) Sunday 6:00pm 4/22/2012 Game 3: 275k (Phi vs NY) Sunday 12:30pm 5/13/2012 Average 319k ESPN Game 1: 217k (NY vs Colo) Sunday 4:00pm 3/25/2012 Game 2: 215k (KC vs LA) Saturday 4:00pm 4/7/2012* Game 3: 508k (LA vs NY) Saturday 8:00pm 5/5/2012 Average 313k ESPN/ESPN2: 6 games, 316k *Was moved from ESPN2 to ESPN ============================= 2011 Final TV Rating Averages ESPN: 4 games: 498k ESPN2: 17 games: 238k ESPN/ESPN2: 21 games: 288k FSC: 29 games: 71k Galavision: 18 games: 72k