I'm not claiming ESPN is interested in MLS, but based on what I saw today anyone who claims ESPN isn,t interested in soccer is on crack. I saw Sportscenter twice today, at 4pm and 10pm MST. In the middle of Super Bowl week, the single biggest sporting event in American culture, both times they led with Barca-Real. The second time they followed it with ManU-Southampton and Mexico-Denmark, followed by a preview of Mexico's 2013 schedule. Now to be fair, the second time they rolled right out of Mexico-Denmark into SC, so leading with soccer to a soccer audience had to play into it, but the first time they rolled out of PTI into Barca-Real highlights. On Super Bowl week!
I will have to take your word on it as far as coverage...the last month of ESPN has been amongst the worst programming ever.. -covering the lakers crisis -covering all NY related anything -College Athlete has make believe girlfriend -Deer Antlers -PED, hating on juicing baseball players (by the same press that hyped their juiced up home run chases -Who would and who wouldnt let their kids play Football -On top of that we're in the midst of 2 weeks of Super Bowl pregame show before the actual 5 hour pre-game show on game day We finally get a soccer match and the National team lays a stinker in attendance and performance, followed by a much better showing by the nations most popular soccer team..Mexico.
Here is the TV schedule for MLS in Canada this season. MLS announces 30-game TV schedule for TSN/RDS in Canada
Toronto will have an additional 11 matches on TSN that would technically be regional matches. http://www.wakingthered.com/2013/2/5/3955598/tsn-schedule-for-2013-announced
It is a related article http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/21/nielsen-ratings-expand-definition-of-tv-households-to-include-in/ Essentially Nielsen is finally coming into the 21 century by including some internet services in their definition of household. However, contained in the short article is the point that many try to make, the industry does not really care about the ratings we see and debate here, only the commercial ratings (for that reasons online services without commercials don't count). SO when folks talk about whether MLS ratings are good/bad/indifferent; they need to remember the commercial ratings of MLS against other sports is what really matters. On that topic, how Nielsen would weight a soccer broadcast since the advertisers are getting TV time through out the game as opposed to in "spots" is unknown.
http://sonofthebronx.blogspot.com/2013/03/nbc-sports-network-nba-tv-mlb-network.html The RSL-Seattle Desert Diamond Cup did 95k on NBCSN last weekend.
holy crap. I had to read that twice to make sure that was the real number. That 95k preseason number beat 16 regular season games on NBCSN last season. Was there some incredible lead in that helped this?
More people are inside (and opting to watch tv) in the cold(er) weather of Feb (relative to the months when a lot of those regular season games were played in 2012). Viewing levels for all of television content are regularly higher in Dec-Feb when compared to the yearly average (or other monthly/seasonal averages). (Also, it might help a bit that this was the national tv "season premiere" episode/game for the league, and viewers may have been "starved" for MLS content and turned out in somewhat strong numbers -- having been without fresh content from the league for about 3 months.)
Is there a way to import a table from Microsoft Word or from Microsoft Works Spreadsheet into a post so that I don't lose the formatting? I am not sure which format I should use this year to be neat and clean.
San Diego State vs Nevada college basketball, which according to the same link with the NBCSN data, had 48k viewers
If you have excel you can use this - http://www.notunusual.net/2012/11/02/bigsoccer-com-excel-table-builder-script/
wow. I can't get over how good this number is. Hope it is a good sign for the season because we are going to need a higher game to game average to stay even with last year because there will be no Olympic boost.
I don't think so, at least in terms of a direct lead in since NBC did not schedule EPL/MLS double headers from what we can tell. It certainly can't hurt though since they will likely pub the MLS telecasts during the EPL telecasts, but direct lead ins tend to be more affective than just publicizing during a different time slot.
I'm impressed with the number too, hope it's a sign of good things to come. My guess is the Sounders fans (who seem to pop up no matter where they play - so it's not a stretch to think a bunch of them watched) plus general withdrawl among the MLS rank and file fans fed this good tv number. If anything, I'm more perplexed by the SDSU number. I know the Aztecs don't have much of cache outside of San Diego County, but they've been in and out of the top 25 all season. I guess it goes to show if it's not a popular NCAA team or the tourney, the audience tends for college basketball to be limited to the markets involved in the game - not all that different from MLS in the sense of what feeds the nationally televised viewership. But still..surely they could have gotten more than 50k in metro San Diego alone, no?
Does NBCSN ever promote their college baseketball games? Their coverage seems scattered and as far as i know they don't have a contract with any conference. Hopefully they can get the Big East and/or Mountain West (as a SDSU fan...despite going to UCSD haha)
I feel I shouldn't have to point out that NBCSN already has a deal with the MWC when we're discussing a SDSU-Nevada game they just aired. New Big East deal will go to FOX Sports, old Big East to ESPN.
I watched a pretty great commercial on Fox Soccer yesterday which said: "Giants of soccer clash this Tuesday... First, Real Madrid vs. Manchester United Then, Houston Dynamo vs. Santos Laguna" I had a nice little chuckle.