But in terms of recent games, don't discount the Olympic lead in. This isn't to say FOX Soccer and NBCSN aren't night and day, but its not the only reason for the much higher ratings. Also don't forget how many homes NBCSN is in than FSC. I don't have the #s in front of me, but I think it was on the order of magnitude of 2 to 1 ratio give or take.
Right now the FSC numbers are better than the NBCSN, when factoring in that NBCSN is in twice as many homes. But it is too early to make the comparison as NBCSN seems to be trending up. In the end though we should all try and ignore the need to compare NBCSN to FSC, it is flawed on so many levels and can lead to poor conclusions. What we should all be focused on is NBCSN trends, and then comparing NBCSN in year two, to NBCSN in year one. We will learn a lot more focusing our attention that way.
These games are going to overlap each other by roughly 15 minutes (assuming NBCSN does the normal 15 minute pregame which it looks like they will as they have the normal 2.5 hour window for the broadcast). If the games do overlap, it will hurt the numbers a touch.
I agree. There are too many variables to make a FSC vs. NBCSN comparison. I'd venture to guess a higher percentage of people homes with FSC are big MLS fans compared to the percentage of NBCSN subscribers that are big MLS fans. I pay a little extra for a sports package (including FSC and Gol TV) but get NBCSN with my HD cable package for example. I think the NBCSN trend over the course of the year is important as its year over year growth. But given that we are around halfway though the year, the FSC comparisons are inevitable.
Historically, Seattle does not move the needle a ton when they play at home, at least on a consistent basis. They have a bigger affect when they are the away team. Which may be nothing more than a couple of Nielsen families also being regular attenders at Sounders games. With the larger than normal crowd expected the likelyhood of one more Nielsen family being in the crowd goes up marginally.
Fox Soccer is no comparison to NBCSPN. NBCSPN is not a niche channel like FOX Soccer. The recent ratings on NBCSPN shows that MLS has a bright future on that platform. NBCSPN is putting a lot of marketing towards MLS. It has a few sports properties, but MLS is one of the key content. Now during the Olympics, many viewers are getting familiar with this new channel and it's content (including MLS). MLS is trending on NBCSPN, and I think it will finish the season way over their baseline expectation for viewership during the 1st season. I will take NBCSPN anytime over FOX Soccer Channel. It allows more viewers to experience MLS vs. Fox Soccer. NBCSPN production is superior over Fox Soccer.
Sounds nice, but I don't see any reason anyone should expect numbers that high. I'd say 350k would be great. No chance it gets more than 400k.
One thing for sure, it will be the highest rated MLS game on ESPN2 this season...I still think we are tracking to do over 400K+ on ESPN2....The games is pretty much sold-out in Seattle (meaning the whole stadium will be full...65K+)...The game has a good buzz, plus it is an important showdown in the West between two most popular teams in MLS.
What work? It has been mentioned/calculated numerous times in the thread. It is just simple math. NBCSN is in ~twice as many homes as FSC was last year. Up until the last two games, NBCSN was not averaging double the amount of viewers. FSC averaged 71k last year. Even after the recent bump in ratings, NBCSN is averaging 128k. Now with the recent rise in NBCSN ratings thanks to the Olympics and time shift to night time, the NBCSN numbers look much better and the trend is excellent. As I said though, people need to refrain from trying to force this comparison as it a very poor one to make. Just concentrate on the trends for NBCSN.
But NBCSN isn't in twice as many homes. Anywhere from 5-15 million homes difference isn't close enough to call "double" to make the math work for you. FSC, 40-45m .... 71K from 42.5m (right between reported numbers) = 1 household per 599 housholds available, rounded up. NBCSN 75m ... 128K from 75m = 1 household per 586 households available, rounded up. They're doing better at grabbing available viewers than FSC was and the season isn't over.
Well, it depends on the nature of the comparison. If you're simply comparing numbers of eyeballs watching MLS games on TV this year vs. last, in order to get a sense of the change in audience size, then it's a perfectly valid comparison. Now, if you're analysing the reason for that increase, then sure, the larger number of homes with access to MLS games might be most, or even all, of the reason, rather than growing popularity of the league. But I see nothing poor about comparing the number of people watching games this year vs last.
You are using slightly the wrong numbers for FSC and for NBCSN. I think you are looking at the 2012 FSC numbers and not the 2011 FSC numbers At the start of last season FSC was in less than 40 million households (38.8 to be exact according to article below). FSC picked up a good amount of households this past winter but that was after MLS was done. At the start of this season NBCSN is in ~76 million households, according to numerous articles below. Pretty close to twice as many homes but again this is a useless point to argue so feel free to have the last word on what is just a simple observation about household reach. Comparing the two stations does not make a lot of sense right now to me. It makes much more sense to compare ESPN to itself and next year compare NBC to itself. All in all though, we can all be happy that more people are watching MLS for what ever reason. Various Sources for the household numbers. https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/...on-a-3-year-deal.1800376/page-3#post-24082600 http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/111275439.html#!page=2&pageSize=10&sort=newestfirst http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...replacement-wont-be-able-to-compete-with-espn http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colu...11-12-29/nbc-sports-network-launch/52279744/1 http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com/mls-debut-on-nbc-sports-scores-disappointing-82k-viewers-15514
agreed 100%. I just think people are all of a sudden thinking MLS is twice as popular because of the viewership growth between FSC and NBCSN when in reality it is probably right in line give or take a little. The ESPN numbers being up are very encouraging and yes of course it is great to see the numbers as a whole increase no matter what. Most of the internet media will just report the hard numbers which is great PR for the league and only a few will really understand the affect of the household reach. And if NBCSN some how keeps up what they have done the last 6 games or so, they will be doing even better than the household difference says they should and that is yet another positive.
I missed this nugget in my first response. Where are you getting 5 - 15 million home difference? Even using your numbers (which don't match the articles I linked), it is any where from a 30-35M household difference. Your numbers FSC 40-45 million NBCNS 75 million
The primary weakness of that argument is probably not to revise the ratios between NBCSN and FSC, it's more that FSC's carriers are, to a greater extent, 'self-selected'. A lot of NBCSN's 'greater availability' consists of people who watch the History channel or the Bravo channel etc etc, and don't give a damn about sports at all. If NBCSN were available in 2x as many homes, you wouldn't expect from this fact that any program would rate 2x as high as a channel that was more focused to that audience, and that some of whom picked up the lower-carry channel specifically because they like that sport.
Ignoring the insipid debate I was sadly drawn into about whether NBCSN's 2012 76 million households is ~ double the size of FSC's 2011 38.8 million households, there is one small bit of information to learn from this. Household reach, especially for the smaller channels, is not static. They change from year to year, sometimes a lot some times a little. They can go up in household reach or they can go down. FSC was as low as 34 million just back in 2009 and has grown slowly and steadily from that number up to the low 40's. http://brandedcontent.adage.com/cableguide09/network.php?id=12 NBCSN was hoping to use the Olympics to increase its household count. It actually went down ever so slightly in the number of households it reached earlier this year as compared to last year due to one of the larger carriers changing the tier it was offering the channel in.
this is correct. Fox soccer channel is explicitly for soccer fans. NBCSN was barely known in the spring and is a multi level network. it is getting 200-400k? if it keeps that up it will crush FSC ratings. the negative nillies are in lala land right now.
It will be fascinating to see if MLS can hold a 170k-200k average after the Olympic lead in are gone. I think it may be tough but if the games stay mostly at night time, the numbers will certainly be better than they were early in the season when even MLS fans did not know where the games were being played. NBC has also done a great job with the channel, mostly due to the NHL playoffs (which had great numbers on NBCSN), and more importantly the Olympics which introduced the channel to a ton of new people.