It's actually WME-IMG, so named because it is the merger of William Morris Agency and Endeavor Agency (WME), which later purchased International Management Group (IMG).
Going gray: Sports TV viewers skew older Sports Business Journal Have no idea how long this article will be made available. But here are some interesting graphs. Four of the five youngest audiences by a decent margin are soccer properties. Soccer goes 1-2-3 in highest % of Under-18 viewers.
Interesting snippet from an article on why TV sports ratings may be falling. I think would have more impact on MLS numbers than some other traditional sports due to the MLS fan age demographic. As cord-cutting increases (according to Nielsen, the number of people in the U.S. without pay TV went up by 8.4 million between 2012 and 2016 alone), fans are turning to alternate methods of watching their favorite sports. That trend is borne out in a more positive number from NBC’s Premier League coverage this season: Though TV viewership was down in 2016-17, the season was NBC’s most streamed ever, with increases of 24 percent and 35 percent in unique devices and live minutes, respectively, compared to 2015-16. If NBC and other networks can replace lost TV viewers with streaming viewers, they could survive and even thrive in the shifting landscape. At the end of 2016, U.S. digital ad sales surpassed traditional TV for the first time, according to eMarketer. In addition, providers are generally able to charge more for online ads, due to the streaming audience skewing younger. https://goo.gl/E5Olcl
@jaxx2009 thanks for this weeks compilation at worldsoccertalk.com Total Competition Teams TV1 TV2 3,003,000 UEFA CL Final Juventus / Real Madrid FOX; 1762000 FOXD; 1241000 2,052,000 Int’l Friendly Mexico / Ireland Univision; 1500000 UDN; 552000 1,330,000 Int’l Friendly USMNT / Venezuela FS1; 492000 Univision; 838000 286,000 MLS Timbers / Earthquakes UniMás; 286000 —; — 275,000 MLS Orlando City / Chicago Fire FS1; 211000 FOXD; 64000 256,000 MLS Sporting / Minnesota ESPN; 256000 —; — 91,000 NWSL Courage / Kansas City Lifetime; 91000 —; — 84,000 Manchester City Cup América Academy / Xolos Academy —; — UDN; 84000 63,000 Manchester City Cup Sounders Academy / Spurs Academy —; — UDN; 63000 Excludes the 25 million MLS viewers on MLSlive
Austin Karp @AustinKarp Fast national numbers for USA-Mexico qualifier: Univision/UDN averaged 4.5 million viewers. Best soccer audience for 2017. FS1 = 2.3 million
I found this in this article posted last May Given 66% of Millennials and 32% of older Millennials are watching to online services, and almost a 40% of MLS fans are under 34 years-old (plus some people over 34 can use the Internet), then that could account for the stagnation of TV viewer numbers alone. NBA have actually published the number of online viewers in the past. Maybe it would behoove MLS to do the same (unless the numbers are so poor they would prefer not to). Maybe ratings expert @jaxx2009 can help explain why these numbers aren't published, or if they are where we can find them.
WCQ numbers - English language channels Guatemala vs. USA – 162,000 - beIN USA vs. Guatemala – 954,000 - ESPN2 St. Vincent & the Grenadines vs. USA – 95,000 - beIN USA vs. Trinidad & Tobago – 550,000 - FS1 USA vs. Mexico – 1,262,000 - FS1 Costa Rica vs. USA – 241,000 - beIN USA vs. Trinidad and Tobago - 797,000 - FS1 Mexico vs. USA - 2.3 million - FS1 - SoccerAmerica Homes available (000) - 2015 beIN - 16.945 (14.6%) ESPN - 94,396 (81.1%) ESPN2 94,379 (81.1%) FOX SPORTS 1 - 84,836 (72.9%) - TV By The Numbers Homes available (000) - 2017 beIN - 22,744 up ESPN - 87,859 down ESPN2 87,731 down FOX SPORTS 1 - 84,724 stable - Sports TV Ratings
Some reports suggest only 10% or so of sports viewing is online. I can't say with a certainty, so we're only talking 20-40k for a national broadcast. And the different types of streaming platforms makes that number difficult as well (MLSLive - in Canada, ESPN/FS1, cable provider's online platform).
And the data on digital viewers is so sporadic, and is often delivered in a format that we are not accustomed to (nielsen data) so it becomes difficult to have any idea what the numbers are. My thought is that the numbers are growing rapidly on the digital end though.
According to Bloomberg about 5% of Premier League viewers watch the matches on Sky Go. that's about 44,000 on average. I suspect the figures are higher percentage-wise in the US as soccer fans tend to be younger. 10% sounds right.
A very solid compendium on historical TV ratings for soccer in the US was just released by Jonathan Tannenwald today (see below). He essentially documents the most-watched soccer games in U.S. television and online streaming modern history (from 1994 until today). It also appears that he got some support from ESPN, Fox, Univision and Telemundo, so the numbers should be credible. LINK: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/thegoalkeeper/306164231.html
That is an impressive table. That should show anyone who questions it that there definitely is an appetite for soccer on US TV.
If I read that correctly. Highest rated game overall, Germany vs Argentina WC Brazil2014. Highest English language game, USA vs Japan WC Canada2015. Highest Spanish language game, Mexico vs Netherlands WC Brazil2014.
I don't see ratings on that chart. To figure rating you would have to divide the viewers by the possible viewers. That would be different for the various years. Unless you are using "rated" to mean ranking.
The World Cup is event viewing even for people who aren't soccer fans so it's not always the best measurement of the sport's growth (although the fact that more people are tuning in suggests there's a large base of casual/on-the-fence soccer viewers that can slowly be converted into regular fans). I'd like to see a similar list for non-World Cup matches, since growth outside World Cup years is probably a better indicator of the sport's rise. I came across these numbers on Wikipedia and it's interesting to note that three non-World Cup games within the last six years outdrew any Stanley Cup final game post-1973--no Stanley Cup final game has broken 9 million since the 1970s. A couple of the matches did not involve the US or Mexico. A lot of these non-World Cup summer international competitions are still relatively new to the non-diehard soccer audience because they've only recently begun airing on networks that people actually get, so it's fair to hypothesize that numbers will grow as the general viewers slowly get familiar with them. It would be huge if Copa America moves to even years as speculated, and either ESPN, FOX or NBC grapple English-language TV rights away from beIN (I'm assuming they still have the rights).