Few if any Crew fans will root for a Cincy team if the Crew are ripped from Columbus. Period. It’s naive to think otherwise.
The change to the format seems to have made this a much, much better competition. The growing and strengthening USL is making the US Open Cup a much better competition too. 3-4 years ago I was an advocate of withdrawing MLS from both in order to concentrate attention on the league. My views on that are definitely changing.
Average viewership of Top Fifteen club soccer matches broadcast (combined with simulcast where available) on US television April 3-8 2018: 582.9k League of top rated game: EPL Man City/Man U NBC/Telemundo 1.659m Distribution by competition: LigaMX 6 EPL 5 CCL 2 UCL 1 MLS 1 Excluded: International friendly 4/8/18
Source for Top Fifteen post: http://worldsoccertalk.com/2018/04/12/watched-soccer-games-us-tv-april-3-8-2018/
Didn't see this mentioned, but LAFC did get their broadcast TV deal. https://www.socceramerica.com/publi...onfirms-partnership-with-univision-los-a.html
An English streaming deal with Spanish over-the-air certainly makes a certain amount of sense for markets like that.
Chivas and America can get those ratings in that channel. I did a quick look to see if I could find the ratings from last year elimination round to compare, I failed. The Group phase of the old format usually got shitty ratings, the first stage of this tournament (the one the crowned 1 champion to play in the Champions League) probably also got shitty ratings (no Liga MX or MLS or top Central American teams). But it would be interesting to see how the Elimination round (and the new format second round) are trending year after year. I liked the original format (4 groups of 4) but the rating were shit and teams complained of too many games, it seems that going back to an all elimination tournament paid off at least on TV ratings.
Meh. EVERYBODY'S TV ratings are down. Everybody. It's largely due to the fact that 22 million people have gotten rid of traditional cable/pay TV in the last 3 years and there's another 35 million or so cord nevers out there. When 17% of people don't have the device/connection that is measured for TV ratings, those ratings become much less relevant.
I know it was mainly a shot at the time to our when Dan Czech was trolling MLSTV poorer ratings and saying he didn't think MLS would get a huge TV deal because as he said MLS " is in Loss" He's seemed to settle down now.
A counter argument could be made for NBA they have done well this year. It's early but MLS ratings appear to be up I wonder if we will get streaming numbers from ESPN+
MLS TV 2018 TV Ratings ESPN Networks FOX Networks Univision Networks Week 1 HOU v ATL 469K UNI March 3 SEA v LAFC 456K ESPN Mar 4 SKC v NYCFC 180K FS1 Mar 4 LAG v Port 168K FS1 Mar 4 Week2 ATL v DC 576K ESPN Mar 11 RSL v LAFC 429K UNI Mar 10 Week 3 NYCFC v OCSC 239k UNI Mar 17 Week 4 FCD v Portland 198k UniMas Mar 24 Week 5 OCSC v NYRB 171k UniMas Mar 31 San Jose v NYCFC 115k ESPN2 Mar 31 LAG v LAFC 676K FOX Mar 31 Week 6 ATL v LAFC ESPN 259k Apr 9 LAG v SKC FS1 229k Apr 9 OCSC v Portland 189k ESPN Apr 8 Week 7 Phil vs Orlando ESPN 253k Apr 13 Chicago v LA Galaxy ??? Apr 14 ATL UTD v NYCFC FS1 197k Apr 15 Sporting KC v Seattle ESPN 248k Apr 15 Total Network Average 302.1k Average ESPN Networks 299.8k Average Fox Networks 305.3k Average Univision Networks 301.2k
Still looking for the Chicago vs Galaxy number and I could of sworn the Portland vs Minnesota game was on FS1 but I may have just watched it live thru MLS on Roku. If someone sees that number please post it. I was thinking we'd see sub 200k numbers on ESPN with all the NBA/NHL playoff games going on simultaneously as MLS games. Feel like in the past there was always that early wtf number from ESPN so if there was a time last week would have been it. Obviously there are still more weeks to go until MLS hits it annual summer ratings jump. So it's just a matter of weathering the early season congestion and the annual too early MLS TV ratings are down articles that come out only to say TV ratings ended up the beginning of the year.
How friggin' disappointing is that?! I've never been hyper sensitive to the ratings but come on, people. Two of the best teams in the league, including an undefeated front runner, playing in one of the better environments going at a time slot when you're not up against the heaviest competition or up too late... And we get this? Grrr.
I watched most of the game. The VAR stuff made me want to hang myself as usual, but the product in general is very good, miles ahead of where it was when the general public perception of the league was formed. Just gotta keep chopping wood. One humble question I'd ask: there are a lot of national TV games, spread across a bunch of different networks. All of those get taken away from the local packages, which in many markets are either extremely low visibility, revenue-negative, or both. Would reducing the national schedule and thus delivering more high quality games to the local packages create a net benefit?
Did you notice that most local games are on Saturdays while the national TV games are not? That isn't an accident.
I tried looking for the Univision Saturday number, but I could not find it even here http://www.showbuzzdaily.com/articl...cable-originals-network-finals-4-14-2018.html
I'd agree I would say though it's better than I though it would get during the timeslot there was NBA playoff games and NHL playoffs. We should be used to lower early season numbers happens every year until the ratings jump in the summer when it's just soccer and baseball. It's just a matter of not completely falling on our faces and holding our own. People tend to forget this isn't a fully formed league we are young thats accepted but when I say formed I mean fan base amongst teams. With only 23 teams which is 7-9 teams less than the other Major Leagues we will have these weeks were some games aren't what you hoped. When we get up to 28-32 teams I expect that low number we gripe about to be around 300k. Most new MLS converts became fans when their city get a team. But I'm encouraged the ESPN ratings held their own relative to MLS and FS1 has been solid the last two weeks from how they started 229k&197k vs 180k&168k that first week. I will go back to add start times to my running stats listed unless someone wants to find them and add them on my running weekly stats.
For ESPN you probably have an extra 35-50k on ESPND, and FS1 likely brings an extra 25-35k on FoxD, and that will give you a better handle on the real audience size for these matches.
Yes you are right but for statistical purpose we just have to report the numbers though I suppose we can add a * denoting that these numbers don't include Spanish numbers and state the historical range for those numbers. Some of these networks are so inconsistent with reporting numbers though.
Right. I agree completey. My comment was more for general informational purposes rather than a suggestion to adjust the data that way. We want this to be accurate, after all.