God, is this depressing :-( I kind of wish we didn't know these numbers so that we could continue pretending that we are watching a product people care about...
A little over dramatic are you. We do this every year and numbers end up increasing. I did hear of additional numbers for the FOX (431k) and ESPN (301k) game from someone on Reddit but I'm waiting to get confirmation on the FOX/ESPN Deportes number as I haven't seen a public figure released yet with the Deportes numbers included. I'm also waiting on the Univision number. Also keep in mind we don't often get those Deportes simulcast numbers through the season and they only come out at the end of the year when official viewing numbers are released
Provide proof that apples to apples are increasing in a significant way. Ratings went up between NBCSN to FS1, and ESPN2 to ESPN, but that's not apples to apples. If you go back long enough, ratings went wayyyyyy up from FSC to NBCSN. Still, that's just availability. Now when will we see game to game ratings increases on ESPN? It's beginning to feel a lot like never.
For your own mental health, perhaps you should stop looking at the numbers? Just watch the games, enjoy them and go on with your day. Ignorance is bliss, after all!
This is all publicly available you know. But don't let the facts get in a way of a good pout. Are ratings where we want them to be no? But are we in this doom and gloom period without sunny days just on the horizon like you keep trying to insist to everyone.......NO. You are like the Randy Quaid character on "Major League" https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/med...ce-slight-uptick-in/xzu0158zao891v5alrv3vm9nn The NHL isn’t the only league to see a decline in its viewership. The NBA experienced a similar drop last season, and the NFL continues to make headlines with its TV numbers dropping over the last two seasons after a decade of seemingly unstoppable increases. “We have year-over-year growth. That’s not a story that everyone in the industry is able to tell right now,” MLS senior vice president of media Seth Bacon told Goal. “[TV numbers going] up in this day and age is something that we’re very proud of and very bullish on because we’ve done a lot of work with our partners internally at the league to make sure that every year we have the story of continued growth.” That growth can be attributed to any number of factors, but a major reason overall MLS TV ratings have increased every year since 2014 is that matches are simply available to more people now than ever before. https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2018/10/29/Leagues-and-Governing-Bodies/MLS.aspx
You keep doing this without understanding what you're doing lol. The NBA ratings are in the millions. The NHL playoff ratings are in the millions. MLS in in the LOW hundreds of thousands. They are not even in the same ballpark. There is no need to compare them. They don't compare CSI to Arrow.
DUDE you ask for numbers to show MLS growth I gave them to you. The only one keeping up anything is you and your trolling behavior. You asked for numbers because you PRETEND like you don't know what they are. I don't need to back up any thing. The NHL stuff was in the article not from me, you lack comprehension and are adding nothing to this thread with your low level analysis.BTW you do know the difference in regular season numbers vs playoffs, NHL regular season numbers are slightly better than MLS. The subject in the article was MLS regular season numbers. I'll let you keep moving the goal post to different things to keep from admitting you are constantly talking out your butt. You've always just been here to troll mainly looking at your post history. Your drama queen sky is falling act is old. You think year after year of TV growth would teach you something. But we get it you know it all. Then you will sit here dumbfounded in 2-3 yrs when MLS rights go for 3x as much as they are now. But by all means do you, but just stop derailing this thread provide something of substance besides the world is ending tomm. You've say the same stuff every year.
Maybe you should work on that? If you get this twisted over a sport, I’d hate to see how you are about things that actually matter.
You've been wrong the last 7 seasons but that hasn't stopped you. Maybe you'll get your wish one season you know that saying about a squirrel finding a nut, broken clock right once something something.
Think of it this way, one more person caring is still a positive even if a small one. Or better yet, watch what you want to regardless of popularity. The Premier League has increasingly bored me for a while now, and I don't feel pressure to watch more of it just because of good ratings.
The ESPN and FS1 numbers were not bad, about average. The Fox number was not that good for sure. 2 "bad" Fox numbers in a row if I remember correctly, maybe the Women's world cup (is on fox right?) will give them a boost.
But the NHL regular season ratings are much closer to MLS ratings, particularly on cable. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2019/04/nhl-ratings-wrap-nba-mlb/
The NHL over the air rating for 12 games is pretty good 1.3 million (relative to MLS), it is probably shit relative to the big 3 US sports leagues.
Correct the July 7 game is on after the Final. The big FOX numbers have been disappointing thus far. Some analysis the FOX and Univision numbers are whats dragging things down. ESPN across the board is up from last year, FS1 is up from last year, as well as Unimas. The FOX numbers will be offset as I'm not certain but believe there will be a additional Big FOX game or two announced down the final stretch of the season with Flex scheduling every season since FOX started carrying games have had at least 6 only 4 have been announced so far. The Univision numbers could be higher, I have no idea what the decision making process for the Univision schedule was. Nearly every game for the season includes FC Dallas, San Jose and Houston playing. It's not a exaggeration to say these 3 teams make up like 80% of there schedule. There is no schedule diversity. I know sometimes networks try new things to see if they can increase numbers but Univision whiffed here it wasn't broke and they tried to fix it. The exec that thought it'd be a good idea to air San Jose, FC Dallas, and Houston every week should be fired.
How much would MLS be worth to ESPN and FOX if contract negotiations didn’t include splitting the U.S. men's national team home games each year and the U.S. women's national team broadcasts, and if they were dealing strictly with viewership numbers rather than the premium that soccer in the U.S. seems to command based on potential? Half of the current $90M yearly TV deal is paid by ESPN. Based on average TV viewers in 2018 on ESPN networks, MLS averaged only 10K more than the WNBA (241K vs. 231K). Before signing a new deal with CBS Sports, the WNBA was getting $25M per season from ESPN for exclusive rights. My guess is the valuation would be around that ballpark, probably deserving around $30M simply because MLS represents such a small portion of overall soccer viewership in America. MLS continues to be a strictly speculative bet because everyone knows that soccer in the U.S. is enormously more popular than what average MLS viewership would suggest. Former ESPN President John Skipper said as much during the last negotiation cycle: "It's a futures buy. We're buying, you know, pork bellies - we think they're going to become more valuable over time." Coincidentally, Skipper is also a “renowned soccer fan, and one of the strongest boosters of MLS and the U.S. national teams at ESPN's headquarters. He has had a direct and personal role in ensuring that American soccer holds a place of prominence in Bristol.” There are several reasons to think that MLS is worried about the future when their current TV deals expire. First, they are instructing teams not to negotiate local deals past 2022 with the hopes of bundling everything together and squeezing out some additional revenue. This smacks of desperation in that they’re not confident of attracting enough money with national rights and therefore need to pool every last resource, even if it means losing money for the more popular clubs individually. Secondly, they’ve already announced plans to expand to 30 teams from the previously stated target of 28 clubs. Either this was done to try to add value to their product for the next round of negotiations by increasing their footprint, or to preemptively infuse cash into the league with expansion fees, in case there is little to no increase in TV revenue after the next deal. Again, the haste in expansion rings alarm bells. Lastly, ESPN has a new president that played football and probably isn’t nearly as bullish on soccer, or MLS specifically, as John Skipper was. The biggest intangible in dealing with MLS is that the ceiling for soccer in the U.S. is nowhere near what the statistics reflect for MLS.
I don't agree that the local deals have something to do with desperation. I just think that MLS noticed that some teams have terrible local TV deals and decided that they could get more for a package of all games than they get now by having each team sell the rights.
It's true that every other sport is declining in popularity while a record number of Americans (7%) picked soccer as their favorite sport in 2018. How much of this is attributable to MLS, which only captures 6-7% of total American soccer viewership, and how much of it is the combination of changing demographics and the exodus of fans from other sports? My guess is that globalization and a growing awareness and appreciation of world events and the global game has more to do with the upsurge then anything MLS has done. It's to be expected that MLS would be the beneficiary of some of this residual interest in soccer, but it's actually shocking to me how little of it has penetrated the domestic league. Rather than patting themselves on the back, MLS executives and their backers should ask themselves why, after over 20 years in existence, MLS is congratulating itself on averaging 276K viewers when random cornhole tournaments on ESPN average over 300K. Or why a Sunday telecast of bowling or poker re-runs still crushes a typical MLS game in the ratings. If MLS can't dramatically grow its brand during such favorable conditions, it better start coming up with more radical transformations than simply tweaking the playoff system or shortening the season.
Lot to unpack here, but lets start with your WNBA comparison. Alot more goes into leagues than just TV money people want to invest in a winner, Networks don't like to throw money at a loser or unstable league. Which is why you saw the AAF and most likely XFL struggle. The AAF was pulling better numbers than MLB,MLS,and NHL regular season games yet networks wanted no part for the foreseeable future of paying them a TV deal. Networks want to see the money they give leagues invested in the product on the field/court/rink not used to keep the league afloat The NBA subsidized the WNBA if teh NBA ever decided once in the last 20 yrs to stop investing in the WNBA it would disappear theoretically with any money the Networks paid the league. Second It's not really a fair comparison because the WNBA numbers are largely smaller than they were 10 yrs ago when the claim you are attempting to make was often heard. It's made less now because the numbers don't support it. The two leagues to the casual observer have went in opposite directions. Here are WNBA Cable Average numbers compared to MLS since 2012. The league is only shown on ESPN/ABC. WNBA has however just signed a deal with CBSSports Network financials haven't been announced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNBA_on_ESPN WNBA Reg Season TV rating since 2012 2012 180k Finals Average 778k 2013 231k Finals Average 344k 2014 240k Finals Average 659k 2015 202k Finals Average 529k 2016 224k Finals Average 487k 2017 171k Finals Average 559k 2018 231k Finals Average 481k https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Soccer_on_television MLS Regular Season ESPN TV ratings since 2012 2012 311k MLS Cup 800k 2013 220k MLS Cup 1.0M 2014 240k MLS Cup 1.9M 2015 245k MLS Cup 1.2M 2016 274k MLS Cup 2.0M 2017 272k MLS Cup 1.1M 2018 241k MLS Cup 1.8M /294k*= Total season OOH/audience(Watch ESPN app/ESPN+) As you can see WNBA is in the same boat MLS is vs NHL. The regular season numbers are somewhat comparable but the Playoff numbers are not. The same reason that make the NHL a more lucrative TV property than MLS applies to people making the comaparison with WNBA vs MLS. In fact over the course from 2012-2018 WNBA season avg on ESPN is 211k Finals average is 548k from 2012-2018 MLS season avg on ESPN is 265k MLS Cup average is 1.4m MLS going back since 2012 is averaging a little more than 25% greater ratings on ESPN but the disparity is more when you look at FInals where leagues show the largest audience pull they can draw. MLS is averaging more than 60% than WNBA there. This should tell you why MLS is a more valuable TV asset. Now thats just ESPN when you take it and apply it to the overall cable ratings MLS going back from 2012-2018 MLS went from 164k-276k and showed overall growth across all networks that strengthens the case for MLS and what they are selling. As far as the Twitter argument about MLS being subsidized by the USMNT that is a great fallacy. The truth is USSF is being paid market value of 15-30mil yr. There is simply not enough USMNT team games a year 8-10 to make it that much of a TV property that they should get the bulk of the 90m yr deal. Likewise applies to MLS. Both properties would see less individually than they would unified together under the umbrella of SUM for TV marketing purposes.