Could someone update me on ABC and if they plan on showing Men's National Team games again? Thanks!!!
I'm sure once qualifying rolls around, they will. No need to show meaningless friendlies that cost the USSF a lot of money to put on. Sachin
Actually, there aren't going to be any USNT games on ABC until the 2006 World Cup, as reported by the Sports Business Journal a few months ago. Why, you ask? Because IMG Media/the USSF asked Disney to incur a bit of the "risk" involved with games. That was that, as far as I know.
I wouldn't be in too big of a hurry to get ABC to broadcast Nats games. The last four matches featuring the national team and broadcast on ABC were all losses.
More like the following: Cost of 2 hours of TV time on ESPN/ESPN2, which goes to 85+ million homes: $200000 Cost of 2 hours of TV time on ABC, which goes to 107 million homes, but only about 95 million homes will get soccer due to pre-emptions: $250000. Why bother paying the extra $50000 for most friendlies, which can't get more than an 0.5 rating anyway?
The NHL and MLS get comparable ratings on cable. On ABC, especially in prime time, the NHL does better. Even though this Stanley Cup Finals on ABC averaged a 2.9, MLS couldn't even dream of getting those numbers 2002 NHL Ratings on ABC: NHL ON ABC-SATURDAY....1/05/02..1.3..1,357,000 NHL ALL-STAR GAME......2/02/02..1.8..1,863,000 NHL ON ABC-SATURDAY....3/09/02..1.3..1,373,000 NHL ON ABC-SATURDAY....3/17/02..1.2..1,251,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....4/20/02..1.1..1,205,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....4/27/02..1.5..1,538,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....5/04/02..1.5..1,562,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....5/11/02..1.5..1,589,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....5/18/02..1.9..2,034,000 STANLEY CUP FINAL-GM3..6/08/02..3.3..3,478,000 STANLEY CUP FINAL-GM4..6/10/02..3.5..3,704,000 STANLEY CUP FINAL-GM5..6/13/02..4.2..4,470,000 And, from this season: NHL ON ABC.............01/11/03...1.2...1,305,000 NHL ALL-STAR GAME......02/02/03...1.7...1,864,000 NHL ON ABC.............02/08/03...1.3...1,381,000 NHL ON ABC.............03/15/03...1.0...1,041,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....04/12/03...1.1...1,186,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....04/19/03...1.2...1,304,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....04/26/03...1.1...1,136,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....05/03/03...1.5...1,559,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....05/10/03...1.6...1,734,000 NHL PLAYOFFS ON ABC....05/17/03...1.0...1,078,000 STANLEY CUP FINAL-GM3..05/31/03...2.0...2,167,000 An MLS match in prime time on ABC would likely make the Stanley Cup Finals look like the last episode of M*A*S*H, ratings-wise. And as for friendlies not getting better than a .5: NATIONAL TEAM VS ECUADOR...3/10/02...1.3..1,335,000 NATIONAL TEAM VS URUGUAY...5/12/02...0.8....858,000 NATIONAL TEAM VS HOLLAND...5/19/02...0.8....872,000
After you throw out all the viewers above the age of 55, all those viewers who don't have cable/satellite, etc. that advertisers don't want anything to do with, you'll be down to about an 0.5. Network broadcast TV still get the higher ratings compared to cable/satellite because there are still people (about 20% of the US) who don't have pay TV. Advertisers, especially those who target particular niches, usually don't want to pay for these eyeballs.
Don't forget to throw out left-handed people, people with more than two cats, and people who suffer from gout. So you're saying that a substantial portion of the estimated audience for Nats' games is demographically undesirable? Please show me some studies to back that up. I've got ESPN's audience profiles for MLS, I'm curious as to why they'd be substantially off from Nats watchers. I'd be curious as to why the TV audience for Nats games would be substantially different from the in-stadium audience. And I'm really curious why, when looking at broadcast ratings, you'd throw out people who don't have cable or satellite. They're watching, aren't they? That isn't what you said. Anything else you'd care to get wrong before I go to work?
You should know better than this. The decision to not pay or not pay the extra money for time on ABC rather than ESPN isn't driven by the bigger ratings on ABC, which are the result of viewers without cable/satellite TV who are tuning in. Viewers without pay TV have limited choices of what they can watch. Sponsors know this. They also know that this group tends to be over 55 or they fall below the minimum desired income level so they have little discretionary income. Sponsors for soccer telecasts only pay for a subset of the audience, not the entire audience. Since sponsors for soccer are going after a niche, targeted audience (i.e. adults 54 and under, perferably 18-35, with a minimum level of income, which generally means the targeted audience has pay cable/satellite TV), you want to deliver as much of that targeted audience as possible at the minimum cost. A 1.0 on ABC means nothing to your sponsors if your sponsors are not willing to pay for viewers above 55, viewers who don't have pay cable/satellite TV, and viewers below a certain income level. ESPN and ESPN2, being cable/satellite pay TV channels, delivers the targeted audience for US soccer to sponsors more efficiently at 20% less cost than ABC, without the pre-emption headaches that plagued US Soccer telecasts in the past (i.e. telethons, infomercials, etc.) US Soccer TV properties are no longer in "growth" mode (the growth phase ended in 1998). It has been a mature product for the last 5 years. Mature products are run for maximum cash generation at minimum cost.
And of course the other main difference between Hockey games and Soccer games on TV is the amount of commercial time that can be sold.
Two points: - First, I'm in no hurry for the USMNT or MLS to have games on ABC because then local affiliates will be free (as they've done many times before) to pre-empt those broadcasts. ESPN/2 can't be pre-empted. Obviously, we sometimes run into the previous live sports event running past its alloted time (just as soccer sometimes does). But I'd rather deal with that relatively rare occurence than a local affiliate deciding they'd rather show fly fishing than soccer (for example, the Raleigh-Durham ABC affiliate decided not to show the WC Final live). - Second, I assume this whole broadcast vs. cable/satellite debate will become far less relevant by 2006, right? I mean, isn't that the deadline by which Congress said that all broadcast stations must switch from analog to digital broadcasts? That'll mean that anyone who wishes to watch TV in this country will need to have a digital system (cable, sat TV, a digital-ready TV or some sort of digital converter for their old TV). Won't that mean that, in essence, the substantial audience advantage that the braodcast networks have today will be substantially diminished? I mean, in an all-digital world, just how many more people will be able to see ABC than espn2 ... especially by 2006?
I'm still trying to understand how these two statements aren't contradictory: Which I read as "You get more people on ABC, but it's an extra $50,000, so why do it?"; And Which I read as "They don't even look at it in those terms." What am I missing now?
Aren't ratings for ESPN based on the number of households that can get it? Plus, are there really that many people who can't get ESPN??? I mean, that they'd make Ollie's ".5" true even tho Kenn provided those .8 games? That would imply that 37.5% of US households with TVs can't get ESPN, even if Ollie is right and I'm wrong about how ratings are determined. Ollie, you're the TV expert, but I'm baffled.
US Television Households, April 2003: 106,641,910 (so sayeth Nielsen) ESPN subscribers as of February 28, 2003:86,700,000 (so sayeth Cable Program Investor magazine) Percentage of US TV Households who get ESPN: 81.3% Basic cable customers as of May 2003: 71,897,250 Percent penetration: 67.4% You think people without cable are watching soccer? Given what we know about soccer's demographics? DirectTV supposedly has more than 11 million subscribers while Dish Network supposedly has 8.2 million, with plans to add another million this year. That's about 20 million, counting everybody else, and we don't know how many people have both (I'm not sure if in some areas you still have to keep your cable to get local channels or not). But it would be 80-90 million people with either cable or satellite or both, probably about 85% of country. But the rest of those people are so soccer-crazy that they run to soccer when it's on ABC, enough to jack up the ratings from .5 to .8? Oh, but wait, they're mostly 55+ or left-handed or have scurvy, not desirable at all. Even though no more than a third of ESPN's MLS audience is 55+. I'm sure the Nats skew much, much older.
I think you missed Oliver's point. If a household does not have cable or dish, doesn't it seem likely that they have less money, or are less prone to purchasing what they don't need. Less prone than those who have paid for hundreds of TV channels? And if a household has a choice of maybe six channels when a soccer match is on, doesn't it seem more likely that they might watch, since they don't have 150 other channels to choose from? Advertisers don't pay for random viewers, they pay for those they believe will fall for their advertising.
No, I didn't miss his point. He overstated the extent of his point. I fail to see how a significant portion of those who watch soccer on television would fall into the group of people who don't have cable or satellite, especially a big enough portion to substantially effect the ratings. Especially since abut 80-85% of the country has cable or satellite. Of course, advertisers target demographics. Soccer has those demographics. He just got the ratings wrong. Nats friendlies do better than a .5.
ABC had EXCLUSIVITY on its USMNT telecasts, while ESPN/ESPN2 usually had to share its USMNT telecasts with Telemundo. USMNT friendlies and qualifiers only get about an 0.5 rating on ESPN/ESPN2, but could get 0.8-1 on ABC (due to exclusivity). The English-speaking crossover audience (however small) that watch Telemundo instead of ESPN/ESPN2 fall through the cracks. Bottom line: USSF/TWI now only use ESPN/ESPN2 and Telemundo and they no longer use ABC (Dan Flynn mentioned the plan during the 2002 USSF AGM in San Francisco). Why pay the extra $50000 per telecast when the sponsors aren't willing to pay a premium for being on ABC to cover the extra cost?