from deford's article on the si site: (thanks for the correction dark knight) "Moreover, the NHL's contract with ABC and ESPN will be up after next season, and given its ratings, which trail even bowling now, there's no assurance that the league will even make that pittance in the future." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The 'pittance" he is referring to is the tv money they get from abc/espn. Are soccer's ratings good enough to take hockey's tv money? it may be a pittance to them, but it's a lot of dough to us!
MLS can learn from hockey's mistakes. Their biggest problem was they expanded too quickly. Initially, this was a boon for the existing owners who received millions for franchise fees. As expansion ended, the easy money ended. Poor management, especially when it came to paying players is really going to hurt the NHL. IMHO, MLS is not falling into the same pitfalls as the NHL. A salary cap is in place. The have been wise in selecting new markets. Finally, they are not relying on TV contracts. Ultimately, TV will spur the growth of MLS, but it will be driven by factors other than the demise of the NHL on tv. I don't like seeing hockey suffer. Most hockey fans and players seem to be pretty nice individuals. I have heard countless stories of hockey players being very approachable. They seem to be the most down to earth athletes in all of sports.
I don't think the NHL's ratings are lower than soccer, but it being lower than bowling's isn't too surprising. I read a while back that bowling is a surprisingly big draw in the ratings for ESPN. I think if soccer can be anywhere near the NHL's ratings (that includes US friendlies and MLS matches), it would be a big step forward.
"We have a situation where each NHL team makes $5.7 million from national TV revenue and pays an average player salary of $1.6 million, while each NFL team makes $77 million in national TV revenue and pays an average player salary of $1.1 million. That is, an NHL team makes barely 1/14 of what an NFL team does from national television, but its average player salary is 31 percent more than that of the NFL. This is not a recipe for economic success." Wow!
One thing that always get overlooked as far as potential money from TV for Soccer is the fact that good ratings do not automaticlly lead to revenue. TV stations do not make money from ratings. They make money from selling advertising, and they use ratings to justify the price that they sell it for. A major problem with Soccer is that the game is continuous with no stoppage, so there's no place to insert any advertising space into the program. You can have a soccer game watched by half of the country and set all new records for viewership, but the station won't make a cent from it without commercials. The only space for commercials is durring half time, while hockey probably has 10x the amount of time for adds to be played (heck, by dividing the game into 3 periods they give themselves 2 "halftimes"). So even if soccer does have better ratings than hockey, hockey will still likely be more desireable to tv stations because they'll get better revenue from it.
Hockey is headed for armageddon after the 2004 season. Owners are not going to settle for anything less than a salary cap/tax, and they will do what it takes to get it. Even Brett Hull, who thought the players got "played like an instrument" in '94, says that something like 75% of players are overpaid. This will be interesting indeed. National ratings for hockey are low, but what allows hockey to stay big on TV is intense regional loyalties and thus, regional ratings. Hockey is not like football or basketball, sports that have a large number of leisurely viewers who aren't watching because they are die-hard fans of one of the teams that is playing. Right now, MLS doesn't have the big casual viewer numbers and there aren't enough teams to build on regional viewers. It should also be noted that the Stanley Cup Final series gets significantly better ratings than the other rounds of the playoffs.
This is true, but how do tv stations in Europe and other places in the world make money? The EPL gets big money for their games. If no one can make money in adds, then how and why or the stations overtheir willing /able to pay? What is the diffrence between European tv and US tv that I dont understand?
Pre-game ads, halftime ads, "pop-up" on the bottom ads during the games, logos on the screen during games, ads before post game wrap-ups and interviews. Also remember a lot of the broadcasters are showing the games to subscription viewers. You don't see ads on HBO but they pay for movies.
OK, then why cant we do that here? If a games on PPV or subscription tv, then ok. But they broadcast alot of game. If their are so few adds in a soccer game (pre, halftime, post game) then the cost of those ads must go for super bowl type cash. I guess I know the answers to my own question. If US soccer ratings were high enough, then ad buyers would be willing to pay for any amount of air time they could get.
Yep.. The ratings in overseas markets are so high that they can make money on less ad time. Also, the rights are sold to a lot of markets. Someday when there is a demand for MLS overseas (already is being shown in Great Britain and will be in Korea) the league will be making money instead of paying to have games shown.
Well, we don't generally have pregame or postgame segments in the US, because no one wants to give us (or pay money to buy) a large enough time slot for that sort of thing. The best thing about pregames is that you not only get to sell loads of ads during that period of time, but you can also rope in channel surfers who don't know ahead of time that the game is going to be on, but stumble on it during that half hour or more before kickoff.
I've wondered this myself. Part of it is the ad time that they do have is pretty valuable given the ratings. However, I imagine soccer acts as a loss leader for later programming jammed w/ commercials.
Guys, Frank Deford is the devil. If we one these boards feel that he is ful of $h!t when it comes to his opinions regarding soccer, why should we give a damn what his rationializations for hockey's shortcomings are. By the way, I love both sports. Deford opinions have no basis of being unbiased or factual and all of his articles should be treated in this manner.
What? His article about hockey is pretty right on. Anyone who's avidly followed hockey for any significant period of time would agree. Almost all of the 30 teams lose money every season. Teams have priced their fans out of the arenas, the league has too many teams and too many rule changes that the refs never enforce, thus making the game almost painful to watch compared to 15 years ago. They never addressed Canada's weak dollar and are in jeopardy of losing three more of their teams to contraction or to US cities that have no business having a team. The Ottawa Senators are the best team in hockey and they're bankrupt. They average something like 14,000 per game and the management says that that's not good enough to keep them there. Hockey's darkest days are right around the corner. Just because Deford hates soccer (which he embellishes because he knows how much it galls folks like yourself) it doesn't mean he can't write semi-intelligently on other sports. There's no way the MLS will even come close to making the stupid mistakes the NHL has made. There's less than half as many games in a season, plus there's no way you're going to price families out of the stadia. On top of that, the bigtime scumbag agents who are partly responsible for the outrageous salaries aren't interested in representing soccer players (at least they won't be in our lifetimes). As for European TV, many of the bigger countries (except the UK) only show 1 or 2 matches on the weekend on their national stations. Anything else is on cable/satellite channels like Canal+. The games they do show are the big ticket games, and they're scheduled in prime time without competition from any other games/sports. That type of programming just isn't possible in the US anymore, as there's just too much competition for our entertainment dollars.
First time I hear this. I'm surprised there's even a market(however small it may be) for MLS outside of the US. How often is it shown in Great Britain? Do they show random games, or specific ones?
Ratings Here's the deal from somebody who does this advertising thing for a living. US Soccer will remain exactly where it is on the sports television food chain. No higher, no lower. FSW will slowly build distribution to a point where we will see more mainstream advertisiers on the channel, and I think ESPN will concentrate their existence on the majors letting the second tier sports go. The majors being NBA,NFL, and MLB. therefore, in the 140 channel environment the ratings will be splintered even further and what one sport gets over another will not be the driving factor in advertising rates, but the specialness of one sport over another will rbing in the money. that being said, the NHL is way deep in trouble. Beyond repair actually. It is comparable to the first div in England where the TV money all but dried up and the contracts they're paying their players was based on the TV money and then nobody's coming to the game. Who in their right mind would pay 65 dollars to see the Chicago Blackhawks play the Nashville Predators? Bowling historically has been a strong draw both on network and cable. when it was on ABC it consistently outrated both NCAA baskets and golf. It was deemed too low brow and was eliminated. ESPN picked it up for Sunday afternoon and it has performed well. Don't read too much into ratings. Soccer will be on far more than it ever has been. Look at what we have now compared to five years ago, and if you go back ten years, we are certainly in the golden age. Oh, by the way, Jack Edwards still sucks. Ruf
Re: Ratings No one pays 65 bucks to see the hawks play the predators. Corporations may shell out bucks so they have tickets to dole out to VIPs, but real fans pay 10, 15 bucks max to see the same game.
Isn't it about time the NHL sack Bettman? Didn't he brag that he would be able to get higher TV ratings when in fact league games on the telly are watched by fewer people than prior to his arrival?
To quote Yogi (Yo! no Yo-GI), no one goes to that restaurant anymore it's too crowded. "No one pays 65 bucks to see the hawks play the predators. Corporations may shell out bucks so they have tickets to dole out to VIPs, but real fans pay 10, 15 bucks max to see the same game." Well, a quick check of the Hawks website prices all of the lower tier between 75-250 dollars, and then theclub seats and then there are some seats for 15 bucks, but I would surmise that some of the real fans are paying top dollar to see hockey and not liking any of it. But the Prem is 50 a ticket, so ticket prices are really out of whack and then tack on the ticketmaster premiums and you are at 90 a ticket. Ruf
Exactly my point. What kind of (dare I say) fool would dole out an extra 50 bucks to see the same game that they can see for 15 bucks from 20 feet further away? Either way, you get a far better experience than watching it on TV, most certainly, but only one makes sense, especially with all the empty seats that are routinely at the United Center, except when Detroit's in town. Same deal for most sporting events in Arenas. You can get 10 or 15 dollar seats to 90+% of the NBA games in the US at the ticket window the night of the event. Why pay more?
On Channel 5 in Britain they show one game per week very late at night during the season. I believe they show the ESPN matches.
It may even be on tape delay. But its all good. I was speaking to a cab driver in Singapore a couple weeks ago and he said that they get the occasional MLS game on out there too. I assume ESPN International picks up the games shown on ESPN2 - a la the Champions League games.