About par for the course. 2 share means 2 percent of the country's tvs were watching at least part of the game.
The US Curling Nationals (one hour tape delay) got a 1.4, if I remember correctly. I think a 1.0 is better than previous ABC telecasts, though. It nearly rivals Arena Football on NBC.
Apple, meet the orange. 1.0 is about what MLS does when it's on ABC, though it's slightly up from last year's opener. If, indeed, that's the final national rating. Usually the first number we get is the overnight, and the final national number is usually, but not always, slightly lower. And, just for comparison, Arena Football numbers: Code: DATE...........Rating....Audience 02/02/03........1.6.....1,743,000 02/09/03........1.6.....1,671,000 02/16/03........1.7.....1,798,000 02/23/03........1.4.....1,281,000 [b]FEBRUARY AVG....1.6.....1,623,250[/b] 03/02/03........1.2.....1,247,000 03/09/03........1.0.....1,062,000 03/16/03........1.1.....1,189,000 [b]MARCH AVG.......1.1.....1,166,000[/b] [b]OVERALL AVG.....1.3.....1,593,857[/b] The AFL benefits from (a) a ton of promotion from NBC and (b) the fact that people actually kinda like it (in person and it makes for pretty good TV). NBC has been jacking its time slot around now, though - whenever they have golf on, they move the AFL to noon ET, which, apparently, has an effect (as does the novelty wearing off, I'd reckon).
j/w how do they know who is watching what? i believe ppl used to get Neilson boxes or somethign so it was only a select group. is it still like that? is this rating relatively good for the MLS? and do you think the ratings should be taken lightly since it was opening day?
Nevermind, i take that back. The rest of the ratings listed were final, MLS' is an overnight. My fault for misreading.
And there's some other big news story going on, though I can't quite recall what it is...but it's having an effect on ratings across the board.
where do you get this info from? the overnight ratings, etc.? it is pretty amazing that soccer's (dismal) rating is up from previous years considering the NCAA tourney and the war to compete with.
The US Curling Nationals (one hour tape delay) got a 1.4, if I remember correctly. One week delay, I believe. But anyway, that's good. The USCA is telling people to write to NBC about their thoughts on the coverage. I hope to see more on the way.
This is the overnight number. The final number will come around Thursday. MLS consistently drops from the overnights to the final ratings. Look for this to come in around a .8 which would place it in its normal bottom of the sports ratings barrel. Shame, after so many good feel stories this winter, this one number makes it very clear that MLS is a long long long way aways from getting out from under the ultra niche status in terms national broadcast OTA events. Until we can start pulling numbers in the mid 1's, I don't even consider MLS to be at the level of the other niche sports in terms national broadcast OTA events. It is pretty sobering to see Curling doing better than MLS. I don't understand why we do so well in comparison to other niche sports on ESPN and yet we continue to suck wind as soon as we move to ABC. The first person that mentions promotions should stop and look at the curling number before typing out that long overused excuse. Andy
While I agree with the second part of that (and have long believed that), I wouldn't have expected the opener to have garnered a substantially higher rating than it did, no matter how many feel good stories we had this winter (or in the last two weeks), not on a weekend in March with a bunch of other sporting events and a war going on. Oh, and then there's the fact that soccer's not usually a ratings-grabber outside of really big events. Which, though this might have been to us, it wasn't perceived as such to the "rest" of America, and they weren't about to tune in in numbers big enough to make a big difference in the ratings. Unfortunately, MLS only gets two more shots at ABC, so it's not like it has a chance to build an audience on that outlet from week to week.
I guess I was just looking for any sort of up tick, say even just a simple 1.1 final rating instead of the sub 1.0 we are most likely going to get. My question to the group still stands though: Why does MLS stack up better to other niche sports ratings wise on ESPN vs OTA networks? Andy
Small sample. I wouldn't have gotten too excited over a 1.1, and I wouldn't get overly down in the dumps about a .8. With sports ratings down across the board, holding your own isn't such a bad deal. As for why MLS does better head-to-head with other sports on ESPN2 and not on ABC, I wonder if it has anything at all to do with male sports fans being more likely to watch ESPN networks than OTA networks for their sports? Or if there's something in the methodology of estimating the cable audience versus the OTA audience that gives a larger margin for error on one as opposed to the other (for all I know, there may be no difference at all). Just throwing stuff against the wall. It's an interesting discussion. But I think we'd need more data and a definition of terms to really get anything out of it.
You are not comparing Apples with Apples. MLS ratings are not up when compared to years passed. I think you may be comparing the current overnight number with passed years final numbers. MLS numbers traditionally drop 20% or so when the final count is done. Andy
Explain this thought Kenn, I am missing it. Why are male MLS fans any different from male "other niche sports" fans? MLS has held its own against the WNBA on ESPN but has historically gotten blown away on OTA. The same can be said of the NHL as well as the AFL. Are you trying to say that female fans are bumping the other sports when they go OTA vs not having them bump MLS numbers? Andy
Well, he told us, MLS has only three showings on ABC a year. My old music teacher once told me that if you played classical music on all the radio stations all the time, everyone would be clamoring about Mozart at the water cooler (or something to that effect). Arena football never snowballed when it was on ABC. Had it repeated showings on the network, MLS would most likely have better ratings, ads or no ads. Being a curler myself, I'm rather conflicted when there are more viewers than curlers in America watching the nationals while, at the same time, there are 18 million soccer players in the US and only 1 million of them watch.
its pretty difficult to get ratings when there is absolutely no advertising. I mean, lets theorize that suddenly there ARE some people who got turned on to soccer by the Men's success in Korea. How the hell were they supposed to know the game was on? I'm not too worried about it. Lets just focus on attendence and stadiums for now.