World Cup outdraws NBA finals on TV in the U.S.

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:09 pm

The World Cup final game outdrew the NBA Finals in the U.S. and wasn't far behind the World Series ratings from last fall. Not bad for a nation that supposedly "doesn't get" soccer:

http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=a ... &type=lgns

Take care,
PK

sfz_T-car · Post by **sfz_T-car** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:34 pm

If we were a Nielsen family, would switching back and forth between Univision and Marcelo-vision count double?

Because I did that 100+ times during the tournament.

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:38 pm

pk500 wrote:The World Cup final game outdrew the NBA Finals in the U.S. and wasn't far behind the World Series ratings from last fall. Not bad for a nation that supposedly "doesn't get" soccer:

http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=a ... &type=lgns

Take care,
PK

Yeah, but keep in mind...the World Cup game is ONE game. The Finals stretch for an entire two week period. I'm sure there is a bigger concentration of viewers when it's only a two hour period (plus lame penalty kicks) rather than a longer series of games. Seems like that's kind of difficult to work into the ratings.

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:43 pm

True, but considering the NBA and MLB are considered "major" sports in the U.S. and soccer is a "minor" sport, having a game between two non-American teams outdraw the average rating of any American major pro sports championship is impressive, any way the soccer haters try to spin it.

Take care,
PK

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:45 pm

It is impressive...I wouldn't have guessed it. I still would predict that if you have a game 7 of the NBA finals in the afternoon on a Sunday, it will outdraw the WC final game.

XXXIV · Post by **XXXIV** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:56 pm

dbdynsty25 wrote:It is impressive...I wouldn't have guessed it. I still would predict that if you have a game 7 of the NBA finals in the afternoon on a Sunday, it will outdraw the WC final game.

Give it four more years...

WillHunting · Post by **WillHunting** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:57 pm

dbdynsty25 wrote:It is impressive...I wouldn't have guessed it. I still would predict that if you have a game 7 of the NBA finals in the afternoon on a Sunday, it will outdraw the WC final game.

Depends on who is playing.

Milwaukee Bucks Vs. Memphis Grizzlies won't break any record

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:02 pm

WillHunting wrote:
dbdynsty25 wrote:It is impressive...I wouldn't have guessed it. I still would predict that if you have a game 7 of the NBA finals in the afternoon on a Sunday, it will outdraw the WC final game.
Depends on who is playing.

Milwaukee Bucks Vs. Memphis Grizzlies won't break any record

Nor will they make it to the Finals. So don't worry about that Matchup.

XXXIV · Post by **XXXIV** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:03 pm

dbdynsty25 wrote:
WillHunting wrote:
dbdynsty25 wrote:It is impressive...I wouldn't have guessed it. I still would predict that if you have a game 7 of the NBA finals in the afternoon on a Sunday, it will outdraw the WC final game.
Depends on who is playing.

Milwaukee Bucks Vs. Memphis Grizzlies won't break any record
Nor will they make it to the Finals. So don't worry about that Matchup.

Not as long as the NBA is sports entertainment.

Kazuya · Post by **Kazuya** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:07 pm

Good to hear, and especially impressive seeing as how the U.S. was not involved at all... still, it was pretty much on by itself, in the middle of a Sunday afternoon with little else to watch. You might have could a put a re-run of Hell's Kitchen on opposite of it and the ratings might have sunk like a stone. I was definitely interested, but still found myself switching back and forth between watching Ranger-ball. I really don't know if these ratings are good or bad. There really is only one other event that is world-reaching and runs every four years, so maybe that's what we should be comparing it to. Either way, at least somebody watched it.

fsquid · Post by **fsquid** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 8:43 pm

dbdynsty25 wrote:It is impressive...I wouldn't have guessed it. I still would predict that if you have a game 7 of the NBA finals in the afternoon on a Sunday, it will outdraw the WC final game.

Disney has decided that they would rather have game 7 on a Thursday at 9EST. So obviously they think Sunday afternoon is not a good time for viewers.

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 9:06 pm

It's impressive...

I think the NBA has marketed itself right out of the homes of casual sports fans however. A few years ago, the NBA had an image problem. For me atleast the trading of players has gotten out of hand. Entire teams can have a whole new line-up from one year to the next. Now how is someone like me who doesn't watch an NBA with any passion going to support a team that I don't know?

I think the NBA product is also not very exciting. I would much rather watch March Madness than the finals. And I can't explain why. Nor can I explain why NCAA b-ball is more exciting.

Back on topic, I wonder what effect this WC will have on soccer in this country. I don't mean in turning us to a WC contender but in terms of getting more of it on the boob tubes.

Personally, I have a bit of the WC with drawals. There was nothing like getting to the office and turning on three games of qualifiers. At lunch I'd get home and turn it on. Get up early on Sat and Sun to watch. I think I watched all or partially 90% of the games.

I love soccer, football whatever. I can't explain that either. I really don't have a team, I watched Newcastle because of Shearer. I watched Arsenal a few years back because they were playing gorgeous football. Now I'm excited because in a month we'll have EPL games. Again, I don't have a team but I'll watch random matches even between Man City and Birmingham which is painful. It's just a great sport to watch.

XXXIV · Post by **XXXIV** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:32 pm

JRod wrote: I think the NBA product is also not very exciting. I would much rather watch March Madness than the finals. .

Its not even close...the latter is actually a real sport.

fanatic · Post by **fanatic** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:49 pm

It's too bad that the flashy players like Ronaldinho and Rooney made little to no mark on this competition. I think that the casual fan sometimes needs guys like these to truly draw them towards the sport.

WillHunting · Post by **WillHunting** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 11:07 pm

fanatic wrote:It's too bad that the flashy players like Ronaldinho and Rooney made little to no mark on this competition. I think that the casual fan sometimes needs guys like these to truly draw them towards the sport.

Rooney made a mark on the Portugese's thigh. Sorry about this joke.

fanatic · Post by **fanatic** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 11:09 pm

WillHunting wrote:
fanatic wrote:It's too bad that the flashy players like Ronaldinho and Rooney made little to no mark on this competition. I think that the casual fan sometimes needs guys like these to truly draw them towards the sport.
Rooney made a mark on the Portugese's thigh. Sorry about this joke.

pigpen81 · Post by **pigpen81** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 11:28 pm

Bill Harris said it so well in his blog today:

"Now, having said all that, I really enjoyed the World Cup. I just finished reading The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, I'm reading (believe it or not) a tactics book to improve my FM strategies, and I'm hoping that the EPL has an HD package available on DirecTV when the season starts in August.

Here's one of the many things I didn't understand until the last week or so, and it was particularly important to me: it doesn't matter that play isn't continuous. Doesn't matter at all. What does matter, though, is that time is continuous.

This is what continuous game time does: it makes it very hard for the coverage of the game to overshadow the game. Make no mistake, that's what's happening in the coverage of American team sports now. In football, there are so many %*$damn score tickers and fantasy stat tickers and replay and telestrators and redundancy that it makes we want to scream. In baseball, there's a giant digital ad board behind home plate that will take up 15% of the screen on every pitch, and in the playoffs FOX will cut away after every pitch to show five or six close-ups on people who aren't in the game. Managers, fans, hot-dog vendors--it doesn't matter. It's one big music video.

Then there are commercials. Here's my favorite NFL sequence: a touchdown is scored and the extra point gets kicked. Cut away for two and a half minutes of commercials. Come back for the kickoff, which takes all of ten seconds. Then cut away for two and a half more minutes of commercials. Seriously, if I didn't have a Tivo, I couldn't watch football anymore, and I've loved football for forty years. I've said before that if I had to lose Christmas or the NFL playoffs, I'd say farewell to Christmas, but it's impossible to watch live. The same is true with the NBA. Commercials have become so excessive that it's ruining the coverage.

None of that is really possible during a soccer game. Continuous time forces you to cover the game and limits the gratuitous excess that producers can pile on.

Cutting away for a commercial? I don't think so.

Sure, you can have announcers talking nonstop for every second of ninety minutes (like the idiotic ABC announcers yesterday, who were apparently under the impression that they were getting paid by the word). And you can pull an ESPN and drop a freaking text window down from the on-screen scoreboard every other minute. Seriously, if the play-by-play announcer had been shot in the ESPN booth last week, and the analyst had screamed "MY GOD! HE'S BEEN SHOT!" this would have been followed, within seconds, by a drop-down text window reading:
Announcer has
been shot.

In spite of how badly ESPN and ABC tried to screw up the coverage, though--and some of their attempts were epic--the game itself resisted them. Because time is continuous, the coverage can never become more important than the game.

And for that, all I can say is thank goodness.

Bill....you hit the nail on the head with that one.

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:01 am

You also have to remember that although the NBA Finals is on prime time, it's the summer when people don't watch TV as much as they do in the fall and winter.

Of course, the fact that it came close to World Series is impressive.

Yeah on a Sunday afternoon in July, it's either a baseball game or golf.

It would be nice if someone experimented with showing some club games on major network TV before they try putting NHL on a major outlet again, since NHL is so marginal.

And certainly would be better than seeing poker or paintball (WTF is ESPN thinking?).

But the EPL isn't going to give TV rights away, which is probably what it would take for a network to show the games. Hmm, ABC no longer has NFL anyways so what have they got to lose? Of course, in the fall they would have college football...

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:31 am

wco81 wrote:And certainly would be better than seeing poker or paintball (WTF is ESPN thinking?).

Oh but nothing beats Dominos...it was on ESPN 2 the other day. Funny crap.

Feanor · Post by **Feanor** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 8:48 am

Hehehe. Dominos seems to be on ESPN 2 a lot recently. And I think it's from last year cause I saw "2005" on the score overlay.

Zlax45 · Post by **Zlax45** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 8:57 am

It would be interesting if ABC put an EPL game on every Saturday or Sunday morning. Just to see the ratings.

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:10 am

Zlax45 wrote:It would be interesting if ABC put an EPL game on every Saturday or Sunday morning. Just to see the ratings.

That would be interesting, but I have my doubts that it would draw any kind of ratings.

I think a later-round Champions League game might draw bigger ratings than the EPL since there usually are more players on those teams who were stars in the World Cup. The average American who caught World Cup fever would recognize those names more quickly, since the later rounds of the CL often feature club teams that are more like all-star teams, such as Barcelona, Chelsea, Arsenal, AC Milan, etc.

Still, I think the ratings bump in the WC is due to the fact that the World Cup is a major, quadrennial event, much like the Olympics. People are drawn to big events. Americans might not understand the World Cup, but they know it's big. Plus there was saturation media coverage of the event around the world, and rightfully so.

Plus, it certainly doesn't hurt having Italy in the final since America has a ton of people of Italian descent.

Take care,
PK

Brando70 · Post by **Brando70** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:44 am

It's nice to see the WC get more popular. I was one of the newbies watching it. It's interesting that a tournament full of Wade-esque phantom calls outdrew the original Wade spectacle.

Also, the NBA does have an image problem, but it also has an angry-middle-aged-white-guys-who-don't-watch-regularly-and-want-to-see-Larry-Bird-suit-up problem.

XXXIV · Post by **XXXIV** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:00 am

Brando70 wrote:but it also has an angry-middle-aged-white-guys-who-don't-watch-regularly-and-want-to-see-Larry-Bird-suit-up problem.

I didnt like Larry Bird...my guys were Elvin Hayes and Moses Malone...then ofcourse later on Micheal Jordan ....I retired the 2nd time He retired

The NFL is My favorite game...Draw from that...

fanatic · Post by **fanatic** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:09 am

Brando70 wrote: Also, the NBA does have an image problem, but it also has an angry-middle-aged-white-guys-who-don't-watch-regularly-and-want-to-see-Larry-Bird-suit-up problem.

Although the NBA draws very well here in Toronto, it still has an image problem with middle aged/older white guys due to the whole marketing approach taken by the team.

They are used to a blue-collar feeling surrounding the Leafs- With the Raps, I think they are turned off by the hip hop music in the arena, the cutsy games being played during timeouts and the general lack of toughness shown by the stars we've had (see Vince Carter).

Getting back to the World Cup- I can see football ratings going way up....We have such a multicultural population and our big sports networks are already showing EPL on weekend mornings.

Digital Sportspage

World Cup outdraws NBA finals on TV in the U.S.

World Cup outdraws NBA finals on TV in the U.S.

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