The NFL reigns supreme?

in Sports by negrostotle — August 11, 2009 at 8:23 pm | 1 comment

Are you ready for some football?

The NFL has begun the 2009-2010 season, and apparently American football fans are more than ready to go to the games and watch on TV. According to USA Today, Sunday night’s exhibition between the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills drew more viewers than the final game of the Yankees Red Sox series.

The NFL doesn’t need trickery to outdraw baseball. Any game will do, as Sunday’s Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio, between the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills showed. The exhibition opener — and the NBC debut of the Al Michaels-Cris Collinsworth team — attracted 61% more viewers opposite a contest that counted: The New York Yankees completing a four-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox. Of course, the NFL had the significant broadcast-vs.-cable edge.

As the article mentions, NBC would have an extreme advantage in terms of potential viewers of their programing, couple that with the fact that many local fans would watch the local broadcast as opposed to the ESPN broadcast…but 61% is an extremely large number, even if you give deference to the points regarding the baseball game.

Lets review…NFL preseason game ratings dwarf the last game of a series between baseball’s two most popular teams. So, football must be America’s past time, right?

Not so fast.

Baseball vs. Football comparisons are truly like apples vs. oranges. 162 games vs. 16 games. Different games on different television sources (network, basic cable, premium cable). Sure, we can look at baseball’s rising revenue and how its approaching that of football, but its still spread out over 162 games, which actually brings advantages for both teams (and makes it very hard to compare). We could also look at attendance levels, where baseball’s total attendance wins out (more games/lower prices) but the shorter football seasons make each game more valuable, which benefits per game attendance. We do know that football generates more television revenue…but is that in and of itself enough to crown a champion?

So how do we compare and decide America’s past time?

We don’t.

America loves football. America loves baseball. Both sports, for various reasons are both doing well, even in the recession. Lets just leave it at that.

USA Today — Selected Weekend TV Ratings

Event	Day, time (p.m., ET)	Rating (households)	Outlet

MLB: Boston-N.Y. Yankees	Sunday, 8	3.6 (2.8 million)	ESPN

The comparison: Another rivalry game, St. Louis Cardinals-Chicago Cubs, drew half the audience a year ago.

The spin on the spin: Not even the appearance of Red Sox legend Luis Tiant in the broadcast booth could prevent the Yankees sweep.

Tags: baseball revenue football revenue MLB NFL television ratings

Author:

I am dude, writing as a dude, disguised as another dude

1 Comments

griffn
2009-08-11
23:28:47
Did you really just say "American football fans"? There's no such thing as American football. There's only football. The other game is soccer. Football. Soccer. Clear?

And the American pastime is definitely football. As long as the Pirates continue to be nothing more than a farm club for big market teams, Major League baseball will continue to be a joke.

The only reason I even know who won the World Series last year is because Philly tried to latch on to Pittsburgh's success with that State of Champions nonsense. No, Pittsburgh won two championships, Philly won one. Keep the count right. We have no interest in sharing our hard-earned spoils so Philly can pretend like it knows what a multi-championship year feels like.