ratings Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
ESPN And TNT Think NBA Broadcasts Are Worth A Lot More Than The NFL's
Adam Silver proudly announced the NBA's new TV deal with ESPN and TNT this morning, one that nearly triples how much its cable partners will pay the league to broadcast its regular season and playoff games. That amount—$2.7 billion a year—is especially insane when compared to what NBC, Fox, and CBS ...
Nope, No One's Boycotting The NFL
Despite recent scandals and calls for boycotts, NFL ratings continue to rise. The chart above from Forbes shows that week 3 ratings were up from last season with notable gains coming from CBS, which featured the thrilling Seattle-Denver game that had a 16.9 overnight rating....
August Sucks—The NBA Or NHL Playoffs Should Move There
In non-Olympic years, there's no wider chasm of utter sports emptiness than late July and August. NBA and NHL free agency have pretty much wrapped up, and most NFL "news" involves players describing the best shape of their lives. Thankfully, football and European soccer are just about back, but for ...
Portugal-United States Was The Most-Watched American Match In History
If you're looking to make the argument that soccer has finally gained a foothold with the American sports-watching public, you'd be off to a good start by citing the TV ratings from last night's thriller between Portugal and the United States, because they were bananas. ...
FS1's Low Ratings Forced Fox To Give Away Free World Series Ads
Two bits of rough news for Fox Sports 1 over the last two days. One, Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox reported a hefty drop in income—by more than $1 billion—thanks to the FS1 launch. All of that was most likely accounted for and anticipated....
Keith Olbermann On Why No One Watches Baseball Anymore
Wednesday's Game 1 drew 14.4 million viewers. That's slightly up from last year's Game 1, but 2012 was the least-watched Fall Classic of all time. It's been a steady downward trend for the World Series over the least 35 years or so, from a time when the majority of Americans would tune in. To put it...
Vikings-Giants Was Crap, And You Watched It Anyway
How bad does a football game have to be before people tune out? Worse than last night's mess, apparently. Vikings-Giants pulled a 9.5 overnight rating—meaning, roughly, somewhere between 14 and 15 million viewers....
The Astros Drew A 0.00 Nielsen Rating
Last week we cringed to the news that the Astros drew an average local viewership of 1,000 people for a game—less than for an out-of-market WNBA game on at the same time. How bad could it get for yesterday's 9-2 loss at Cleveland, which went up against the Texans' game? Pretty damn bad....
The New <em>SportsCenter</em> Commercial You're Going To See Everywhere
It's been a rough stretch for ESPN and SportsCenter. Ratings for ESPN's flagship show have been sagging, bringing in about 828,000 viewers this year, down from about 1 million last year. Primetime ratings for ESPN and ESPN2 have seen declines too. ESPN's gotten really defensive about it, especially...
An Astros Game Had Just 1,000 TV Viewers
Houstonians apparently had better things to do than watch the Astros Saturday night. Like, anything at all. ...
ESPN's July Ratings Are Down, Too
This is starting to feel like a thing. ESPN's ratings were down in the first half of the year—alarmingly so in the spring—which prompted ESPN's PR machine to swing back hard, labeling the drop a bizarre fluke, an aberration. Well, July numbers are in and ... ...
ESPN Gets Defensive About Ratings Drop
Earlier this week we told you about ESPN's recent ratings woes. The numbers dropped significantly in the second quarter this year. They were down in the first quarter, too, and they were flat last year. Now that the news is getting around, ESPN PR—which usually projects an air of lordly remove in t...
ESPN's Ratings Are Way Down This Year. What's The Matter In Bristol?
ESPN may have grown into an unbeatable Goliath, as its executives spent the year telling any reporter who'd stand still long enough, but maybe the stretch marks are beginning to show. ESPN laid off hundreds two months ago, and in August it will face new competition in the form of Fox Sports 1, a ne...
NBA Finals Elimination Games, Ranked According To Fun
Note: An earlier version of this post was missing two key elimination games – 1988 Game 7 and 1993 Game 6 – which are now included in the rankings....
Game 7 Ratings Were Predictably Bananas
The ratings are in: 26.3 million viewers watched the Heat beat the Spurs last night, the second-most for an NBA game since 1998....
What Was The Best Super Bowl Ever? Ranking All 47 Games According To Watchability
Sunday's Super Bowl was undoubtedly awesome. Big comeback. Dramatic finish. Weird NFL rules. Beyoncé. The question on everyone's mind: Was it the best Super Bowl ever? ...
TV Ratings For Ravens-Broncos Were Bananas
The NFL is invincible. After a season of unnecessary distractions and safety crises and owner collusion and labor stoppages, in the course of two days the sport managed to put on two games that were so good they make you want to run through a fucking brick wall. Saturday's slugfest in Denver and yes...
More People Watched A Rerun Of <i>NCIS</i> Than Lakers-Knicks: Last Week's TV Ratings, In Context
A weekly feature wherein we contextualize TV ratings for national sports broadcasts. Data via Nielsen, Sports Business Journal's John Ourand and @TVSportsRTGS. Viewership numbers represent approximate number of persons tuned to a given program; ratings share refers to the percentage of all household...