Chart of the Week #57: All Games are Not Created Equal

Many of us read a lot about television viewership in the sports business press. It is a simple and tangible metric that provides useful context for sports media storylines. But, we’d go as far as to say that regular season, average-minute viewership — the metric we keep reading about—without substantially more context provides limited information relevant to assessing the value of that content.

There are several problems with the imperfect viewership data that we have. One of the issues that we address in our most recent flash piece is the fact that not all games are equal.

Let’s take the National Hockey League (NHL) for example. In 2024, the NHL’s regular season games were split between two networks – ESPN and TNT Sports U.S. Both are major cable properties, though one (ESPN) is the clear leader in premium sports. Another important difference is that ESPN’s NHL games were amplified by four properties: ESPN, ESPN+ , Hulu , and ABC. Any games broadcast on ABC likely got a major viewership bump, as is common for anything shown on the Big Four broadcast networks (i.e., ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX). The result is that 2023-24 regular season viewership (i.e., the number of nationwide viewers estimated by 尼尔森 to be watching in the average minute of the broadcast) was 846,000 viewers on ABC, 486,000 on ESPN, and only 360,000 on TNT.

Prior to the 2022 season, all NHL programming was found on NBC Sports Network with an average viewership of 470,000, with a visible downward trend starting in the 2016-17 season. (Happens to coincide with the beginning of cable subscriber erosion.) This downward trend appears to be continuing with TNT games but has experienced a step-change improvement on ESPN and especially ABC.

Do we believe this is a result of a sudden surge in fandom? Do we believe that viewership increased that dramatically, that quickly?

Unfortunately, not. The answer to this change instead lies in the promotion commitment and the network broadcasting it.

The promotion commitment comes in two forms: is the network willing to give you time on their most watched, most available properties? And is the network willing to advertise your programming on that network using their most valuable advertising inventory?

Similarly, network matters. The big four broadcasters continue to be a major driver of reach, especially among older demos who are most likely to be captured by Nielsen viewership measurements. These networks exist in every basic cable and virtual skinny bundle package of every major distributor at high penetration rates. They also have a reputation of airing content (incl. other sports) that are a known draw, so they will invariably attract “channel flippers”.

Here’s the ‘so what’. If you are seeing viewership figures quoted from a Big Four broadcast network for a sports league, you are likely seeing the highest achievable viewership figure for that kind of content. Similarly, while it is hard to know for sure, what you are seeing is driven by a mix of organic fandom and network promotion – the higher the latter, the less “pure” the viewership figure in question. And it is fair to assume, in our view, that the oldest, most venerable leagues need the least amount of promotion to generate organic viewership, while the more nascent leagues are heavily reliant on it. This makes it a critical evaluative question, especially for assessing emerging leagues.

We explore this topic in further detail in our new Arctos Insights Whitepaper, Viewership is Overrated: A Primer on Valuing Sports Media Deals, which can be accessed at The Breakout.