The Rangers hot start has delivered some big TV numbers AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez
Through the first two months of the 2009 baseball season MLB is not seeing a big increase in their TV numbers, the good news here is there has not been a significant decline.
According to WTOP.com and The Sporting News the numbers for the National TV games looked like this: (This is for the first two months of the 2009 season only)
• Fox who aired 6 games had a 2.1 average rating with 3.14 million average viewers
• ESPN/ESPN2 who aired 20 games had an average rating 1.1 with 1.57 million viewers.
• TBS who aired 7 games had an average rating of 0.5 with 699,000 average viewers
Nielsen defines the rating like this; there are an estimated 114.5 million TV households in the United States. One National rating point represent one percent of that total or each ratings point equals 1,145,000 households.
So far in 2009 the Fox and TBS ratings are even with the 2008 number, while the ESPN rating is down 15.4%. In terms of viewers the Fox broadcast have 2.6%. ESPN is averaging 17.6% less viewers, and TBS has 0.7 more viewers on average.
On the local level the many Regional Sports Networks are down 2% compared with 20008. However, more than half of the teams are seeing an increase in the ratings.
These increases are led by:
• Texas Rangers on Fox Sports Southwest with an incredible 111% increase
• Washington Nationals on MASN/MASN2 are up 56%
The biggest losers so far:
• Oakland A’s who switched Comcast Sports Net prior to the 2009 season have seen ratings drop 63%
• Boston Red Sox who games on NESN are the highest rated at 8.67 but is off 27% from 2008
In the end what all of this means is baseball remains a strong TV force, while the economy is affecting the number of people who are going to live games, many of them are tuning in too the local and national TV broadcast.
More Business of Baseball Stories:
• Chicago Cubs sale, not exactly completed
• Detroit Tigers 2009 payroll, not exactly money well spent
• MLB attendance woes
• MLB attendance slightly off so far in 2009
• MLB Payrolls by Rank
Comments