Tag: TV Ratings

Cowboys dominate TV ratings again, played in 5 of 10 most-watched games of 2021

America’s Team was must-see TV all season long; with the Cowboys appearing in the two most-watched games of the regular season. | From @ToddBrock24f7

This just in: the Dallas Cowboys are always must-see TV.

The NFL has released ratings information for the 2021 regular season, showing that the league enjoyed its highest overall viewership since 2015. An average of 17.1 million viewers per game tuned in, with a staggering total of 370 billion (yes, with a B) minutes consumed across the season.

And the Cowboys were once again a major draw. Of the ten most-watched games of the regular season, Dallas played in the top two and five of the top ten.

The Green Bay Packers appeared in three of the top ten games; Kansas City and Tampa Bay each played in two.

Thanksgiving Day’s overtime shootout between the Cowboys and Raiders was far and away the most-watched game of the season, attracting 40.8 million viewers. That was an especially big week for NFL ratings, as the game Dallas played against Kansas City just four days prior took the No. 2 spot with 28.7 million viewers.

The Cowboys also played in the sixth-, eighth-, and tenth-most watched contests of the 2021 campaign: Week 17 versus Arizona, Week 1 in Tampa Bay, and Week 2 against the Los Angeles Chargers (in that order).

Oddly enough, four of those games resulted in Cowboys losses.

The promise of close games tends to bring big ratings, and the NFL had plenty of those this season. According to the league, out of 272 total games:

  • 34 (12.5%) were decided by a game-winning score on the final play (1st all-time)
  • 49 (18%) were decided by a game-winning score in the final minute (tied, 1st all-time)
  • 175 (64%) were within one score (eight points) in the fourth quarter (tied, 4th all-time)

The Cowboys begin their postseason journey on Sunday in the late-afternoon slot in a home game against San Francisco. The eagerly-anticipated rematch of the two stored franchises will be broadcast on CBS by their top booth team, Jim Nantz and former Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo.

Expect America’s Team to bring in monster numbers yet again.

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12 most-watched college football games of 2021

How many of these 12 did you tune in for?

The college football regular season has officially come and gone after Army and Navy’s annual battle last Saturday and we now know which games brought the highest viewership in.

Despite Alabama and Georgia’s meeting in the SEC Championship being the only battle between two eventual College Football Playoff teams this season, it actually didn’t take home the top spot.

Notre Dame showed up on the list just once this season after being included in a few of the very top spots a season ago.

So what else made the list and what game ultimately took home the highest viewership?

Here are the 12 most-viewed college football games of 2021 according to Stewart Mandel of The Athletic.

King: Cowboys 1 of 2 ‘sexiest’ opponents for Buccaneers in 2021 opener

Insider Peter King joins the list of NFL observers who believe the Cowboys may be the most logical foe for Tampa Bay in the 2021 kickoff.

Add NFL insider Peter King to the list of football observers who believe the Cowboys could be the first team to get a shot at knocking off the defending Super Bowl champs.

Back in early February, Cowboys Wire explored the notion of a Cowboys-Buccaneers matchup being slated as the 2021 season opener on September 9. NFL.com’s Kevin Patra also pointed out the plethora of juicy storylines that a Dak Prescott-Tom Brady would bring to the kickoff event.

Now with the official schedule release just days away, King has the list of Tampa Bay’s opponents narrowed down- in his mind, anyway- to just two teams that make logical sense: Buffalo and Dallas.

His reasoning, as laid out in his Football Morning in America column:

“The NFL wants to get off to a very strong start after a shaky offseason, and they want a game that will generate buzz in the weeks before the season begins and will be must-see TV to start the season. To schedule the Saints or Bears or Giants here (all Bucs home foes this year) doesn’t seem smart because any of them could be a game that’s over by halftime. Not so Buffalo or Dallas. The Bills could go to Tampa and win the opener, and the Cowboys, with Dak Prescott leading an explosive offense, would be able to go toe-to-toe with the Arians/Brady offense. We’ll see, but those are the two sexiest home foes for the Bucs, and I think one of them will open the NFL’s 102nd season.”

Die-hard football fans know that Buffalo has become one of the league’s most exciting young squads, and Bills fans- spread across the country- are famously rabid, to be sure. But based solely on star power and the ability to lure casual viewers’ eyeballs to the television on a Thursday night, it’s hard to imagine a bigger ratings bonanza than the World Champs versus America’s Team.

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Most viewed college football games of 2020

What were the most viewed games of this college football season? Find out right here.

As we sit with under 100 hours left in as strange of year as most of us will ever experience, it’s time to start seeing the lists that recap the year that was.

Some will be done by personal opinion while others are based on actual fact.

Stewart Mandell of The Athletic accumulated all of the data from Sports Media Watch and put together the list of the most-watched college football games of the year.

Of the top 13 Mandel listed, Notre Dame appeared four times.

1. Nov. 7 vs. Clemson
2. Dec. 19 vs. Clemson
11. Nov. 27 at North Carolina
13. Nov. 14 at Boston College

Ohio State had four of their six regular-season games appear in the top ten while Alabama had three games appear on the list, all coming in the three-six range.

Most interesting about the list is how it compares to ratings from just one year ago. 2019 saw five games have a larger television audience than the 10.1 million who watched Notre Dame and Clemson on NBC.

Is it easily explained by COVID-19 simply taking over the world and millions of peoples worries and time being spent elsewhere?

Is it because conferences essentially operated as their own islands this year, leaving less of a national appeal?

Or is it something college football has brought upon itself with the idea that unless it’s the CFP, that nothing else matters?

If I had to guess it’s a mixture of all, seeing as being in attendance for many of this games wasn’t exactly a reason for folks to not have watched them on TV this year.

 

 

News: Cowboys scout Ravens live, Post Malone flaunts ‘#1 Fan’ bling

Also, Dez Bryant’s imminent return to Dallas, which free agents are worth re-signing, and breaking down Randy Gregory’s techniques.

A surreal week in Dallas has hit the halfway mark. The Cowboys took advantage of the unusual opportunity to watch their next opponent play live, with more practices to go in which to adjust to what they saw. That comes as the team prepares to say its final farewell to a beloved member of the coaching staff, and as a fan favorite prepares to come back to town wearing enemy colors. Strange times, indeed.

But some are already looking ahead to next season, either forecasting the status of one of the team’s supposed strengths, making a case for which free agents are worth re-signing, or trying to speak into existence who the club should select with their first-round draft pick. There’s tape to break down on how Randy Gregory has come so far so fast in his football comeback, and words of wisdom from Dak Prescott to NFL rookies as he deals with a season cut short. There’s a mini-history lesson on Wednesday football, a TV ratings win for America’s Team, and a bit of celebrity news as a rap star puts his Cowboys fandom on full display with a pricey pendant. Here’s the News and Notes.

Nets crush Knicks in average 2019-20 TV rating, rank just outside NBA’s top-10

Knicks fans thinks it’s impossible for the Ntes to become New York’s team, but the ratings already indicate Brooklyn is making its move.

Kevin Durant hasn’t even played a second of Nets basketball and Brooklyn is already embarrassing the New York Knicks in the ratings.

USA Today SMG’s HoopsHype listed off the ratings for every NBA franchise on Wednesday, and the Nets fell just outside the top-10, coming in at No. 12. The Knicks came in at No. 27.

Brooklyn had a regular season average rating of 0.77, which is up 42.04% from 2018-19. The Nets’ regular season average audience size bumped up a couple extra percentage points (44.34%), increasing to 1.19 million.

The Knicks, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction — and their decline was greater than the Nets’ growth. New York drew an average rating of 0.20, which is a 69.47% dip from 2018-19. The average audience size of those watching the Knicks in 2019-20 was 0.33 million — down 67.02% from the previous season.

As for their viewership in the playoffs, the Nets did take a hit there, dropping 59.98% in the ratings from 2018-19 to 0.63 and 59.87% in average playoff audience to 0.82 million.

HoopsHype also has the national numbers for all of the Nets’ national TV games, and ranked them by overall audience:

  1. Brooklyn vs. Boston: 1.79 million (1.04 rating)
    November 27, 2019 on ESPN / Regular season
  2. LA Lakers vs. Brooklyn: 1.63 million (1.04 rating)
    January 23, 2020 on TNT / Regular season
  3. Trail Blazers vs. Brooklyn: 1.52 million (0.93 rating)
    August 13, 2020 on TNT / Regular season
  4. Toronto vs. Brooklyn: 1.45 million (0.94 rating)
    August 23, 2020 on TNT / First Round, Game 4
    48.31 percent less than in 2018-19
  5. Houston vs. Brooklyn: 1.42 million (0.94 rating)
    November 01, 2019 on ESPN / Regular season
  6. Brooklyn vs. Toronto: 1.30 million (0.89 rating)
    August 17, 2020 on ESPN / First Round, Game 1
    27.85 percent less than in 2018-19
  7. Brooklyn vs. Philadelphia: 1.19 million (0.77 rating)
    February 20, 2020 on TNT / Regular season
  8. Brooklyn vs. Boston: 1.12 million (0.71 rating)
    March 03, 2020 on TNT / Regular season
  9. Brooklyn vs. Boston: 1.02 million (0.66 rating)
    August 05, 2020 on ESPN / Regular season
  10. Brooklyn vs. Philadelphia: 0.93 million (0.64 rating)
    January 15, 2020 on ESPN / Regular season
  11. Detroit vs. Brooklyn: 0.88 million (0.69 rating)
    January 29, 2020 on ESPN / Regular season
  12. Brooklyn vs. LA Clippers: 0.40 million (0.25 rating)
    August 09, 2020 on NBA TV / Regular season
  13. Brooklyn vs. Toronto: 0.28 million (0.21 rating)
    August 19, 2020 on NBA TV / First Round, Game 2
    20.17 percent less than in 2018-19
  14. Toronto vs. Brooklyn: 0.24 million (0.47 rating)
    August 21, 2020 on NBA TV / First Round, Game 3
    90.12 percent less than in 2018-19

For the full list of 2019-20 NBA ratings, head on over to USA Today SMG’s HoopsHype.

Yelling about low sports TV ratings is so incredibly pointless

Stop yelling about sports TV ratings. It’s meaningless.

Chances are, over the past few days you’ve seen some people on social media yelling about how NBA TV ratings have been down for the Finals then other people yelling at them about how all sports TV ratings are down (which is correct, for many obvious reasons). The sides go back and forth, round and round, day after day, year after year, yelling at each other about something that means absolutely nothing to us, the fans.

Because here’s the deal — sports TV ratings shouldn’t mean anything to us, and those who waste their time arguing about them are silly.

And I know the side usually pointing out if ratings are low usually have other motives behind their vapid, idiotic arguments. So it is OK to point and laugh at those people because they generally deserve it.

But here’s what else I know about sports on TV – I watch a game, I enjoy a game, then life goes on, maybe I have a drink, and I go to bed. The enjoyment I have from that game has absolutely nothing to do with how many other people watched the game. I don’t care if 58 million people tuned in or if I was just the only idiot watching.

So when I see a tweet the next day that has the numbers about the ratings for the game I enjoyed the night before I barely notice it. I sure as heck don’t get mad at myself for watching it if the numbers were less than a similar event that was held on a similar day the year before. And I don’t celebrate if I find out lots of people watched it.

The ratings have no impact on my life.

At all.

Wasting any time and energy on ratings is generally a stupid thing to do. Now, I know the numbers mean more to the leagues and the networks that show the games but in the big picture they really mean nothing. Networks are always going to pay more for rights when deals come up and leagues are always going to make money.

But all we normal fans can do is turn on a game that we want to watch and have fun for a few hours watching it. Because watching sports on TV is a lot of fun, no matter how many other people are watching, too.

Quick hits: NFL power rankings… Mahomes on postgame embrace with Gilmore… Fantasy football advice.

(AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)

– Henry McKenna’s latest NFL power rankings has the Browns in the top 10.

– Patrick Mahomes said his postgame embrace with Patriots star Stephon Gilmore, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday, was a “mental lapse.”

– Charles Curtis has his Week 5 fantasy football studs, duds, and sleepers.

Ted Cruz cites Rockets fandom in spat with Mark Cuban over TV ratings

A lifelong Rockets fan, Cruz said he hasn’t watched the 2020 NBA Finals for political reasons. Naturally, the Dallas owner pushed back.

There’s no debating that television ratings for the 2020 NBA playoffs are down from previous years. The big question is why they’re down.

There are clearly some unique circumstances. For starters, due to the league’s COVID-19 hiatus, the 2020 playoffs were held from August through October, as opposed to the usual April through June period. That means competition for viewers from other sports, such as football and the Major League Baseball postseason, that isn’t usually there.

Other potential issues include a lack of fans at games; the disjointed nature of a season that was halted for months just before the playoffs; increased competition from cable news channels in a U.S. presidential election year; and the pandemic changing general viewing habits. It also doesn’t help that the matchups haven’t been especially compelling, with the Los Angeles Lakers yet to be pushed beyond five games in any series.

Then, there’s this theory: Are some viewers be tuning out due to NBA players speaking out more aggressively on issues related to civil unrest? That’s what Ted Cruz, a U.S. Senator from Texas, seems to believe.

In a contentious back-and-forth on Twitter with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Cruz said that even though he’s a fan of the Houston Rockets, 2020 marks the first time in years that he hasn’t watched an NBA Finals game. In recent playoff runs, Cruz has attended several Rockets games in person — most notably, the team’s painful Game 7 loss in the 2018 Western Conference Finals to eventual champion Golden State.

As for the issue of TV ratings and reasons for the slippage, it’s probably an “all of the above” situation. Politics are potentially part of the explanation, but there’s a wide variety of circumstances all contributing to the decline. It could take until the 2020-21 NBA season — and a more “apples to apples” comparison with when and where games are played, relative to historical norms — to get a better sense of the landscape.

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Rockets account for 30% of NBA’s highest-rated games this season

Led by a pair of All-Stars and recent MVPs in James Harden and Russell Westbrook, Houston seems to capture lots of television interest.

Led by an All-Star backcourt of recent MVPs James Harden and Russell Westbrook, the Houston Rockets were certainly among the NBA’s most intriguing franchises in the 2019-20 season.

It clearly showed up in the local and national television ratings, too.

Digital content company Sportico recently analyzed the league’s 20 most-watched games of the season, heading into the NBA Finals. Of those 20 contests, six (or 30%) featured the Houston Rockets.

Only the LeBron James-led Los Angeles Lakers, who are now three wins from the 2020 NBA title, had more than the Rockets.

Here are the teams who appeared on the list three or more times:

Lakers: 11
Rockets: 6
Celtics: 5
Heat: 4
Nuggets 4:
Clippers: 3

In fairness, facing the Lakers in the playoffs certainly accounted for some of the lofty ratings by the Rockets. Of Houston’s six games in the Top 20 list, four came from that second-round series against the Lakers.

However, Houston’s top-rated matchup — and No. 2 overall on the list — actually came in a regular-season game versus the Warriors on Christmas Day. That was the only appearance on the list by Golden State, which suggests that they weren’t the primary draw for national viewers.

In the postseason, even though the Denver Nuggets faced the Lakers in a later round, Game 2 of the Rockets-Lakers series remained the No. 1 game of the entire Western Conference playoffs by TV rating.

Game 7 of the first-round series between the Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder was also a big ratings hit. Not only was it by far the highest-rated game of that round, but it came in No. 11 overall among all 2020 playoff games (before the NBA Finals). Even compared to the six combined series and 35 playoff games played after the Rockets-Thunder Game 7, it would still place in the top-third from a ratings perspective.

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Those data points are all from nationally televised broadcasts, of course, on networks such as ESPN, ABC, and TNT. But the same trend appears to have held up locally. While local television ratings for most NBA teams were down this season, the Rockets saw an increase on AT&T SportsNet Southwest. That data was released in late February, just prior to the 2019-20 season’s extended hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For better or for worse, it certainly seems to suggest that Harden and Westbrook’s Rockets are among the NBA’s most compelling teams.

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New data shows Washington Football TV ratings are down significantly from 2019

The product Washington is putting on the field overachieves what many people expected, but ratings for both games are down from last year.

After going through the vast wasteland of no sports for a few months earlier this year, you’d think that fans of the Washington Football Team would be enthralled to be able to turn on the TV this past month and watch their favorite team play.

On top of that, with thousands of fans now unable to attend games in person due to the coronavirus pandemic, you’d think that even more people are forced to sit in front of their box sets and catch the game via telecast.

Apparently that hasn’t been the case, as Washington’s ratings on TV have been down both of the past two weeks, compared to a year ago.

Week 1 2019 @ Eagles: 19.0
Week 1 2020 vs Eagles: 14.3

Week 2 2019 vs Cowboys: 18.3
Week 2 2020 @ Cardinals: 16.5

Stats via The Sports Business Journal

How does that make sense? Washington has a young and budding star in Terry McLaurin, plus one of the best defensive lines in the NFL and a No. 2 overall pick in the most recent draft. On top of that, the first two games of the year came against entertaining opponents, with Week 1 against the division rival Philadelphia Eagles, and Week 2 against the high-flying Arizona Cardinals. Mix all of those factors with the reasons we laid out at the top of the article, and you’d expect ratings to be up, right?

One thing you could blame it on is the myriad of different options available to the viewer at the moment. In Week 1, Washington and the rest of the NFL early slate were up against a Clippers and Nuggets NBA Playoff game, and last week saw the entire NFL Sunday matched up against the U.S. Open.

Whatever the reason, we can hope that Washington starts to look a bit better on the field, and in turn, more fans will catch onto the wave and tune in on the dials.

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