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awhom111



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PostPosted: 08/12/20 12:01 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

8/8 Mercury-Storm ABC 400,000
8/9 Lynx-Sparks ESPN 310,000
8/9 Mystics-Fever ESPN2 130,000
awhom111



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PostPosted: 08/12/20 12:11 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Richyyy wrote:
ClayK wrote:
I've decided to ignore the NBA for the most part, but when playoffs begin, that will change.

Same here. It's amazing how the NBA took months off, cut a whole bunch of games out of the schedule, carefully designed a complicated set-up so that they could play at all... and still managed to come back and play weeks of games that I couldn't find it in me to give a toss about.

The only reason that they're playing these games, and the only reason that they play 82 normally, is money. From a sporting perspective, and a viewer interest perspective, it's wildly too many. 22 might be a little too short, but honestly I think 34 was plenty for a regular season. You guys only play these games to decide who plays who in the ones that actually matter, anyway. I don't know how baseball fans retain any interest over a 162-game season.

But I digress. Some of the numbers do look pretty poor, but maybe we need more context. Has everything, even live sport, just gone down across the board? Or is all this WNBA basketball being available killing the interest in any given game?


As near as I can tell, WNBA ratings have followed the exact same pattern as all of the sports on their return. It starts with an increase and then drops down to what would be the expected ratings if the season had been normal. Given the scheduling, we probably will not have great direct comparisons until the playoffs though.

johnjohnW wrote:
Richyyy wrote:
ClayK wrote:
I've decided to ignore the NBA for the most part, but when playoffs begin, that will change.

Same here. It's amazing how the NBA took months off, cut a whole bunch of games out of the schedule, carefully designed a complicated set-up so that they could play at all... and still managed to come back and play weeks of games that I couldn't find it in me to give a toss about.

The only reason that they're playing these games, and the only reason that they play 82 normally, is money. From a sporting perspective, and a viewer interest perspective, it's wildly too many. 22 might be a little too short, but honestly I think 34 was plenty for a regular season. You guys only play these games to decide who plays who in the ones that actually matter, anyway. I don't know how baseball fans retain any interest over a 162-game season.

But I digress. Some of the numbers do look pretty poor, but maybe we need more context. Has everything, even live sport, just gone down across the board? Or is all this WNBA basketball being available killing the interest in any given game?


I'd argue the surplus of national TV games is diluting the audience pool. In a typical season we can expect 150-250k viewers for an ESPN/ESPN2 game. Having 2 games a night for 4 straight nights is going to spread out the audience. I'm a massive fan and in the last few seasons, I managed to watch almost all national TV games love or via DVR and most Phoenix games on league pass. This season, with the compressed schedule and almost daily national games, I'm lucky to keep up with just the Phx games. When normally I would have a week, sometimes two in between ESPN games, it was way easier to watch them all.

I'd say the same 150-250k are still watching, and maybe even more due to added interest and coverage, but that pool is being divided up between several games a day, instead of all being diverted to one game a week.

Does Nielsen have a way of measuring "unique" viewers? I doubt it, but that may be the only metric that could be improving this season. For instance, maybe. Normal season has 500-750k unique viewers divided among 16 national games, but perhaps this season is averaging 1million or more unique viewers but split among 40+national games.


Nielsen can measure anything if they are paid enough. I am not sure if their agreement with the people in the sample allows for that kind of disaggregation, but I do feel like I have read information about networks trying to figure out what percentage of the audience for a particular show also watches a given show on another network in order to decide whether moving the show to the same timeslot would be a bad idea. There is also the reach statistic, which is similar to how internet video counts their views, but networks generally do not publish those because advertisers are not idiots and know that somebody watching something for two minutes should not count the same as another person watching it for two hours.

Tally24 wrote:
awhom111 wrote:
I guess that having part of the game off of the main channel is a valid strategy for technically boosting your ratings.

The ESPN2 portion of Sky-Mercury averaged 83,000 viewers. It averaged .03 percent of the sample in 18-49, 25-54, and 50+ and .02 percent of the sample in 18-34 and 12-34. Of course, that is not an adequate number of decimal places to really get any insight, but there was no difference in 18-49 or 12-34 between male and female ratings.


Was this the game that the soccer game overran prior to tip and the first half was moved to ESPN News? If so, that could explain the drop in views.


Yes, it was that game, but I was positing that those circumstances actually improved ratings because of a solid lead-in and cutting out halftime and other typically low-rated parts of the broadcast.
johnjohnW



Joined: 11 Aug 2020
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PostPosted: 08/12/20 6:09 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

awhom111 wrote:
8/8 Mercury-Storm ABC 400,000
8/9 Lynx-Sparks ESPN 310,000
8/9 Mystics-Fever ESPN2 130,000


Ha. Well after all my "oversaturation" talk, these numbers seem pretty consistent with regular season numbers on the respective channels. Good to see.

If the ABC numbers stay consistent, then the season average will likely go up and the W will have a good argument for more ABC games.


awhom111



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PostPosted: 08/25/20 11:38 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Numbers since we went down:
8/15 Mystics-Aces ESPN 181,000
8/16 Wings-Mercury ABC 599,000
8/16 Storm-Sun ABC 480,000
8/22 Storm-Aces ABC 384,000
johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 08/26/20 8:37 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

awhom111 wrote:
Numbers since we went down:
8/15 Mystics-Aces ESPN 181,000
8/16 Wings-Mercury ABC 599,000
8/16 Storm-Sun ABC 480,000
8/22 Storm-Aces ABC 384,000


That Wings/Mercury game was really entertaining, so glad to see it got good exposure to the widest audience. Really curious to see the regular CBS game numbers. Low level teams but the highest watched network.


awhom111



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PostPosted: 09/01/20 11:51 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

8/29 Storm-Sky ABC 413,000
8/29 Wings-Fever CBS 403,000
johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 09/02/20 6:34 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

That's a pretty good number for the those teams on CBS.

The numbers clearly show that, the larger the platform, obviously, the more people who watch the game, but clearly there is a ceiling of 500-600k. I wonder what number they would get if they have them s better time slot on ABC or CBS.


awhom111



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PostPosted: 09/15/20 11:48 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

9/13 Aces-Storm ABC 333,000

This number and all those going forward will include viewership from the sample while outside the home assuming they view in a way where the measuring device can confirm their viewing so the figures are likely to be higher than they would be under previous measurement.

The first two NWSL games on CBS averaged 381,000 and 370,000 viewers. The US Open Women's Singles Final averaged 1,855,000 viwers. Also, a replay of Arsenal Women's 9-1 win over West Ham Women averaged 100,000 viewers.
johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 09/16/20 8:12 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Not a bad number going up against opening day of the NFL. Would hope those two teams would draw bigger but honestly, if I was a causal fan and tuned in and saw Stewie and Bird on the bench, I probably wouldn't stick around.

More concerning for the WNBA is that NWSL number. Simply astonishing how well NWSL has built up since their early days.


Silky Johnson



Joined: 29 Sep 2014
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PostPosted: 09/16/20 9:21 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

johnjohnW wrote:
Not a bad number going up against opening day of the NFL. Would hope those two teams would draw bigger but honestly, if I was a causal fan and tuned in and saw Stewie and Bird on the bench, I probably wouldn't stick around.


Vegas appears to have, inexplicably, consistently gotten the lowest ratings of all the playoff teams, this season.



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WNBA 09



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PostPosted: 09/16/20 9:25 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Silky Johnson wrote:
johnjohnW wrote:
Not a bad number going up against opening day of the NFL. Would hope those two teams would draw bigger but honestly, if I was a causal fan and tuned in and saw Stewie and Bird on the bench, I probably wouldn't stick around.


Vegas appears to have, inexplicably, consistently gotten the lowest ratings of all the playoff teams, this season.


It's the Cabbage effect !



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johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 09/16/20 9:40 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Does anyone know if Vegas Golden Knights have inexplicably lower ratings? Ha.


awhom111



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PostPosted: 09/19/20 5:31 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

For those wondering, I did not forget. None of the playoff games so far have rated well enough to make it to the list from the usual source.

johnjohnW wrote:
Not a bad number going up against opening day of the NFL. Would hope those two teams would draw bigger but honestly, if I was a causal fan and tuned in and saw Stewie and Bird on the bench, I probably wouldn't stick around.

More concerning for the WNBA is that NWSL number. Simply astonishing how well NWSL has built up since their early days.


It is impressive if you believe the rumor that there was a fear for the whole league collapsing if the USWNT had not won the World Cup. Unfortunately, like MLS, they seem to have great enthusiasm for their new teams, but need a lot of work on the old teams.
awhom111



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PostPosted: 09/22/20 11:35 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

9/20 Sun-Aces ESPN 210,000

NWSL averaged 495,000 viewers on Saturday.
johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 09/23/20 7:36 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

awhom111 wrote:
9/20 Sun-Aces ESPN 210,000

NWSL averaged 495,000 viewers on Saturday.


To be fair, the NWSL only had to compete with low tier college football whilst the W had to compete with the NFL. Still a bummer.


awhom111



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PostPosted: 09/23/20 11:46 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

9/22 Sun-Aces ESPN2 180,000
9/22 Lynx-Storm ESPN2 161,000
awhom111



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PostPosted: 09/25/20 10:51 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

9/24 Storm-Lynx ESPN2 154,000

497,000 average viewership on ESPN for the football game between two not as well known Alabama schools.
Richyyy



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PostPosted: 09/26/20 4:07 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I wonder if it's possible if the lack of novelty value is hurting the playoff ratings. Most years there's a game a week at most on ESPN2, and then you have to go hunting on other random networks if you want to find any others. This year there've been a string of double-headers on ESPN/ESPN2/ABC, plus a huge amount of games elsewhere, and all condensed into a tighter timeframe. Maybe instead of a bunch of people who've barely noticed the league was on but would normally go "oh, the WNBA playoffs, cool" and watch, have this year already had their fill and aren't bothering.



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johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 09/26/20 11:21 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Don't the first rounds of the playoffs usually have a ratings decline compared to the regular season? The increased competition from mlb, NFL, college football and NBA have got to be taking a toll. Most of these playoff games have been competing directly with the NBA playoffs.


Randy



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PostPosted: 09/26/20 11:55 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Plus, a lot of people may have developed new interests in the long sports hiatus.


ClayK



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PostPosted: 09/28/20 6:38 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

There have been NBA games on pretty much every night, and most basketball fans will prefer the NBA, which has better players, better coaching and better broadcasts.

The NBA is the best league in the world -- so in a way, the WNBA numbers aren't that bad. Going head-to-head with the NBA is not what the league had in mind ...



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awhom111



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PostPosted: 09/29/20 11:43 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

9/27 Aces-Sun ESPN 251,000
9/27 Storm-Lynx ABC 271,000

299,000 viewers for the latest NWSL game. 71,000 viewers on ESPN2 for the softball game at the same time as the ESPN game.
Silky Johnson



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PostPosted: 09/29/20 11:48 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

ClayK wrote:
There have been NBA games on pretty much every night, and most basketball fans will prefer the NBA, which has better players, better coaching and better broadcasts.

The NBA is the best league in the world -- so in a way, the WNBA numbers aren't that bad. Going head-to-head with the NBA is not what the league had in mind ...


A lot of this, on my end. I've been a WNBA fan since Day One, but I still like the NBA better.



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awhom111



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PostPosted: 10/01/20 12:10 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

9/29 Sun-Aces ESPN2 209,000
johnjohnW



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PostPosted: 10/01/20 7:53 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Sunday and Tuesdays numbers are pretty decent considering the competition. It kinda shows what the base dedicated WNBA viewer base is. Despite sports saturation on Sunday and the 2nd highest tv event of the year on Tuesday, the W can reasonably expect 200k viewers.

This season shows what the W can achieve with more casual viewers and increased viewing options. I'd like to see a much more concentrated TV approach next year. Although the constant games on TV was great for us, I hope the league can find a way to trim the schedule and focus on high caliber matchups and leverage as many ABC games as possible.


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