This year ESPN saw its Sunday Night Baseball ratings increase 18.8 % from last year. What was their trick? Well, they can thank 6 specific cities for this increase.
The 5 highest rankings of the year:
1. Mets vs. Yankees. May 21, @ 3.5
2. Boston vs. Yankees. Aug 20, @ 3.3
3. Angels vs. Boston. July 30, @ 2.5
4. St. Louis vs. Chicago. April 9, @ 2.3
5. Mets vs. Yankees. July 2, @ 2.3
The lowest ranking in 2006.
San Diego vs San Francisco. Sept 10, @ 0.9
With these year-to-year trends, ESPN is going to end up showing exclusively Boston, NY, Philly, Chicago, L.A, and St. Louis games. I mean hell, they are basically already there. Those six cities accounted for 22 of the 26 Sunday Night games on ESPN. Of those 22 games, they were playing each other 9 times. Someone made the point to me that more fans are gravitating towards large market teams these days, regardless of where they grew up. This just may explain why that is happening. It also explains why most people I know from these cities have a deep rooted hatred for Morgan and Miller. We are forced to listen to their nonsense consistently. For example:
3 comments:
Um...that's six cities.
That's why MLB is seeing lower ratings for the World Series.
Since the postseason is such a crapshoot the "hyped" teams are not always going to make it to the Fall Classic.
We've been hearing about the Red Sox, Yankees and Mets all year long but are not familiar with other teams.
Who knew that the Tigers had such a great reliever in Zumaya until he smoked the Yankee lineup in Game 2 of the ALDS?
If ESPN did a better job of highlighting all of the decent teams they wouldn't be such strangers to the potentially larger viewing audience in October.
PS: I'm a Mets fan but it doesn't take a genius to figure this out. The suits at Fox Sports have done a terrible job of showcasing baseball in the last 10 years.
Forget the nonsense they said, did you notice their radar gun saying 103 and them going silent for a second?
Post a Comment