It’s hard to believe that sports viewership would be on the decline, with so many of us looking forward to a return to live sports over the summer. I wish I could say that it wasn’t the case, but most top-flight sports are seeing a significant decline in viewership numbers. But don’t worry if you purchased or want to purchase some sports programming to advertise your business, there is a way to protect yourself.
How Bad Is It?
One of my newly found media heroes Paulsen at Sports Media Watch, has been collecting the data for over a decade. His numbers for 2020 are startling to say the least. The Stanley Cup Finals were down 61%, which is a considerable number. Part of this decline can be explained by looking at the participants. The Tampa Bay Lightning and Dallas Stars are great teams have little in the way of a nationwide audience.
More concerning is the drop at the ever-stable NFL, whose viewership is down by 13% over the first 4 weeks. Looking at the first four weeks of the season, we are seeing worse numbers than we experienced in the last much-publicized drop in 2017. Most troubling is the slide that is being experienced by Sunday Night Football on NBC. Who prime time slot airs a stable of cherry-picked matchups with nationwide interest.
Most surprising of all is the drop we saw in the NBA. Not even two of the league’s largest teams, the Heat and Lakers, could salvage the NBA finals’ ratings. They ended 49% down compared to the Raptors and Warriors last year.
I bought sports in Q4, with sports viewership down, what do I do?
Make sure that you have an agreement in place based on the ratings for the programming. These can be either Nielsen ratings or Comscore ratings, whichever the vendor subscribes to. The good news is you don’t personally have to buy the ratings; however, it is better to pull them independently to keep everyone honest (this is where an agency helps). After the quarter is over, ask your rep to create a post of your programming. This is where they pull a report that tells how many viewers (in your market) actually watched the programming you purchased. From there, you can see if you got what you paid for. If the vendor delivered less than 90% of the viewers you agreed to, you are entirely within your rights to ask for some free spots. These are called makegoods, and deliver additional viewers to bring you back up to 90% of your agreed-upon amount. This will be discussed in more detail in an upcoming blog.
Overall if you set yourself up for success, you wont have to worry that sports viewership is down a little. I hope this helps and hope your business and team win out in 2020.
