CFL (and other sports) TV Ratings

FOX owns the USFL. It would be in their best interest to heavily promote the USFL even piggyback their league during NFL season.

ESPN can report the 'Merican angle of the CFL because Americans always back anything American no matter where they are playing.

If ESPN puts women’s basketball on ESPNews, it too would get poor ratings. American love football more than women’s basketball. I sure don’t watch women’s sports unless it is the good looking ladies in Tennis or Golf.

Anyway ESPN is a dying entity. The CFL is better off going to a new horizon in streaming sites in the US

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Not accurate. I actually think that is a Canadian thing where everybody watches just to cheer for their fellow countryman (theory behind Global initiative that the CFL thinks applies worldwide). For the most part, Americans only care about the country of origin during the Olympics. For the teams they support everyday, they could care less where the player was born, went to school, or whatever. They are only concerned about how good you are at the sport. Plus, Americans only support the major version of a sport.

Americans in any decent numbers just do not care about the CFL. Never have. Never will. Think Toronto with less interest.

WNBA has a better US tv contract than the CFL with the league supposedly worth a billion dollars. NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship is going to be aired on ABC starting this season.

You may not like ESPN’s coverage of the CFL. But who is going to give you more money, more coverage, and is available to more people? Anybody? CFL is not exactly a league that multiple networks are bidding against trying to secure their tv rights.

If that were true, how do you explain the popularity of high school and college football?

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I suspect Genius Sports’ input on future broadcast deals will involve any increases in pay tied to increases in viewership. And they hope to achieve this by connecting CFL players to US football fans with similar roots, especially college. So, Ohio football fans might get a lot of stories on their social media about Rourke and Lions games. And then if they do tune it, I think Genius Sports technology will make it easy for viewers to track the players of interest to them.

I have no guess as to how well this might work, though.

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Not sure putting the CFL product scattered on just ONE platform all over the place then expecting good results after is a true test for anything .

The product must be consistent and actually promoted if you give one exclusive rights .

If 400 k tuned into Johnny Football game that should have been examined .

Getting 400 or 500 k consistenly should be a reasonable target if nurtured under the right conditions . Now that number may require shared product on several platforms and accumalated to get a measurable significance .

This multi streaming Muti channel universe the CFL's best interest is to get more platforms involved and sell the rights as non exclusive for the time being .

They really have nothing to lose and everything to gain it's not like they are getting any noticeable money out of the ESPN deal today .

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Are you kidding me? Americans are the most patriotic group on the planet. They watched the Tour du France when Lance Armstrong was routinely winning the event before he got caught for doping. They watched Tiger Woods play the British Open, the Williams Sisters dominate Tennis on the international events. American viewers love to watch their fellow citizens perform well in international events so it gives them a chance to yell “U S A! U S A! U S A!” to the world.

The CFL doesn’t need all Americans to care for it’s league, just a few million will do.

The wealthy NBA is supporting the WNBA and the G-League. How long does that last as the quality of play isn’t as great as the NBA. The WNBA got a TV contract because of the popularity of the NBA. It’s kind of like if you want to take the prettiest girl in school to the prom, you have to find a date for her ugly kid sister.

Ratings for women’s college basketball is going to tank on ABC. Why do you think that there is no Women’s Sports Network that solely airs women’s sports. They go broke. Remember WTSN? That didn’t last too long because nobody wasn’t interested in women’s sports.

People are cutting cable and switching to streaming sites

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Major tennis and golf events are covered by the broadcast networks and are shown no matter who is participating. Ratings of course benefit when there is a big name there. However the main point is: nobody who has no interest in golf, tennis, and cycling are going to watch just because an American is there. There are leagues all over the world with Americans. If all it takes to be popular in the US is to promote them, all those foreign leagues would have big US tv deals. Advertising that Americans play in the CFL makes no difference at all because Americans don't care about the CFL.

The CFL in its current form is never going to get a million viewers per game in America. Even 200,000 is unrealistic.

WNBA gets $25 million a year from their US tv deal. CFL would be grateful to get $2 million a year American tv deal.

ESPN has been airing the Women's NCAA Basketball Tournament for years. They should know whether it is a good idea or not to move it to ABC. Despite the perception that the move is for some sort of activism reason, the change was made because ABC feels there is money to be made airing the final on broadcast tv.

CFL's value to ESPN is probably in the diehards who subscribe to ESPN+ and watch every game on that platform. Within the mainstream US audience, the value is probably negligible.

I think they only need half a million if they have their own teams. Then some of those can show up for games, some of them will be casual fans. Some of them will be Canadian fans on a road trip.

According to Dave Naylor the CFL gets better viewers than MLS so they should get more than 200k for their American deal at any rate.

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The CFL isn’t going to remain in it’s current form. Thinking that it will is unrealistic. Things will eventually change because of greed. It’s human nature.

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If past history is any indication, it won’t be until the bottom completely falls out. It will just be spin, denials, and steady as she goes until then

What I don’t get is why does ESPN keep the CFL when it won’t promote it properly. It gave the XFL team reveals for it’s teams, coaches just recently. The CFL doesn’t even get score announcements on it’s nightly Sports Center telecast, particularly when the CFL is active during the summer when there is no football going on.

ESPN did that to the NHL too when it didn’t NHL rights, which prompt Bettman to go with NBC for a couple of years. The NHL gave it’s broadcast rights to NBC for nothing before it got a money contract years later.

The CFL has to change it’s availability to the US markets. It can’t be buried behind a paywall on ESPN+. It’s time to find a new partner for CFL broadcasts

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ESPN does their viewers dirty quite often. Disney itself is one of many evil empires in todays world. the theory is that ESPN expects the CFL to pay for advertising it’s own product on ESPN. The CFL doesn’t want to do it because there’s no clause in their current contract that has anything to do with more money for higher ratings.

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I don’t blame the CFL for not paying advertising rates for it’s own product in US Funds. That’s what you call “Pay For Play”, a Payola which is wrong in principle.

I hope the CFL finds a new broadcasting partner by the end of the year. ABESPN- Anybody But ESPN

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Your assumption is incorrect, for many like me have not needed ESPN+ even before it existed so as to tap into the CFL and never will.

And your line of argument as if it’s ESPN or bust is bogus, and as noted above there are plenty MORE possibilities to explore in today’s modern media than you even consider and a major player is involved in shopping those opportunities on behalf of the CFL.

The future is brighter and better than what we have had for at least five years now via the antiquated cable TV stranglehold of either TSN or ESPN.

Other sports and leagues of all sizes have figured this out already and so will the CFL.

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The same ego and hubris at hand since about 2010, the first year ever that cable and satellite subscriptions declined, remains at ESPN despite whatever changes have been made. They simply can’t get away from their cable-first model and ESPN+ is not a solid complement or replacement.

And so down further into the sewage system ESPN goes and good riddance.

Here’s the latest frightening update from Disney that hit its stock hard in these last few days. I will cross-post this one in the streaming thread too.

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Yeah, a few people pirate the games instead of paying. But to ESPN, they use Plus to monetize niche sports. That is what the CFL is: a niche sports league. People act like ESPN promotes all the niche programming they air other than the CFL. Nobody wants to admit that the audience size for CFL games is minuscule and will never change. It is very likely that the same people watch every game.

Should a big network other than ESPN pick up the CFL next year, a few games will be on linear with the rest being streamed on their paid service just like it is now. If you are against viewers paying for the CFL, I suppose the league could try a low-tiered OTA network like Stadium and hope that their current viewers find them, they get “promoted better”, and viewers do not mind watching games in SD.

These are all great points though of course I disagree that the CFL audience need be miniscule.

There are so many improvements to be made including as we have noted for some time in this thread and in others like the Tanenbaum, Chicago, and Streaming threads.

Here are some concrete ideas as I have shared in the Streaming thread as well and the timing was about the time when it was shared that Genius Sports is shopping media deals for the CFL including in the US market:

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For US Rights, NCAA Football Is NOT An Issue For Most Media

This also seems like a good time to point out this reality in the US that all seem to understand but those who are diehard so-called "college" football fans who think all football fans like college football, which quite simply never has been true.

I am not much of a "college" football fan any longer though I do follow my alma mater here and there.

I only learned this reality decades ago when moving from the Midwest, where Big Ten football is big in many circles as was once basketball as well, to Washington DC. Then in Atlanta I saw that college football is the number one sport with even more interest than the NFL, and then back to the reality of Washington DC where few care but a few alumni of regional universities and most of them not even for the actual game.

The audiences for NCAA football and NFL football vary and do not overlap as much as they once did when our choices for sports and entertainment on weekends were fewer.

Also interest in watching due to gambling and interest in watching due to interest in the sport as a fan are not necessarily one and the same. There are plenty of guys who bet on sports who are otherwise not fans in general.

The bottom line is that the CFL has Saturdays whether in Canada or the US though of course should be mindful of certain regional tendencies on Saturdays when making decisions for sake of promotion and marketing in certain markets in the US.

There are plenty with the media experience to help guide the CFL in those regards around any given college football game of heavy regional interest much as for any given other sporting or entertainment event in any market that presents a potential conflict for all audiences.

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The Dallas v Green Bay game that went up against the West Final was the most watched NFL game of the year in the US at 29.2 million. No public numbers will ever be released for BC v Winnipeg on ESPNews because that channel does not pay to have their ratings measured. That being said, it would be hard to believe the West Final was watched by many people in America.

You forgot to mention that the Pack n’ 'Boys game was televised on over the air broadcast for FREE while the CFL West Final is stuck behind a paywall. Of course you are going to get small numbers for a CFL divisional final. That’s why the CFL season should conclude by Halloween

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