Here are the top English-language sports ratings for last weekend, as supplied by BBM Nielsen Media Research:
Football, Blue Bombers at Lions, Friday, TSN: 480,000
Football, Roughriders at Alouettes, Friday, TSN: 408,000
Auto racing, NASCAR Sharpie 500, Saturday, TSN: 277,000
Baseball, Angels at Blue Jays, Sunday, TSN: 245,000
Tennis, Rogers Cup final, Sunday, CBC: 212,000
Tennis, Rogers Cup semifinal 1, Saturday, CBC: 170,000
Tennis, Rogers Cup semifinal 2, Saturday, CBC: 156,000
Baseball, Angels at Blue Jays, Friday, Sportsnet: 165,000*
Track and field, World Championships, Saturday, CBC: 151,000
Track and field, World Championships, Sunday, CBC: 149,000
Baseball, Red Sox at Yankees, Sunday, Sportsnet: 143,000
Baseball, Angels at Blue Jays, Saturday, TSN: 141,000
Auto racing, F1 European Grand Prix, Sunday, TSN: 137,000
Auto racing, IRL, Sunday, TSN: 114,000
Soccer, Fulham at Chelsea, Sunday, Score: 74,000
Soccer, Man City at Wolverhampton, Saturday, Sportsnet: 58,000
Soccer, Toronto FC at Chivas, Saturday, Sportsnet: 40,000
Ontario and Pacific channels only
Good to see cfl still going strong. For some reason i am always surprised at how low the toronto f.c ratings are considering how popular they are supposed to be in toronto. The ratings are from the Chris Zelkovich blog.
Awesome, good to see that the CFL is still head and shoulders above any other sports on TV in terms of popularity, in the summer at least. Now if only the media outlets (ie Toronto) would catch on. Do you know if the Riders-Als ratings include those from RDS?
To be honest, I'm surprised at the figure for TFC games, I thought they would be lower since the times I flip the channel to TFC games on the tube, my brain says "hurry up Mikey, get off this most boring sport there is to watch on TV." Really, there is a little man in my head that tells me that.
Awesome weekly numbers, I believe the CFL only lost the first weekend and has been solid numbers finishing the top whatever number of games watched.
Also don't forget with the additional 300,000 or so average on the RDS when the Als play, this figure is huge, well over 700,000.
With the second half numbers sure to increase in the fall, there appears no question how the 400,000 per game average will be reached.
As for soccer Earl, the 40,000 is pathetic and is basically one half of infomercial numbers. The other thing is the game was shown on all of the 4 Sporetsnet networks, yet still a joke.
I think the reason TFC numbers are low is that the game day experience is good because it's supply and demand, it's hard to get tickets to actually go to the game, doesn't mean people are going to tune in though.
Nice to see another solid week of ratings, the Montreal - Sask game doesn't include RDS numbers either.
I don’t know what to think about this, The Alouettes have a 20002 seat stadium, and their attendance has been that since moving to mcgill stadium.
BMO field listed capacity is 20,844, Yet listed attendance for games goes from a low of this year of 19,843 to a high of 20,902. Attendance isn’t a stable sell out for MLS games at BMO
Some in the Lions' front office had the brilliant epipheny to lift the black-out for last Friday's debacle, so that images of Fred Reid's cleat marks running up and down our linebackers and DBs could be beamed all over the city. :x This may partially explain the big TV numbers (well, in the first half, anyway).
As for TFC, I believe it's not unlike the NHL situation in the USA. One sees a full building of 19,000 fans in, say, Washington and assumes they have massive support in that city. But it's likely that most of the people that like hockey in that market (or Nashville or Anaheim or New Jersey....) attend games and are passionate supporters. There's just not that many of them.
Was the Blackout lifted on the standard feed from TSN , or were you watching on HD , The HD has been showing all the Lions home games as it’s a TSN national feed for some strange reason they can’t blackout that Channel
Well, the Fulham-Chelsea game did nearly almost double the Toronto FC game, apparently. And other than Chelsea, there weren’t any big-name clubs playing (Fulham, Man City and Wolverhampton…) … I would guess that come Champion’s League (especially the later rounds), and games between two massive teams, the numbers will rise … quite possibly above 100,000. (Although there is the drawback that Champion’s League games are played at midday over here, and replayed late at night.)
Per my signature, I was at the game, but read about the blackout lift in the newspaper. I don’t watch standard def, but I know many still do. This was available on both TSN feeds.
CBC is really trying to push soccer in the adsence of the CFL for summer sports programming. 40,000 is abysmal and really demonstrates that the interest in TFC doesn't go much beyond their season ticket waiting list.
Any pro sports outfit can look at their attendance numbers and given the opportunity, build an appropriately undersized venue to create demand. The real interest can be guaged in the world of TV ratings where you can't do the same thing. A typical CFL game is 400,000 or 200,000 per market... TFC is 40,000 this week for their following... 5:1.
