I thought it would be interesting to look at the change in total viewership from the "shut-down" year of 2020 to last year. Common sense might say that leagues had more viewers in 2021, but that's not the case. Take a look (in 000s):
Thursday, January 13, 2022
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
TV Soccer Viewership: Jan 4-10
Liga MX returns during a very light week of games on TV for soccer in the United States.
• The FA Cup was broadcast exclusively on ESPN+ streaming last week. We haven't seen an FA Cup match on regular ESPN/2 since June 2020. It's a great property. It's strange they don't put some on "big" ESPN.
• The Premier League resumed its regular-season schedule after the 3rd round of the FA Cup yesterday. They are a little over halfway done with their 2021/22 season.
• Ligue 1 broke through on BEIN and is worth mentioning. Though, the number is tiny, I think folks at the network will be happy with it.
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source: showbuzzydaily, spoilertv, helltown
Thursday, January 6, 2022
YE2021 Review: Winning the Day
One way I like to look at how popular a sport or event might be is to see how it does in comparison to all other events (/programs) that aired that same day. This includes ALL cable programs. From FOX News to WETV.
It's no secret that sports dominate cable TV these days, so let's tease out how many times a specific league or event finished on the day it aired.
Here's how many times in 2021 these leagues and events finished in the top 15 on the day they aired on cable television:
That's a lot of soccer-related events! Easy to see the order of things, however. Liga MX and the Premier League topped any of the other leagues broadcast on US cable TV. EURO 2021 (2020) dominated the soccer calendar.
To the right of the table you'll see red bars. These indicate the percentage of times each league or event finished in the top 15 out of all the times it aired.
For example: College Football (CFB) had a total of 542 programs (dedicated shows) that finished in the top 150 cable programs in 2021. 210 of those finished in the top 15, which means 39% of College Football programming finished in the top 15 on the day.
I used gray to sort of break them out in tiers.
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1. Somewhat surprisingly, the sport of BASKETBALL is the number one draw on cable TV in 2021. Some of that total is due to the volume of games played, but it's worth a callout non-the-less. 532 total programs finishing in the top 15 on the day.
2. GRIDIRON finishes 2nd. NFL and College Football finished in the top fifteen 453 times last year.
3. PRO WRESTLING is our 3rd most popular sport in the United States last year. WWE and AEW finished with a combined 241.
4. The 4th most popular sport in the US (on cable) is soccer. EURO 2021, Liga MX, Premier League, Gold Cup and Copa America regularly finished in the top 15 last year with a total of 153.
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
TV Soccer Viewership: Dec 27-Jan 3
The Premier League has the stage all to themselves this week. Here are some quick observations on the last week of the 2021 calendar year.
1. 974k is the best viewership number the Premier League has had on US cable since the beginning of 2020.
2. I don't think all the transfers out of the US to foreign "top 5" clubs and this big number are a coincidence. Americans can't get enough of their own. Will it work? Maybe in the PL. It's something that has always happened, but with the PL reaching new levels... maybe.
3. Spanish language viewers continue to get their soccer fix with the only show in town (the PL). Universo has 6 programs making the list this year.
4. The transition over to USA Network is going a lot better than I expected. Fans have followed. These numbers are just as good (if not better) than NBCSN's.
5. I'll have a year end top 50 post up soon.
Happy New Year.
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sources: showbuzzdaily, spoilertv, helltown
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