Sports Television

Sporting events represent an important source of programming for the television industry. Countless live sporting events and spin-off programs (e.g., talk shows, preview and postgame shows, sports news, and highlight shows) are aired each day. Specialized sports networks available on cable abound and include golf, football, outdoor sports, college sports, soccer, and racing of all varieties, to name but a few. In addition, premium channels in most markets allow viewers—for an extra charge—to see all of the games played in major league baseball, and the National Basketball Association (NBA), Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), and the Premiere league. Finally, pay-per-view television allows viewers to watch WWE wrestling and nearly all title fights in the world of boxing.

One way to estimate the importance of sports programming to the television industry is to examine the amount of money networks spend to buy the rights to these events. Table 1 provides the costs of most of the rights for most major sporting events during the 2002–2003 season—more than $5 billion were spent for the television rights for 1 year, and that excludes the cost of the WNBA, boxing, wrestling, and a host of other sports such as college football. NBC paid $793 million for the rights to the 2004 Summer Olympics held in Athens, Greece, and NBC will pay $894 million for the rights to the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. According to USA Today, NBC, MSNBC, and the other NBC networks aired more than 800 hours of Olympic programming during the 2004 games. These games garnered an audience of more than 200 million viewers and set a ratings record as the most-watched non-U.S. Summer Olympics in history.

Further evidence of the importance of sports programming to the television industry can be found in the Nielsen ratings. During the 2003–2004 television season, the three most widely viewed TV specials focused on the Super Bowl. In fact, according to the Nielsen ratings, sports programs held 4 of the top 5 slots and 6 of the top 10 television specials for the year.

These high levels of viewership for the 2003–2004 television season are not an anomaly. Nielsen's list of the highest rated programs of all time is filled with sports programming. In fact, 55% of the 40 most widely viewed programs of all time were sports programs. This list includes NFL games and women's Olympic figure skating, with World Series baseball games and NBA games not too much further down the list.

Most televised sporting events do not attract ratings audiences as large as the most popular prime-time network programs. Researchers recognize that the Nielsen ratings consistently underestimate the audience of sporting events because of measurement error. This error in audience estimation stems from the fact that Nielsen system has not traditionally taken into consideration the fact that many TV viewers watch sporting events with friends and in public places. Thus, anyone not watching TV at home is lost in the ratings assessment process.

While estimates vary, somewhere between 10% and 20% of all TV viewing is done outside the home. In the Nielsen system, which employs 8,000 families to represent the U.S. viewing audience, that percentage could mean a huge swing in the ratings, an increase of as much as 12 rating points. In fact, Nielsen and other rating companies have begun to employ portable people meters to combat this problem. These devices work like a cell phone and transmit audio sounds back to Nielsen so they can keep track of all media usage home or away, without reliance on the memory of the Nielsen family member. Although sports programming might not attract an audience as large as prime-time network programs, the ratings for sporting events are consistently [Page 787]as high as programs on cable. With the employment of portable people meters, advertisers may find sports programming is more competitive than previously known.

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