ESPN Suffers Surprise Defeat for the First Time Ever - 'A Massive Shift'
ESPN just got some news so bad that it might consider going back to “World’s Strongest Man” and exercise shows in order to right the ship.
For the first time since ESPN2 launched with beefy dudes in the morning and hockey at night back in 1993, it is no longer the No. 2 sports network on the cable dial in terms of viewers.
John Ourand of Sports Business Daily broke the news that will likely have the suits at the Walt Disney Co. squirming: Both NBC Sports Network and Fox Sports 1 have caught and surpassed “Worldwide Leader Junior” for total viewers, dropping ESPN2 all the way to fourth place in ratings for the year.
Awful Announcing called the news “a massive shift” in sports television.
On the bright side, the mothership is still comfortably No. 1; ESPN is by miles the most-watched sports network on television. All those NBA and MLB games plus “Monday Night Football” see to that.
TV sports ratings have been on a slight upswing lately, as sports are the last bastion of programming for which it is more difficult to “cut the cord” because TV is the most reliable way to watch sports live without the WiFi or the player app causing games to fall so far behind real time that you can see what’s going to happen next on Twitter before it shows up on your laptop.
But even with the good news, the Deuce’s fall to fourth is pretty bad.
NBCSN had some help from the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, which accounted for 13 of the network’s top 20 ratings performances.
But this is not the first time Olympic coverage has hit NBC’s cable backwater, and the games in Sochi in 2014 and Vancouver in 2010 weren’t enough to push it all the way past ESPN2.
NBCSN also got a huge boost from hockey, as the Vegas Golden Knights, in their inaugural season, captured the public imagination during a run to the Stanley Cup finals, in which they fell to the Washington Capitals — with Games 2 and 3 on NBCSN.
Mark Lazarus, who by name alone probably ought to be tapped to oversee ESPN2’s turnaround, is chairman of NBC Broadcasting and Sports, and his statement was a deft example of dunking on an opponent with a humblebrag.
“In the world of TV today, growth stories are few and far between,” Lazarus said. “The Olympics were definitely a positive, but it was the fourth Olympics on NBCSN. The NHL, NASCAR, English Premier League all drive ratings and drove our growth.
“We have every confidence that we will continue to build properties with our audiences.”
Indeed, the EPL, perfectly positioned as it is timewise to go with one’s Saturday morning breakfast, has enjoyed a surge in popularity in the States, as the combination of English-language native broadcasts and mainstream American media outlets hungry for content has introduced the game to millions of viewers on this side of the pond.
FS1’s gains were a bit more tenuous, as the biggest surge in its viewership was due to the World Cup soccer tournament.
The network also aired Game 7 of the NL Championship Series between the Brewers and Dodgers, picking up a huge audience that would usually watch such things on regular Fox television.
For total daily viewers, ESPN was first with 720,000, NBCSN took second at 192,000, FS1 was third at 176,000, ESPN2 grabbed 173,000 and the NFL Network was even nipping at the Deuce’s heels with 135,000.
In sixth place? The NBC-owned Golf Channel, at 113,000.
That’s not just taking the lead, that’s grabbing an 11 percent viewership advantage. If NBCSN keeps that up, that’s how “new normal” stats are made.
ESPN2 is going to have to make big changes in order to get back into its previous position as silver medalist.
Quick, someone call Iceland; we need more strongmen!
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