Are more people watching Miami Heat and Marlins than before the pandemic? Some answers.
Sports fans were undoubtedly craving live competition when American pro sports leagues went dark for four months because of COVID-19.
So now that the pro leagues have returned, are South Florida viewers watching the Miami Heat and Miami Marlins in larger numbers than pre-pandemic? And what about nationally?
Let’s look at the local ratings first.
The Heat’s bubble ratings are slightly ahead of the pre-COVID ratings, but the margin is negligible.
Combining the entire audience for the Heat’s six seeding games entering Wednesday (including the three that aired both on Fox Sports Sun and a national network), the six games have been viewed, on an average, in 2.9 percent of Miami-Fort Lauderdale homes with television sets.
Before the league halted play, the 62 Heat games have averaged a 2.88 rating, equal to 2.88 percent of those Dade/Broward homes with TV sets.
So the ratings are virtually the same.
But here’s the thing: That 2.9 is strong considering only two of the Heat’s first six games were in prime time, and two were weekday afternoon starts, when viewership for sports is traditionally low.
Also, Monday’s Heat-Pacers game on Fox Sports Sun was the most-watched TV program on English television in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market on Monday night.
Quick aside: When Fox Sports Sun and either TNT or ESPN compete with each other on Heat cablecasts, sometimes Fox Sports Sun wins the local ratings battle and sometimes the national network wins.
But Fox Sports Sun appears to have a sizable and loyal core audience whether the game is nationally televised or not. For the Heat-Pacers seeding finale at 4 p.m. on Friday, Mark Jones and Doris Burke work the game on ESPN, opposite Eric Reid and John Crotty on Sun.
As for the Marlins, ratings are way up from last season, which is presumably the result of the thirst for live sports and the Marlins’ strong start.
The Marlins’ first 10 games averaged a 1.2 rating in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market on Fox Sports Florida, equal to 1.2 percent of Dade/Broward homes with TV sets. That’s up 43 percent over their TV ratings last season. Viewership on the Fox Sports Go app are up 93 percent.
FYI: One ratings point in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market equals 16,522 homes.
Nationally, NBA ratings have dropped by four percent since the re-start (per Sports Media Watch), and one factor in that games have been airing in non-traditional windows, such as 6:30 p.m. starts when some West Coast viewers are still at work or in a few cases, weekday afternoons.
ESPN’s first 11 NBA bubble games averaged 1.4 million viewers and 764,000 viewers in adults 18 to 49, down 7 and 3 percent, respectively, from the pre-COVID regular season average.
AROUND THE DIAL
The NFL is expected to consider moving some Sunday games to Saturday if all of college football is canceled. That would figure to involve taking games from Fox and CBS Sunday packages and placing them on Saturdays as full national telecasts.
That would negatively impact the Fox/CBS ratings on Sundays, but it also would create programming for them on Saturdays that could replace college football and provide another vehicle to sell advertisements.
The NFL hasn’t commented on the issue. And the league, under terms of its antitrust exemption, cannot air games on Saturdays if any college conferences are playing games. The Big 12, Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference say they are moving ahead with plans to play this fall.
▪ ESPN’s Rece Davis made a good point this week when he wondered why the Big Ten changed its mind about playing football this fall and added: “If it is indeed medical information, it’s incumbent on the Big Ten to share information with the population at large, not just in sports.
“If they’re not playing because of myocarditis [a cardiac issue] ... then why are we playing Major League Baseball? How are we going to play the NFL? We need this medical information for everyone to evaluate. There are other doctors who look at it differently.”
▪ CBS is shuffling three of its top four NFL announcing teams. As we noted previously, Kevin Harlan and Greg Gumbel are switching partners, with Harlan now paired with Trent Green on the No. 3 team and Gumbel and Rich Gannon on the No. 4 team. As we’ve reported, former Fox No. 2 analyst Charles Davis is now CBS’ No. 2 NFL analyst, paired with Ian Eagle. Jim Nantz and Tony Romo remain CBS’ lead team.
Here are some NFL changes we hear Fox is making.
▪ In filming this month’s Hard Knocks amid a pandemic, HBO used robotic cameras when possible to avoid contact with Rams and Chargers players and coaches.
“I got a couple robo-cameras following me right now,” Rams coach Sean McVay told The Orange County Register. “Every move I make in my office, so I have zero privacy. So, time that I would probably allocate at my home office otherwise, to try and get some of that privacy. I can’t say anything without feeling like I am going to get in trouble.”
▪ Deion Sanders left NFL Network — after refusing to accept a big pay cut — and joined Barstool Sports.
▪ Quick stuff: Laura Rutledge takes over as host of ESPN’s NFL Live beginning on Monday ... ABC will carry the first game of the Western Conference seeding matchup at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. If the ninth seed beats the eighth seed on Saturday, then a Game 2 will be played at 4:30 p.m. Sunday on ESPN … ESPN and TNT have set aside 4, 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. windows for NBA playoff games next week.
▪ This year’s Sports Emmy award winners, announced Tuesday night, include - among others - TNT’s Ernie Johnson (studio host), NBC’s Mike Emrick (play-by-play), TNT’s Charles Barkley (studio analyst) and ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit (game analyst).
Here’s my Wednesday piece on how the upheaval in college football will affect the Miami Dolphins.
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 3:21 PM.
