How important is sport (or not) for a network viewer

Fox ranks third among broadcasters this season in terms of ratings, with an average primetime audience of around 4.7 million viewers.

The network can thank its various sports rights packages, including the director of the NFL and Major League Baseball, for this position. Removing sports games from Fox Prime Time’s season rankings will hit the network with less than 3 million nightly viewers, exactly 2.96 million.

Fox stands out among its broadcasters, showing Nielsen data from the last two seasons. NBC also brings sports to a significant portion of its viewers, while ABC loves to get viewers excited anyway. CBS occupies a middle ground. However, sports can have a huge impact on a network’s viewership, which is why rights to these shows have increased in recent years. With live sports consistently being the most trusted way for people to watch TV (and related commercials) online, networks are paying a huge premium to secure these rights and the audience that follows them.

As of May 1, Fox had withdrawn nearly 37% of its audience from sports ears in the season’s prime time. Thursday night football, which improved by over a million viewers last season, is the main factor behind this. The World Series, despite being the lowest point of its all-time numbers, was still 20% higher than the pandemic-modified Fall Classics in 2020.

Fox also has the most prime-time TV shows with sports codes: 159, or about 28% of their total prime-time number. In addition to the NFL and baseball, WWE Smackdown, which airs every Friday, is considered a sports show.

This is partly by design. When Fox’s corporate parent sold Disney Studios and cable entertainment assets in 2018, it was part of the new independent network framework that Fox Sports would use to attract viewers to live events.

Below is the number of sports shows on the top four broadcasters as of May 1, along with the percentage of primetime viewers generated by those shows.

The number of sports shows on Fox in prime time has increased slightly compared to the 2020-21 season, when 154 such shows aired (24% overall) throughout the entire season from September to May. However, the percentage of the network’s viewership that belongs to the sport has grown much more: from 21.7% last season to 36.9% in 2021-22.

NBC has the second highest share of viewers and sports TV, unsurprisingly, the season in which it hosted the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics. Its 125 primetime sports broadcasts on May 1 make up less than 20% of NBC’s total, accounting for an average of 28% of the network’s 6.25 million viewers this season.

The Olympics skew these numbers a bit. In 2020-21, NBC aired 96 primetime sports broadcasts (13.6% of the total) and accounted for 14.7% of the network’s average audience, both in size after Fox.

At the other end of the spectrum, ABC’s 50 primetime sports broadcasts this season, mostly college football and NBA games, attracted just 1% of the network’s 4.2 million viewers. Last season, Sport lagged behind on the network, lowering its average viewership by a few percentage points.

ABC also ranks #1 in the 18-49 age group advertising demographic with its unsportsmanlike (and news) show. “We are very proud of all those who contributed to the star formation, which secured ABC’s third place for the third year in a row. 1 Entertainment Network and we look forward to continuing that momentum,” said Craig Erwich, president of ABC Entertainment, Hulu Originals.

CBS has aired the fewest primetime sports TV shows in each of the past two seasons — 42 this season and 45 in 2020-21 — of four major networks (the CW does not have a national sports rights deal). However, most of them are big items like the NFL and the Men’s College Basketball Tournament. So while sport makes up more than 5% of prime-time TV shows, it has provided 11% of the audience over the past two seasons. The 2020-21 figure, which is nearly 14% of viewers, might be a little skewed since CBS aired the Super Bowl last year.

Fox will necessarily be a little less reliant on live sports next season Thursday night football It’s migrating to Amazon Prime Video. ABC, on the other hand, could be a little sportier if it aired a few more football games on Monday nights, while in the non-Olympic year, NBC looks more like 2020-21. Overall ratings for entertainment programming in an era of declining overall ratings, however, a few margin delays won’t change the fact that sports remains the main driver of viewing across multiple networks.