The seven lowest-rated World Series have come in the last seven years. And after Fox didn’t get much help Saturday night, its World Series looks on track to be the lowest-rated ever.
Which is weird, as there aren’t any obvious explanations for this Series to set that record. And that has to be troubling for Fox, which this month signed an eight-year extension for MLB TV rights that includes the World Series. MLB doubled its overall national TV money in also re-signing TBS and ESPN.
Good timing by MLB to get those checks guaranteed to be in the mail.
The WS averaged a 7.6 rating and a 12 share in 2012, the lowest ever. Each game’s rating was the lowest ever for the given game (i.e., Game 2 was the lowest-rated Game 2 ever).
I’ve been looking at this for several years now, and unlike Hiestand I’m under the impression that these numbers, while the lowest ever, are slightly higher than expectations. And they have been for most of the last few years.
I have a simple model I’ve been using to forecast Series ratings for a while now. The original model was built in 2007 based on 1971-2006 data. The newer model is slightly enhanced and is fit based on data through 2011. The elements are as follows:
Length: Ratings go up for the Series the longer the Series goes. A 7-game series will get higher ratings than a sweep. Around +1 rating point per game added to the average rating.
Year: Assumption is that ratings started a slow and steady decline in the late 1970s, about -0.3 rating point per year.
Network: Yes, there is empirically a FOX penalty.
Market(s): Different TV markets attract different ratings. Both models have a 4-point swing in total depending on the teams involved; the two models have different bonuses by team, mostly because…
Drought: In the newer model I’ve added a component signifying that a given team is ending a huge championship drought. How huge? Phillies (1980), Red Sox (2004), and White Sox (2005) are the only qualifiers, so 86 years minimum. There’s a 4 point ratings bonus for this in the newer model. The older model doesn’t have this component, and as such the Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia markets get a bigger bonus in that model than they do in the newer version.
Based on the actual 2012 Series info - Giants vs. Tigers, on FOX, in 4 games - the models predict as follows:
old model: 6.9 rating
new model: 5.6 rating
...both of which are below the actual rating of 7.6.
One of the interesting things is that if I go back and generate a “prediction” on the model data, both models are generally underpredicting recent years. (The new model underpredicts back to 2006; the old model, back to 2003.) This means one of 5 things:
1. Randomness. Not buying this one, but it is possible that the deviation from the model is random.
2. I’m not using the proper model form. This is just linear regression; maybe there’s something better.
3. I’m missing something important.
4. FOX isn’t so bad any more. Maybe the sizable gap between FOX and NBC/CBS is no longer what it was.
5. MLB is no longer in decline, and hasn’t been for many years now.
Regardless, ratings are beating my expectations, even if they suck.
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1. Bitter Calculus Instructor Posted: October 30, 2012 at 01:11 PM (#4288381)Of course there are, and they've been explained in this space many times, including this year when this new low was predicted a couple weeks ago.
The postseason crapshoot does not appeal to many fans, particularly neutrals, and it's appealing less and less as time marches on. In important places like New York, its appeal to participant fanbases themselves is eroding.
Seconded. It's fine that there are people out there who don't care but that's not going to change my approach. I find it odd that there are baseball fans out there who wouldn't be greatly interested in baseball games being played but there are odder things in this world.
It appears the errors are serially correlated and thus suggest an ARIMA time series model rather than standard regression. An ordinary regression model assumes the errors are uncorrelated with each other and thus will estimate incorrectly if they are actually correlated with time. A model that is autoregressive (regressing on prior values), moving average (regressing on the error terms for prior values), or that models the differences between successive years may be the way to go here.
Because if there's one thing about baseball, it's not slow enough.
Why do they keep paying massive amounts of money if the ratings are falling? I can see why a new channel would pay big if it's trying to get added to a basic tier on a bunch of providers. But why FOX/TBS? Is television viewing that fragmented that even with the decline in ratings, it's still attractive to advertisers?
The question is, why do so many of them work for Fox's World Series broadcast team?
My guess is:
1. Prestige
2. The ratings, even while falling, are only falling by small amounts.
3. Sports hits a key demographic in 18-34 men, and is more popular for advertisers, even if overall ratings are falling.
4. Sports aren't DVRed and fast-forwarded through like most programming, so its a great platform to advertise your other shows (for example, I was not aware a few weeks ago that there is a show called "Ben and Kate.")
5. If FOX does not let Cleatus the robot stretch his legs out every few weeks, he goes on a killing rampage, which is how we lost Herman's Head.
I'm pretty sure this is the driving factor. Sports has a bigger bang for the buck than other shows, for both ad-buyers and the network selling the ad time.
I would also add that World Series baseball is popular among the 49+ demographic, and that this demo is becoming more appealing to advertisers because it's got more money kicking around than a bunch of 27 year olds who are waiting tables and have Master's debt. The World Series doesn't actually do THAT well with 18-49s, so the ratings must be coming from the older demo.
What I wonder about is how the ratings account for sports bars. That's not necessarily people glued to the screen and they miss out on the sound of the ads typically but given the number of people who watch sporting events in bars (or are at bars when games are on) that seems like a material number.
I mean passages like this from the article are just silly:
that has to be troubling for Fox, which this month signed an eight-year extension for MLB TV rights that includes the World Series. MLB doubled its overall national TV money in also re-signing TBS and ESPN.
Good timing by MLB to get those checks guaranteed to be in the mail.
Really? You think the networks didn't know that the last 6 had been the lowest ratings ... or they did but they were expecting this year to go through the roof? If the last 6/10/20 World Series weren't troubling to Fox before they signed that contract, why would this year's cause any concern?
Fair enough, I don't understand why Fox et al would pay that much to televise baseball but then I don't understand why the Tigers would pay Prince Fielder that much (for that long) to play baseball. But I am fairly comfortable thinking that, at least on average, all these major corporations are making decisions that impact positively on their bottom line and therefore, at least on average, these decisions are rational. Sure, at some point this bubble will burst.
They don't, which is probably not a big deal in terms of MLB vs. NFL, but is a big deal in terms of sports vs. other TV shows.
The appeal of the larger expanded playoffs is more teams competing longer into the season, it maintains popularity in September months for more teams than there was in the past, at the cost of getting people to care more about the early rounds of the playoffs that they aren't potentially vested in.
Ratings is by far, the dumbest way to rate the appeal of a sport though. (ok, I imagine there are dumber ways, but you would have to be a Texas school board member to come up with them)
I don't think there is sufficient evidence to say that it doesn't appeal to neutrals, ratings are going down because ratings everywhere is going down. Baseball has the advantage of being a sport that people can like without having to watch every single second of it.
Items 4 and 5 reflect errors associated with time. Specifically, they reflect that the accounting of time - a long, slow decline - that works to describe the activity of the prior 30+ years no longer applies in recent years.
My goal is not necessarily to build a perfectly predictive model. My goal is to set a baseline expectation, so I can understand and quantify (a) what contributes to ratings, and (b) when things change from the expectation. As I learn, I can build a better model; but my goal is to learn, by quantifying what contributes to ratings.
While Hiestand can't understand why ratings are the lowest ever, I can say either of my models would have predicted this Series - given it featured Tigers/Giants, on FOX, in a 4-game sweep - to have the lowest ratings ever. And that's not because it's under-predicting; it predicted (correctly) increases in 2007, 2009, and 2011. The underprediction in recent years is fairly consistent, rather than growing.
But that brings me back to the question of why the underprediction is happening. It's not that the model is getting progressively worse. It's that something changed in the 2003-06 range of years that is out of step with the established pattern, almost a phase shift of improved ratings. I suspect it could be that more people consider FOX to be a viable option for viewing - they were #1 in overall ratings for the first time in 2005 - but MLB attendance numbers are also up in that time. Or maybe there's something else afoot. (It could be, of course, that I'm screwing something else up.)
So, yeah, I could build a time series model, or use a moving average, or such, and that could improve the model for 2013. However, that doesn't enlighten me on why things have changed. It would just account for the changes and move on, and that's not my goal.
-- MWE
I don't think there is sufficient evidence to say that it doesn't appeal to neutrals, ratings are going down because ratings everywhere is going down
The NFL is fine thanks. The World Series ratings are a little lower each year because baseball is a little less popular every year. That's the takeaway. Doesn't mean baseball is in trouble, doesn't mean baseball is going away anytime soon. Baseball will continue to plod along and it's increasingly boring pace, shunning technology, and each generation will be a little more ambivalent to it's existence. But it will hang in there, at least until we're all dead and gone.
You mean the sport which is widely viewed as the one which has done the best job leveraging the internet for delivery, with MLBAM the envy of virtually every online entity? The same technology-shunning industry that has used pitch/fx, etc. to more accurately measure what's going on in the game? The same technology-shunning industry that pioneered the use of statistical analysis in its industry? Hell, MLB will probably be the first sport to provide us with Star Trek-style replicators so we can "enjoy" Dodger dogs when we catch the Mars Warriors vs. the Mercury Flash* while on vacation.
*Yes, unfortunately, a singular team name will finally be used in baseball, approved by Bud Selig IV.
This is a good point. At this point it's hard to imagine football (at least at the NFL level) existing without TV, baseball can still be avidly enjoyed on the radio, on a live game-tracker in the corner of your computer screen, in online box scores, or even (still) in the next morning's paper.
Living overseas, I have gone through entire seasons where I didn't (couldn't) watch a single baseball game on TV, but I still checked my fantasy team every day, looked at all the box scores, visited Baseball Primer, etc.
It would be nice if baseball's postseason TV ratings were higher, but as a measure of the sport's health, it's probably not even one of the top 10 most important thinsg. (In no particular order: tickets sold, local TV ratings throughout the year, fantasy baseball participation, online page views of baseball-related sites, etc.)
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no…no, no, not at all. I, I, I just ... that the.. uh.. the World Series's appeal is becoming more selective.
it would help if they showed, like, you know, like the GAME!!! instead of various maroon fox tv actors. but they are there not to broadcast anything but ads. really. that and pimping their other shows. after all these years we still remember that some guy/girl's father IS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY!!! even if we can't remember the name of the show or who was in it. And some maroon was RISKING A PATIENT'S LIFE!!!!! and franktv was gonna be like WOW!!! and this year, what will be remembered is FREE TACOS!!!!!
the ads make money, casual viewers must like monotone buck and McMaroon, and every one knows ALL about getting a FREE TACO!!!!!
the networks market the sport of baseball around 4 glamour teams and anyone who might could be a STAH!!! who is east coast and unfortunately, this leaves out 26 teams and they don't know what to do with themselves for the postseason
they were all totally lost because of No Red Sox and bobby valentine being crazy wasn't enough of a storyline for a postseason. and the giants didn't even have beardman wilson. the tigers had some fat guys. including that hispanic who won some title or other who cares because he don't speaka da inlish goood and isn't charismatic.
and pimping Team Chemistry!!! doesn't really attract eyeballs
there is so much interruption of games for ads/stupid interviews overriding the game/terrible camera angles showing nose hairs and crotch scratching if you don't know anything about baseball, it's hard to follow. you disbelieve me, watch any game from, say, the early 70s.
but like mike sez, "low ratings"!!!!! don't mean a thang as long as the eyes they want are upon it
i wonder if any interest in the game could be drawn if we could have baseball clips on YouTube and link them to friends. shock horror.
mlb. tv and it's blackout horseshit is appealing only to the diehards. and pitch fx is only appealing to basement dwelling nerds like us.
It's the latter. WS games have all been at 8pm east for at least the last few years. Also with direct TV hit the red button it will show you all the sports.
Or you could just watch and link to the clips on MLB.com.
MLB.TV has something like 2.5 million subscribers and charges 1/3rd of what the NFL charges for the same service, despite having 10x the games.
Blackouts you say? Watch the game on cable, you nudnik.
Considering it took the NFL years to figure out there was enormous unsatisfied demand for All-22 I am not keen on trashing MLB for coming out with PitchFX.
Oh, and MLB At Bat is one of the best selling apps in the history of the iPhone. Six million subscribers this year. No other sport has anything like it.
I thought Buck was a lot better this year than in the past. He ain't Scully or even his old man but I thought he did a good job.
I do this quite a bit. What I find frustrating though is that I often have to sit through a 15 or 30 second commercial before seeing the clip which greatly reduces the number of clips I watch. It's silly to watch a 15 second commercial to see a brief highlight. On the other hand you're 100% right about MLB At Bat. Holy crap is that wonderful. And no ads when I watch clips there. I often find myself watching a condensed West Coast game while laying in bed when I wake up in the morning.
At this point it's more likely to be the preserved head of Bud Selig I. Someone here posted the collection of times when he renewed his contract and said it was the last time. At least 4, I think. The guy's never going away.
The nationally televised games on SNF and MNF are typically among the highest rated shows of the week among all shows.
Your other points are valid - its driven by fantasy football, gambling, one-event per week, etc.
That would be an awesome concept.
So long as there's enough money in MLB to attract the best players in the world I couldn't care less.
It's fans of the other sports that want to claim that somehow baseball is no longer the most popular sport in the U.S. or insane baseball fans who are hard core traditional zealots, that want to use the ratings to somehow claim that progress is hurting baseball.
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