Liga MX is the most popular league in the USA.

CF Montréal got over 100k viewers for the weekend game against Charlotte. Not bad when you consider it was on a sunny St-Jean-Baptiste weekend afternoon with few people inside looking to watch sports on TV, and that TVA Sports has fewer subscribers than RDS, and of course the bad taste that some supporters still have in their mouths.

https://3downnation.com/2022/06/28/c...week-3-on-tsn/

Canadian QB Nathan Rourke edges out Riders for most-watched CFL game in Week 3 on TSN


You know the Nathan Rourke hype has gained real traction when the B.C. Lions draw higher television ratings on TSN than the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Rourke’s second straight record-setting performance was the top-rated game among English language viewers on TSN in Week 3. He completed 39-of-45 passes (86.7 percent) for 436 yards with four touchdowns against zero interceptions in leading the Leos to a 44-3 dismantling of the Toronto Argonauts.

Despite being in the 10 p.m. eastern time slot with the outcome never really in doubt, viewers kept it tuned to Rourke as he set the single-game passing yards record by a Canadian quarterback. Even though all-star receiver Bryan Burnham left before halftime with broken ribs, Rourke continued to move the offence and led the unit to points, which was entertaining.

The Riders usually go unchallenged for the biggest TV audience each week, but being blown out by Montreal from the opening kick-off onwards did not help intrigue and prevented late-arriving viewers. It’s rare for Saskatchewan to take a backseat to any other team — especially during the regular season — when the weekly ratings come in. The fact Rourke edged out the green and white on the first official weekend of the summer in Canada displays the growing excitement for a homegrown star at the game’s sexiest position.

Surprisingly, the Grey Cup rematch between the Tiger-Cats and Blue Bombers posted the lowest viewership of last week’s CFL slate.

There was some competition that night with Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Colorado Avalanche (2,191,200 average viewers combined between Sportsnet and CBC) plus 595,800 people watched Toronto Blue Jays starter Alek Manoah record his MLB-leading ninth win.

2022 Week 3 TV ratings:

Thursday
Saskatchewan at Montreal — 442,600

Friday
Hamilton at Winnipeg — 393,500

Saturday
Edmonton at Calgary — 399,600

Toronto at BC — 464,500

Total Week 3 average: 425,050

(These numbers do not include viewership from RDS, TSN’s French-language affiliate.)

this is a U.S. article about streaming services looking to grab the next U.S. sports broadcasting rights but I was startled to read that now only 68 million U.S. homes subscribe to the cable bundle versus over 100 million homes just 4 years ago. I would suspect numbers would be somewhat similar in Canada. With that said I do wonder what the next NHL and CFL broadcast deals will look like in Canada once TSN's and Sportsnet current deals expire.

https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-appl...095500933.html

Amazon, Apple May Crash NBA Rights Party, but TV Won’t Leave

Anthony Crupi
Fri, July 1, 2022 at 4:55 AM·7 min read

Today’s column is from Sportico media reporter Anthony Crupi.

When thinking about escalating rights fees and the near-mythical sums the networks are forking over for sports properties that draw fewer viewers than even the dopiest network sitcom, there are two things worth keeping in the back of your mind:


1) It’s not your money.

2) No matter how bad the deal may seem on paper, there’s almost no way it will turn out to be the worst sports-rights investment of all time, as that dubious distinction in all likelihood will never be wrested away from CBS’ 1990-1993 pact with Major League Baseball.

If Thing 1 is rather self-explanatory, Thing 2 could do with a little contextual fiddling. Without getting too far into the murk of ancient history, the Tiffany Network lost about a half-billion dollars in what one rival TV exec—ah, hell, it was Dick Ebersol—characterized as “the biggest write-down in network sports history.” As it happens, CBS’ final go-around with MLB coincided with its return to the top of the primetime ratings heap after a few seasons of basement-dwelling, although baseball’s contribution to the regime change was negligible.

Also not doing much in the way of heavy lifting was the animated comedy Fish Police, which bowed during Year 3 of the CBS-MLB tie-up. The thing about Fish Police is, the pilot featured a bivalve named “Clams Casino” who owned a gambling emporium, and while this has very little to do with the point we’re trying to make here, it’s still worth thinking about. Maybe.

If the deal did very little to grow the sport—CBS’ Saturday afternoon MLB schedule was so erratic that fans never quite knew if they were about to while away the lazy summer hours in the company of Inspector Gadget or Chuck Knoblauch—the $1.06 billion deal made perfect sense to commissioner Peter Ueberroth and the league’s owners. That CBS acted as decisively as it did can in some ways be chalked up to the burgeoning sense of panic that was beginning to settle in at the Big Three networks. In almost no time at all, cable had knocked broadcast’s share of the primetime audience from 90% to 68%, and for the first time ever, the rabbit-ears crowd was staring down an existential crisis. Something had to be done, and in time-honored fashion, the quickest way to accomplish that something was to splash ungodly sums of money around.

Plus ça change. Back then, shows like SportsCenter and Rugrats were stealing impressions from the traditional TV marketplace; today it’s the latest gloss on the Star Wars canon and whatever the hell The Umbrella Academy is supposed to be. Differences in degree lead to differences in kind. Water gets colder and colder, and suddenly it’s ice. Clams Casino gets older and older, and suddenly he’s dead. TV keeps losing impression after impression to the streaming services, and suddenly you’re paying something like $90 million per year to re-up with a très continental auto racing package that currently costs $5 million.

Of course, the streamers who are doing their damnedest to kill off TV are also driving the rights fees up into the nosebleed latitudes. While the strategy doesn’t always pay off on the deal-making front—Amazon is said to have bid as much as $25 million more than ESPN for the Formula One package, and its proposal caught the John Heisman stiff-arm—it’s been wildly successful as far as the whole make-the-other-guy-hemorrhage-money scheme is concerned. Apple’s 10-year, $2.5 billion MLS deal is at once wholly disruptive and almost weirdly noncommittal, inasmuch as the sum agreed upon represents about 0.1% of the tech giant’s $2.2 trillion market cap. The same applies to the annual $1 billion fee Amazon will pay for the rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, although in that case, the networks were perfectly happy to watch the primetime package topple into Jeff Bezos’ digital shopping cart.

What this all means in the near term is that Adam Silver will continue to wear that canary-swallowing grin through the end of the NBA’s current $24 billion contract with Disney and Turner Sports in June 2025. While the odds of either incumbent being shouldered aside are currently listed as slim:none—by 2025, Turner will have been in business with the NBA for 41 years, while ESPN/ABC will have reached the 23-year mark—it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which an Amazon or an Apple doesn’t put in a bid, if only to drive the price up even higher. (No less an authority than David Levy has said he expects the NBA to nail down a fee that’s two-and-a-half times what the incumbents pay now.) It’s basically an arms race, only rather than stockpiling more weapons than your ideological foes, the idea is to force them to spend so much on artillery that there’s nothing left in the budget to feed the troops.

The thing is, the linear-TV networks can’t afford to let the streaming set make off with all their sports properties, because those are the only programming options that still draw an audience. That audience is also far more likely to watch the commercials; because nearly 98% of all sports deliveries happen in real time, the games are practically DVR-proof. Meanwhile, entertainment programming is collapsing in on itself like a dying star, as the average primetime broadcast series is now eking out around 652,000 adults 18-49, or one-half of a ratings point, while the cable numbers are so bleak that Warner Bros. Discovery has slammed the door on further scripted development. (Cable’s getting it from all sides. Fewer than 68 million homes now subscribe to the bundle, which marks a decline of 26% versus the analogous period in 2018. At its peak, the bundle reached north of 100 million U.S. households. At present, only 56% of TV homes subscribe to a bundled pay-TV package. Four years ago, penetration was a relatively hale and hearty 78%.)

As much as just about anything can happen between now and when the NBA negotiations begin in earnest, the current state of affairs makes for a compelling argument against reducing the league’s national TV exposure. Even as pay-TV subscriptions continue to spiral, the tube remains the platform of choice for the top-tier U.S. sports leagues. Sustained relevance buys a whole lot of loyalty, and when a program is shunted from the living room to behind a firewall, the audience starts disappearing like Barret Robbins in the hours leading up to Super Bowl XXXVII. Howard Stern made himself $500 million richer when he jumped from terrestrial radio to Sirius XM, but in doing so, the self-described “King of All Media” effectively checked himself into a cultural Witness Protection Program. Mention Baba Booey to a Gen Zer and he’ll think you’re quoting the radio edit of a Cardi B song.

Which isn’t to say that Amazon and Apple aren’t going to try and carve out a space for themselves with the NBA, or that Silver and the owners may not have a change of heart two or three years from now. If nothing else, there’s an awful lot of money floating around out there. Together, the two digital players amassed some $834.8 billion in revenue last year, and even a media adept like Silver may find it difficult to say “no thanks” to the people with the money cannons.

Of course, all an Amazon or an Apple need do to eliminate any misgivings about a streaming-only distribution scheme is buy a TV network outright. The parent companies of ESPN and TNT may be too big for a takeover bid, but grabbling, say, Fox or CBS would put about as much strain on the Amazon and Apple war chests as the purchase of a yard-sale toaster oven might have on your own wallet.

Not sure about the NHL, but I will bet you a Coke that the CFL's next deal will look almost identical to their current deal with TSN, because the League does not have a clue what they're doing re: broadcast rights. :yes:

depends if it will be Genius sports having enough influence or not in the next negotiations.

Nothing to do with having a clue, it is about limited options (no CBC, no USA). Sure maybe if they are lucky they could get a streaming deal and then what, lose 3/4 of their audience because they don't want to subscribe to a service. It's the casual fan that makes up big audience numbers.

I would prefer a split deal with sportsnet and tsn so the league has more coverage over multiple platforms so more media properties cover the league instead of jut tsn or maybe a tsn and global deal where playoffs and grey cups could be delivered to more canadians since bell seem unwilling to have playoff and grey cups go on ctv whereas they promote the hell out of nfl on it every week during the nfl season.

https://3downnation.com/2022/07/06/r...ver-alouettes/

The Saskatchewan Roughriders rebounded in a big way on the field and on televisions across the country in Week 4.

Cody Fajardo played error-free football while punching in a touchdown on the ground and throwing touchdowns to Mitch Picton and Kian Schaffer-Baker. Jamal Morrow ran for 103 yards and one major to give him the league’s rushing yards lead with 257. Meanwhile, the defence recorded six quarterback sacks, including Pete Robertson adding to his CFL-best total of seven, and Nick Marshall added a pick-six.

The Riders recorded a 41-20 win at Mosaic Stadium on Saturday night as Rider Nation tuned in to see how the green and white would respond following a 37-13 loss in Montreal during Week 3. It was a rousing performance from the Roughriders and members of Riderville revelled in it live and on TV with an average audience of 623,000 on TSN. That was more than double the number who watched Nathan Rourke in the nation’s capital.

It was the Blue Jays who ruled Canada Day weekend on TV in our home and native land, posting an audience of 1,223,000 on July 1 during a 9-2 win against the Rays. The Jays played a rare five-game series at Rogers Centre — there was a doubleheader on Saturday — against American League East Division rival Tampa Bay and it piqued the interest of sports fans in Canada.

2022 Week 4 TV ratings:

Thursday
B.C. at Ottawa — 302,000

Friday
Edmonton at Hamilton — 470,000

Saturday
Montreal at Saskatchewan — 623,000

Monday
Winnipeg at Toronto — 523,000

Total Week 4 average: 479,500

(These numbers do not include viewership from RDS, TSN’s French-language affiliate.)

I have always wondered why Ottawa rated low. I know for a time they were an unmetered city (pretty sure they have been metered for quite a while now) but their first three years in the league they came out with a bang and had a high profile, a good exciting team, and a lot of goodwill.

Are they like TFC, good local engagement in the stadium but not on TV.

Its baffled me maybe the francophone fans watch on rds?

It would only be a trickle so probably not much of a factor. (I don't even think all Redblacks games are carried by RDS. RDS carries all Alouettes games and then a selection of other CFL games.)

Wow, just like the Battle of Verdun, bleed the competition white.

I was thinking that but even if we gave them a high number like 100k I don't think their numbers would be like all the other teams.

What do the Als usually average on RDS 50-100k?

More like 200-250 k I think.

Just to put things into context:

Here’s how the Top-10 played out on the Numeris National English Canada chart for that week in Live+7 2+ totals: (June 20-26 2022)

1. Stanley Cup Final (Sportsnet National) M W F S 1,267,000
2. CTV Evening News (CTV) MTWTF 1,193,000
3. America’s Got Talent (Citytv) Tues 1,154,000
4. CTV Evening News Weekend (CTV) Satg, Sun 871,000
5. CTV National News (CTV) MTWTFSS 826,000
6. Stanley Cup Finals (CBC) M W F S 799,000
7. Stanley Cup Postgame CBC) Sun 771,000
8. Masterchef (CTV) Wed 756,000
9. Baseball Blue Jays (Sportsnet National) Sat, Sun 686,000
10. Jeopardy! (ACCESS indieNET+) MTWTF 665,000

Basically, Canada watched American hockey teams battling it out, corporate news, and generic American culture.

It was even worse before. I have no idea why (other than reach) but CTV could put the worst "generic American culture" garbage on and it would succeed. Or is that the power of the GTA market?

This week's Argos Lotto 649 winner! :worship:

:d

Is that the Toronto CTV Evening News?
In Vancouver for example it's Global that is tops for news .

I was wondering about that too.

And is it the average for the CTV Evening News over five days?

The total daily average for all local CTV Evening News programs across the country?

Or the total viewers for the CTV Evening News program in the Toronto market over the week?

My guess is it's probably an average per broadcast over the week. If you look at the Stanley Cup Finals, which were on on multiple night, that logic pans out.

But is it just Toronto?

I have to say that even if it's large market, in this day and age with multiple personal pursuits, activities, occupations and obligations, streaming and TV options, 1.2 million people sitting down to watch the 6 pm news on a summer weeknight in that market still seems like a lot.

Ottawa generally has the smallest fanbase in the CFL based on what I have seen for TV ratings the past several seasons. Whenever I see TV ratings for teams around the league, Ottawa is almost always last with whoever they are matched up with that week.

This lower viewership appears to apply to the NHL as well. A few years ago, TV numbers for regional games of the 7 Canadian NHL teams were posted and Ottawa's average was the lowest.

https://3downnation.com/2022/07/12/b...ngs-of-week-5/

Blue Bombers bashing B.C. Lions boasts biggest CFL TV ratings of Week 5

Winnipeg heard all the noise about the B.C. Lions and at least slowed the hype around Canadian quarterback Nathan Rourke with a convincing 43-22 win that drew the largest television rating in Week 5 on TSN.

The two-time defending Grey Cup champion Blue Bombers pressured Rourke with star ends Willie Jefferson and Jackson Jeffcoat leading the way while intercepting the national QB twice. Reigning CFL Most Outstanding Player Zach Collaros put forth his best performance of the 2022 season so far with three touchdown passes to lead the offence to a season-high 43 points.

An average audience of 585,200 watched Winnipeg walk into BC Place and prove to the rest of the CFL they remain the class of the league, even if people are tired of the blue and gold dominating. That number was the highest-rated Blue Bombers game on TV this year.

Week 1 vs. Ottawa: 434,000
Week 2 at Ottawa: 517,000
Week 3 vs. Hamilton: 393,500
Week 4 at Toronto: 523,000

The 2022 NHL Draft stole some attention from the CFL in Week 5 as round one on Thursday night drew 782,900 average onlookers who tuned in to Sportsnet to watch the Montreal Canadiens selected forward Juraj Slafkovsky first overall. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays game on Friday night aired on Apple TV which left the Canadian TV sports spotlight for the Roughriders.

Saskatchewan’s efficient performance against the Redblacks was overtaken by Garrett Marino’s low hit on quarterback Jeremiah Masoli and his ensuing celebration and violation of the CFL’s code of conduct. His actions tainted the win according to head coach Craig Dickenson and Marino was subsequently suspended for four games by commissioner Randy Ambrosie.

2022 Week 5 TV ratings:

Thursday
Calgary at Edmonton — 367,700

Friday
Ottawa at Saskatchewan — 463,400

Saturday
Winnipeg at B.C. — 585,200

Total Week 5 average: 472,100

Canada women in Concacaf W Championship for World Cup & Olympic qualifying got 147k vs Costa Rica last Monday on CBC. They had already qualified for the World Cup. This match was to just avoid playing the US in the semis in the Olympic qualifying portion.

In line with Cdn MLS team viewing figures over past 2-3 years. But lower than any men's World Cup qualifying match shown on SN in the past year. It's also lower than the typical audience for the CBC programs it preempted in the eastern to central time zones of local news, Coronation Street & Murdoch Mysteries.


The first two matches were delayed shown on CBC after midnight EDT got 35k & 23k. OneSoccer is showing all matches from the tourney live.


https://twitter.com/KRunitedMedia/st...96579817009155

Any verification of that?

It's in the tweet:

Just IN: previous 3 #CWNT games that aired on
@cbcsports
(1 live) had the following audience ratings against Adults 18+ (AMA):
*vs. T&T: 35,100
*vs. Panama: 22,900
*vs. Costa Rica: 147,400 (LIVE)

First two matches were not live on CBC.

It's in the part I quoted, where is the verification that Cdn MLS team viewing figures are around 147k over the past 2-3 years.

The only MLS team that may draw those numbers consistently (or above) would be Montreal when you include the french language channels. Whitecaps and TFC are drawing in the 5-figure range likely the 50-80,000.

So you are saying TFC draws similar ratings to when Tony Little sells his Gazelle exercise machine on TSC.

Haha, well I think those ads late at night in Canada might draw a few thousand so this would be a little bit better than that. There were many instances in which this guy on twitter would post the daily Canadian sports ratings on twitter when Canada's MLS soccer games were on, and the 10th highest rated Canadian sport would be something like 80,000 - 100,000. None of those top-10 rated sports would be a Canadian MLS team.

The Bomber-Calgary game had the highest attendance of the season next to the BC home opener. Just a shade under 30,000. Looked like a fantastic atmosphere on TV.

Which is fine. MLS teams in Canada don't need eyeballs on traditional TV, a dying medium outside of sport anyway, like other sports do. For MLS it's pretty much all about gameday and other matchday revenues, either on or off-field.

I couldn't find the attendance for yesterday's cf montreal toronto fc match in montreal

Sellout. First of the season.

https://fbref.com/en/matches/22256eb...-League-Soccer

19,619

They needed that boost for sure

They need something to grow new fans because the honeymoon is over for the three Canadian teams, in stadium attendance has fallen as well. The TFC people used to come on here and gloat about how Argo attendance fell after they won the Grey Cup, same thing happened to TFC after they won their championship.

There are obvious reasons for why crowds at Whitecaps and CF Montreal matches are down - namely that the FO likes to fight with the supporters groups. TFC hasn't had this issue and continues to steam along.

This forum is not representative of real life. Argo attendance has a trendline regardless of what the team does. TFC's generally follows a more natural North American franchises trajectory (crowds when good, no crowds when bad). Except that TFC are bad now and still drawing crowds.

You're right, the TFC people are more obnoxious at other sites. My God, I can watch you spin stuff all day :)

TFC fans a absolutely loyal no doubt from what I can see as far as attendance and in game atmosphere when I briefly have it on my screen.

They weren't too loyal a few years ago when the team tanked.

Literal fake news.

2016 26,538
2017 27,647 (won MLS)
2018 26,628
2019 25,048
2020 COVID
2021 COVID
2022 23,676* (up to July 9)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...nto_FC_seasons

What isn't captured in these numbers is that these are just MLS matches. 2018's dip can be attributed to TFC making a run in the Champions League, where they played an additional four matches between 23-29K.

They seem to be trending DOWNWARD

Grasping for straws, I guess.

Here's what a downward trend looks like. I'll only include their tenure at BMO:

https://i.ibb.co/XDrTJBk/Screenshot-...8-14-47-03.png

I'm hesitant to even use 2022 numbers given that we're still dealing with COVID, but the numbers line up with the pre-2020 trend anyway. No data point for 2021 because COVID.

This entire argument is pointless anyway because there's more to team viability, especially in MLS, than just crowd sizes. It applies more to CFL teams given their revenue stream breakdown.

Toronto support for TFC has been pretty good and consistent attendance wise. Argos are in my opinion now where they need to be relocated to London or Kitchener as MLSE shows zero interest in rebuilding them and the market base in Toronto just doesn't seem interested in CFL football inside the GTA. Outside the GTA it works in Hamilton and Ottawa but not Toronto.

There's no need to deflect the argument to the Argos, it's no secret that MLSE does nothing to support them aside from paying the bills and they are terrible in terms of public support. And to compare a Canadian league to an American league with 10 times the population to draw from is disingenuous.

But the bloom has gone off the MLS rose from their early days. That's not to say TFC isn't still successful, but the crazy prognostications of enlarging BMO to 40-50k seats has come down to earth. In stadium attendance is dropping, their fanbase is getting older. Combine that with what is happening with the rest of the world in terms of the pandemic and we may never see those hey days again.

This doesn't seem to stop every topic from being turned towards MLS.

This sounds like you're talking about the Argos. Public support of TFC is generally good, as can be seen from gameday turnout. MLSE is actively supporting TFC by signing international, World Cup-quality players in the leadup to the World Cup in Toronto, along with signing one of the best managers in MLS. More on that below.

Both teams play in Canada. CFL teams have no issue being successful in Winnipeg or Saskatchewan. The CFL does not have that same traction in Toronto, and to a lesser extent Vancouver or Montreal. It doesn't have anything to do with whether they play American teams and everything to do with the product and sport. Blaming the CFL in Toronto's decline on Toronto being 'American' or 'more interested in American things' just feels like a coping mechanism.

You've been saying this for at least half a decade. MLS continues to grow and CFL continues to trend downwards, at least in the Toronto market.

The stadium is only being renovated for the World Cup. Nobody seriously thinks TFC could earnestly fill a stadium that large on a consistent basis.

TFC, or the Argos? It's true for one of these teams and not the other. Argos have difficulty getting crowds for eight home games and TFC will be drawing 2.5x the amount over 18 competitive home matches spread over two competitions. CFL teams can be viewed as just regular season attendance because that's all that they play but MLS teams will generally be hosting both MLS matches as well as domestic Cup matches and, in TFC's case, occasionally Continental matches as well. I know you know this already.

We'll return to normal eventually, if we haven't already. One team at BMO is capable of getting crowds in the 25-30K space and one team draws better in small town Nova Scotia.

I get that you don't like MLS, or me because I defend it, but some of these points are so plainly easy to see. 'MLS is a pyramid scheme!' yet it still continues to grow and exist. 'TFC is losing money!' yet they've signed a single player that makes what three and a half CFL teams do combined. It's no secret that TFC's recent Italian-incursion is a marketing ploy to feed in to World Cup 2026 and it begs to reason that TFC will be riding a significant wave until at least that point. The question that needs asking is whether or not the Argos fit into any sort of picture at BMO beyond 2026. I bet they'd be better off in London.

I'd say the latter part of that is pretty demonstrably true. So on that front, there isn't really a debate to have.

The only real questions regarding the matter are whether it's a good or bad thing, a big deal or not, or simply inevitable?

Rare instance here where I agree with JHikka