ESPN lost around 4 million subscribers last year. They've lost about 13 million in the last 5 years.
Poinsettia Bowl Shuts Down
- Thread starter PaulD
- Start date
"declining game attendance and TV ratings for almost all bowl games is the new normal in college football. The new 4-team playoff has essentially rendered all but 3 games each bowl season as meaningless."
Who didn't see this happening. However you want to spin it, the bowl system is in jeopardy.
Who didn't see this happening. However you want to spin it, the bowl system is in jeopardy.
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I agree that we have too many Bowl games and that some are awful with teams with 5-7 or 6-6 records. But the Poinsettia Bowl was not one of these. It's usually been an 8-10 win team against another 7-9 win team at worst. They were just teams from smaller west coast conferences or independents.
It's been a host for many Navy, BYU, Utah, TCU and Boise State Bowl games the last 10 years. There was even one year that was a Top 10 matchup between BSU and TCU. So I kinda hate that THIS one was eliminated. There are many other bowls that are FAR worse on paper.
It's been a host for many Navy, BYU, Utah, TCU and Boise State Bowl games the last 10 years. There was even one year that was a Top 10 matchup between BSU and TCU. So I kinda hate that THIS one was eliminated. There are many other bowls that are FAR worse on paper.
I would point out one thing to the people saying more is always a good thing, or if they're making money on bowl games they should just keep doing more. Flooding the market does not always mean you make more money, if you flood the market you can devalue the product. So you end up with a lot of cheap crap no one really cares about, that sounds a like a lot of the bowl games to me. This can negatively impact even quality products though, because the overabundance of crap makes people less interested overall. This sort of thing has literally killed off some products.
I have long considered some bowl games to be harmful to college football and bowl games in general. It does nothing constructive other than give people a meaningless football game to watch. I'm not the type that enjoys watching crappy teams I don't care about play each other though, and most football fans fall under that category.
I have long considered some bowl games to be harmful to college football and bowl games in general. It does nothing constructive other than give people a meaningless football game to watch. I'm not the type that enjoys watching crappy teams I don't care about play each other though, and most football fans fall under that category.
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Couldn't happen to a better bunch. ESPN has a practical monopoly, on the bowls. Watching a crappy bowl game, because it is football, takes on a new meaning when you have to pay money, for that privilege. Hopefully, the "free market" will fix this problem. Meaning the crappy bowl games will have to scale down, and get put back on the modern equivalent of the Jefferson Pilot Network. If one exists. (I guess you could say that is FS1 & 2, but you still have to pay to watch those. Do they have anything worth watching, let alone paying to do so?)
Hmmm.......(checks memory).........
Ratings:
Poinsettia Bowl - 2.38 million viewers
LSU/Arkansas - 2.35 million viewers
Proves your point that somehow the Poinsettia Bowl 'got better ratings' - except for the following facts:
1) The LSU-Ark game kicked off at 6pm.
2) The game was over in the late third/early fourth quarter
3) The Poinsettia Bowl was the only FBS college game on that day
4) LSU-Ark had competition splitting the CFB audience at:
a) Iowa-Michigan (7 pm kickoff, close game, upset)
b) USC-Washington (top 10 maatchup, 730pm kickoff, 17-13 entering the fourth quarter)
c) Ole Miss-ATM (630p kickoff, game went down to the last play)
So you had three REALLY GOOD matchups splitting the audience - and maybe the numbers were low at the start because both UGA-Auburn and Texas Tech-Okie St (230p games) came down to the final play as well.
I'm not saying you're wrong as far as what ESPN can show viewers-wise, but I'm saying that even making this claim - "the Poinsettia Bowl got better ratings than LSU-Ark," is absurd. The barely higher audience was the only game on at the time while the LSU-Ark game featured two teams now out of the running in the SEC (once LSU lost to Alabama, the West was over save for formalities) splitting the viewing audience with three other BETTER games.
FWIW - USC/Washington had 4.3 million viewers, Iowa-Mich had 6.4 million.
Add to that the fact that Clemson-Pitt was decided late, too. I got the text on my phone just as I dropped my brother off back home after we'd left the MSU-Tide game earlier that day.
And the UCLA-USC game KICKED OFF at 930pm central time.....1030p in NYC. When 3/4 of the country it's already late, I don't think that's a fair comparison. This is not the 2006 USC-UCLA game ending around 6 or so central time (I was in TJ Hartford's when the whole place erupted on that upset).
So again - I won't argue ONE of your points - live sports are cheaper to produce than something like PTI or a studio show and for the money spent draw decent ratings. But the comparisons you make lack context.
If they keep delving into the subject forbidden here and permitted only on NS, they're going to lose even more and much quicker.
That has very little to do with ideology. It's economical. Their distribution method must change. Cable in general is getting ridiculous and folks are cutting the cord. ESPN is clinging to an old dying model because the next model, the al a carte subscription model, won't make them as much money, but the way people get video content has changed and will continue changing pretty significantly in the near future.
Are their some folks who only have cable for ESPN who might drop it due to politics? Maybe, but they are statistically insignificant.
We could argue over substantial but....there once was a time when ESPN (for the most part) stayed out of that stuff. When most of us tune in sports part of it is to ESCAPE from those kinds of things.
Forcing me to listen to them is their choice - cutting the cord is mine.
I DO agree with you that the economic problem is substantially larger, yes.
But when I tune in Auburn-LSU (yes, I did), it isn't to hear at halftime about why the name Redskins has been determined by some chowder head in a seat in CT to be 'offensive.' (No, that didn't actually happen but stuff like that DOES go on on that network).
A lot of people don't realize that ESPN itself actually owns about a dozen of the lower-rung bowl games (including the Birmingham Bowl, the Camellia Bowl, etc.). So they aren't really paying carriage rights fees to anyone in the traditional sense for those games. The assumption is that they only subsidize the difference between the corporate sponsorships (obviously leveraged with their TV ad inventory) and ticket sale revenue (albeit paltry for several of them) against the agreed upon payouts (these are usually the lowest-paying bowls) to the schools/conferences. They've essentially cut out the middle men and created low-cost inventory for themselves during the holiday season that'll outdraw almost else in the ratings.
It won't surprise me to see more bottom-rung bowl games like the Poinsettia that are not owned by ESPN struggle and maybe fold, especially if they don't have local sponsors more motivated to pony up in the spirit of hometown civic boosterism as opposed to a return on investment.
It won't surprise me to see more bottom-rung bowl games like the Poinsettia that are not owned by ESPN struggle and maybe fold, especially if they don't have local sponsors more motivated to pony up in the spirit of hometown civic boosterism as opposed to a return on investment.
I won't say you're wrong but this argument allows those who do support and promote a certain kind of politics to convince themselves that *surely* their politics can't possibly be unpopular.
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I haven't really paid attention to it. I know they've moved to the left editorially, I just never see it, but that's probably because I rarely watch any of their content other than games and the occasional 30 for 30. SportsCenter hasn't been relevant for a while since you can get all of your highlights online and their talking head show's just don't appeal to me. I simply don't watch it when Stephen A. or Jemele Hill are on there, and I can't imagine there are thousands of TV viewers who dislike Smith so much that they didn't simply change the channel, but rather cancel their cable or satellite entirely.
And ESPN is probably the mitigating factor keeping the rate of users subscribed to cable and satellite from going into complete free fall. One of the main reasons people are hesitant about cord cutting is live sports. Live sports are pretty much the one genre that can't be fully accessed without cable. I know I'd personally drop DirecTV if it weren't for ESPN and the SEC network. Everything else I watch I could find elsewhere.
Yes, but you will need internet access, so all those companies will do is switch things around to where the internet access costs more. People used to have high phone bills and outrageous long distance costs. Enter cell phones and the internet. Now my cable company practically gives away the phone service and keeps raising the internet and TV charges. I imagine when I cut the TV services that they will jack up internet charges. We all keep playing the game of switching providers and services in an attempt to save a buck, and they keep moving the shells around to keep us guessing which lucky shell is hiding the pea.
Back to the original post- I'm surprised more bowl games haven't shut down.
I have stated my position on crappy bowl games played before 15k-20k fans and that has not changed. For those who want to watch the DelMonte Boiled Okra Bowl have at it.
We do our internet (and phone we never use) separate from DirecTV through Charter anyway. Had to do it because our DSL sucked and a condition of my wife being able to work from home for BCBS was having fast, reliable Internet service.
I have mastered the art of calling and griping to keep our internet bill down. Get in touch with customer reclamation, be firm and dangle the "It's too expensive. I'm thinking about switching to X" carrot. Hasn't failed for me yet.
I really don't know what ESPN's political views are as they don't discuss them during football games.
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