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Fall in TV viewership figures give EPL, NFL a huge wake-up call

NEW YORK — The two most successful sports leagues in the world, which bring in billions of dollars in revenue, the biggest corporate sponsors and mammoth audiences every game day, are now sharing an altogether different experience: The National Football League and the English Premier League are enduring startling, double-digital declines in television viewership this season.

NEW YORK — The two most successful sports leagues in the world, which bring in billions of dollars in revenue, the biggest corporate sponsors and mammoth audiences every game day, are now sharing an altogether different experience: The National Football League and the English Premier League are enduring startling, double-digital declines in television viewership this season.

Viewership through the first seven weeks of the NFL American football season is down by 12 per cent in the United States, while the audiences for football matches in this season’s EPL, which began in August, are down by nearly 20 per cent in Britain.

All the trends that drove viewers away from other programmes on broadcast television in recent years, including cord-cutting and digital video recorders, had not punished the NFL and the EPL in the same way. Fans — lots and lots of them — did not seem willing to look away.

They are now, in numbers that are alarming for the leagues, which have grown used to fans tuning in to their games in good times and bad, and for the networks, some of which have spent 10-figure sums for the rights to broadcast them.

Viewership for NFL games on CBS on Thursday nights, on NBC on Sunday nights and on ESPN on Monday nights is down by as much as 21 per cent.

“We have been led to believe the NFL and EPL were immune to these trends, but it turns out they aren’t,” said Rick Gentile, a former CBS Sports executive producer who now runs the Seton Hall University sports poll.

“This isn’t a fatal blow, but it is a wake-up call.”

HICCUP OR SETBACK?

While it may be too early to determine whether the declines are a hiccup or a serious setback, they are large enough to prompt league executives and team owners to confront the uncomfortable possibility that their leagues have hit their peak.

Publicly, the leagues contend that their businesses are fundamentally sound and that any declines in ratings have been caused by temporary factors, such as the raucous US presidential campaign, and the lack of a compelling storyline in the EPL, which last season got a jolt from Leicester City, the ultimate rags-to-riches champion.

Viewing habits, they say, will rebound after their uncharacteristic slides.

“We recognise that network television is still dominant, and we believe it’s going to be dominant going forward,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said last week.

“And it’s where the vast majority of our fans view our games. It’s a great experience, the advertising market is incredibly strong, and I think that our ratings are something that we’ll continue to look at and make sure we’re doing everything not just to get them to tune in, but to get them to stay tuned in.”

Industry observers, though, point to a stew of long-term trends, such as younger audiences eschewing subscription television packages in favour of free content on the Internet. That could erode the leagues’ business models, which rely heavily on television networks that pay tens of billions of dollars to broadcast NFL and EPL games.

The leagues may also be responsible for some of the slide by expanding their schedules into more days of the week, eroding the exclusivity that once made their games must-see TV. “Among other things, oversaturation is definitely an issue,” Gentile said.

Then there are factors whose effect is harder to quantify, like the NFL’s continuing public-relations struggles involving issues such as domestic violence, brain trauma and national anthem protests.

“They have largely been side issues, but even if it is a psychic toll, it’s hard to have that much of a drumbeat without their having some effect,” said Robert Boland, director of the sports administration programme at Ohio University.

The leagues are grappling with an even larger problem of their own making: Too much football. To grab bigger audiences and more rights fees, the leagues have spread their games across more days of the week, from 9.30am Eastern time starts on Sundays to Thursday night match-ups in the NFL, and on Friday nights, as well as Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays in the EPL.

Sky Sports and BT now offer more EPL football to customers than ever before, with Sky permitted to broadcast 10 Friday night EPL games this season. BT shows a Premier League match on Saturday, with European competition filling the schedule on alternate Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Publicly, both broadcasters say they are unconcerned by their ratings and do not believe the market is oversaturated, in part because no live action can be broadcast, from England or elsewhere, from 3pm to 5.15 pm on Saturdays.

Sky Sports described the ratings decline as a “premature comparison”, noting that the figures do not include a number of high-profile matches, such as the recent showdown between Liverpool and Manchester United.

Still, the numbers collated by the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board in Britain are startling — not only the 19 per cent decline for EPL matches but also the slide in viewership for the Champions League matches, which included a 40 per cent drop on one Tuesday evening.

CRUCIAL BATTLEGROUND

The pressure is on because both Sky Sports and BT have made televised football the crucial battleground in their money-spinning contest to win customers for their television, phone and Internet packages.

The bidding war between the two companies pushed the EPL’s rights deal for the domestic British market alone to £5.13 billion (S$8.8 billion) over the course of three seasons — starting this year and ending in 2019 — while BT has paid an additional £937 million for the rights to screen the Champions League and Europa League, Europe’s elite competitions.

The cost of the packages, though, has pushed fans to seek out illegal streaming sites and forced EPL executives into a race to shut them down.

Mike Girling, a Liverpool fan who has cancelled his personal Sky subscription this season, spoke for many frustrated fans. “It wasn’t value for money anymore,” he said. “I found that I was watching only Liverpool games, and was paying £80 or £90 for it.”

Girling, a pub owner, acknowledged that the “ease and proliferation” of streams for Liverpool games — in high definition, with English commentary — made them an appealing alternative when he could not attend a match being broadcast on Sky.

He has even considered cancelling at least one of the four subscriptions at his pubs, which cost about £1,500 a month for each bar.

“It does not bring customers in as much as it used to,” he said.

“It doesn’t make economic sense anymore.” THE NEW YORK TIMES

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