Not true. The World Cup murders everything but the Super Bowl on TV, which is where the money is, here.
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/201...rld-cup-olympics-bcs-nba-finals-world-series/ world cup final was the 23rd ranked sporting event in America last year. 2nd highest world cup match was 49th. below such events as: Bears/49ers week 2, Cardinals/Cowboys Week 9, and Giants/Seahawks week 10. average size for a world cup match was around 6 million viewers. compare that to march madness which averaged 11 million viewers in the US. given the fact that the world cup games are extremely limited and every 4 years that doesn't strike me as numbers indicating a broad interest in the sport.
those were by far the highest rated matches. once again you are talking about an event that has a very limited number of matches. the ratings SHOULD be higher than a regular season nfl game or random Olympic broadcast. the world cup final and the USA game are games that attracted a ton of casual soccer fans.
If that's the case, shut down all other sports. Look at the non NFL/Olympics numbers. World Cup is high up, and I don't think that accounts for mass viewings.
I hardly think comparing to sports that have 80+ meaningless games a year seems appropriate. that's why I compared to march madness. the championship tournament part of the season of a fairly unpopular US sport.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/20...nt-scores-as-most-watched-in-22-years/386093/ The 2015 NCAA Tournament averaged 11.3 million total viewers, up 8% from last year (10.5 million viewers), and is the highest average viewership for the NCAA Tournament in 22 years (12.7 million; 1993).
http://awfulannouncing.com/2015/nbcsns-english-premier-league-ratings-2015-date.html To date, the ratings for EPL games at the half of the season is up 15% compared to the same point in 2013-14 averaging 479,000 viewers.
they may be playing with the numbers certainly (i.e. number of people watching all the stations at one time). are world cup games ever simultaneous? not sure what would be apples to apples then. perhaps the elite eight since those are individual games?
For mostly four games running at a time. Everyone in the media business has long since realized Neilsen numbers are suspect. If anyone believes more people watched West Virginia - Maryland than watched Brazil-Germany, I want to do business with them.
How do the numbers for this year's World Cup compare to that of the last one? Supposedly interest soccer is growing in America. It would grow significantly faster if we had big time players playing entire seasons here in their prime. Forget Messi and Ronaldo. Even just pulling average to slightly above average players from those leagues would probably be a significant talent jump.
But you are aware that when players out of college don't get drafted, they go play overseas, yes? Wayne Chism, Scotty Hopson, et al. Is this your homework Larry?
