Ok, now I get why you don't care/know about hockey. You're too busy following this garbage.
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- Thread starter gunslingerdick
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Ok, now I get why you don't care/know about hockey. You're too busy following this garbage.
The Stanley cup playoff thread is less than a page long. That tells you all you need to know. There is really no need for you to get worked up about it. Hockey is the unpopular kid who everyone forgets about. Embrace that fact and you'll feel better.
There's only 3 people on the board that poast in the NHL threads. Mine and @gteeitup teams have already been bounced too which limits the excitement there.
If hockey is the unpopular kid, what are college baseball, mens/womens lax, and college golf (these are the sports I actually like but can admit they're not as popular as hockey), the ugly step children? And that must mean the scraps of M/W tennis and softball are the abused foster kids?
Right, because only three people on this board give shit about hockey.
I agree that those college sports are probably not as popular as professional hockey. Pro sports are usually more popular than college sports. I was just joking with you about that. That being said hockey is at best America's 4th sport behind football, basketball and baseball. It wouldn't surprise me if it was behind soccer and pro golf as well. Hockey is an afterthought sport outside of Canada. Now, stop ruining a good thread with all of this hockey crap.
Headed to Chapel Hill around 3 for tonight's game. Has all the feels of a CWS game. Can't wait.
This is true (although baseball's plummet could take it to the #4 spot soon enough). My only point was that being #4 is miles ahead of college tennis.
Soccer has equaled hockey in terms of American TV ratings, but networks just stick to including hockey in "the big 4" because people are used to that nomenclature. The difference between NHL and MLS TV ratings is negligible in terms of regular season:
2016 MLS regular season games on ESPN / ESPN2 -- average viewers = 312,000 viewers (source)
2015-16 NHL regular season games on NBCSports Network -- average viewers = 378,000 viewers (source)
The numbers are even closer, though, because MLS soccer's viewership audience is diversified because of simulcasts on ESPN Deportes and/or other Spanish-language channels such as Univision or Telemundo. A regular season hockey game that's chosen for national broadcast on NBCSN is shown only on that channel (and possibly in each of the two teams' regional market, as well? You'll have to let me know on that one @Hark_The_Sound_2010). Your typical MLS nationally televised ESPN or ESPN2 game is almost always simulcast on ESPN Deportes (a part of Spanish-language packages available on most cable providers) or Telemundo/Univision. The article above states that ESPN Deportes broadcasts get about 45,000 viewers per match. So if you want to add that to the 312,000 total above, you get 357,000 soccer viewers vs. 378,000 viewers. Either way, the difference between the two sports' viewership is negligible.**
One other major difference: soccer's viewership in America is split because foreign leagues are much more popular than America's MLS. Whereas with hockey, NHL is the only game in town. There are many folks -- myself included before Atlanta got an MLS team -- who watch a decent amount of soccer, but virtually never watch MLS. Even with all that audience fracturing going on, soccer has caught hockey if not surpassed it, nationally, and has certainly passed it in the vast majority of U.S. markets on a market-by-market analysis.
**For sake of argument, I am treating "streaming audience" (not reflected in either number poasted above) as negligible difference. In all honesty, the streaming audience for MLS is almost certainly bigger due to target demographics than it is for NBCSN streaming for hockey, but I'm still gonna treat it as a wash (the linked article above says ~12,000 people stream MLS ESPN games).
2016 MLS regular season games on ESPN / ESPN2 -- average viewers = 312,000 viewers (source)
2015-16 NHL regular season games on NBCSports Network -- average viewers = 378,000 viewers (source)
The numbers are even closer, though, because MLS soccer's viewership audience is diversified because of simulcasts on ESPN Deportes and/or other Spanish-language channels such as Univision or Telemundo. A regular season hockey game that's chosen for national broadcast on NBCSN is shown only on that channel (and possibly in each of the two teams' regional market, as well? You'll have to let me know on that one @Hark_The_Sound_2010). Your typical MLS nationally televised ESPN or ESPN2 game is almost always simulcast on ESPN Deportes (a part of Spanish-language packages available on most cable providers) or Telemundo/Univision. The article above states that ESPN Deportes broadcasts get about 45,000 viewers per match. So if you want to add that to the 312,000 total above, you get 357,000 soccer viewers vs. 378,000 viewers. Either way, the difference between the two sports' viewership is negligible.**
One other major difference: soccer's viewership in America is split because foreign leagues are much more popular than America's MLS. Whereas with hockey, NHL is the only game in town. There are many folks -- myself included before Atlanta got an MLS team -- who watch a decent amount of soccer, but virtually never watch MLS. Even with all that audience fracturing going on, soccer has caught hockey if not surpassed it, nationally, and has certainly passed it in the vast majority of U.S. markets on a market-by-market analysis.
**For sake of argument, I am treating "streaming audience" (not reflected in either number poasted above) as negligible difference. In all honesty, the streaming audience for MLS is almost certainly bigger due to target demographics than it is for NBCSN streaming for hockey, but I'm still gonna treat it as a wash (the linked article above says ~12,000 people stream MLS ESPN games).
It happens when some jackleg poster derails a great thread about UNC sports. Probably a closet dookie.
First off, the playoffs are when the NHL gets really good (and I'd guarantee picks up more viewers), I'm not even aware if the MLS has playoffs.
Second - I guess our definitions of "negligible" are fairly different.
378,000/312,000 - 1 = 21.2%. Hockey regular season viewership is 21.2% higher than soccer's, I'd hardly call that negligible.
Fair enough. I admit I derailed this, and for that I apologize.
Please fill us in on how the Tiddlywinks squad does in their next match when you have the chance.
Will do, but the season doesn't start until September.
MLS has playoffs. And sure, NHL playoff numbers are better. The league has 100 years of history that makes its playoffs a TV draw. MLS playoffs aren't the same level of excitement. To me, regular season numbers is a better comparison because it's way more games and a bigger sample size and it's a bigger variety of teams (I'd assume) whereas playoffs is just the good teams.
I knew you were going to raise this point. I say it's negligible because the top two of the "big four" have as follows:
NFL regular season average TV viewership = 16.5 million
NBA regular season average TV viewership = 1.65 million (and I picked ESPN which has a significantly smaller number of viewers per game than ABC [3.93 million] and TNT [1.68 million])
So yes, compared to 16.5 million and 1.65 million, 66,000 people difference is negligible to me.
6:30 and 6:00 starts, respectively. I'm going to try to watch both.
UNC has a club hockey team, for those who weren't aware.
I'm going to wait until this poast is made into a movie.
You, of all people, not appreciating a poast heavy on numbers? The apocalypse is nigh.
Fair enough. College sports are the only ones that I really care about the regular seasons though - because they matter. The regular season isn't that important in NHL, is pretty close to meaningless in MLB, and is completely meaningless in the NBA. I guess it's probably fairly important in the NFL - but, not to be a dick (ok to be a little bit of a dick), it's fairly meaningless for my team because I know they'll make the playoffs the question is how they'll do from there.
We're not comparing NFL and NBA though. I freely admit those are much much much bigger draws - so their numbers are irrelevant here. If the NHL had 66,001 viewers and MLS had 1 viewer, that 66K would be a pretty big difference. I consider over 21% to be non-negligible.
I see you've now gotten to the gunslingerdick/strummingram phase of the argument where you just state what's important to you; everyone else be damned
Yes of course, if we're going by the strict definition of "significant" in the mathematical sense, yes it's significant from 312,000 to 378,000. But in the overall scheme of what we're talking about, those numbers aren't very different. They're both small numbers for a pro sports broadcast. To me, it's sorta a wash. Especially because all the same players are advertisers for these games, for the most part. It's still Budweiser, Coca-Cola, et al. It's not like Harry's Local Hardware Store is paying to advertise during these games. If that was the case, then a 66,000 viewer difference would be extremely significant.
Dammit guys. I like to drink beer n talk shit. What the hell are y'all doing?
Your girlfriend. She was already bored that you left for Chapel Hill, so she stopped by.
Ha jokes on you I haven't left yet
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My point with all this data is not to bash hockey or praise soccer; it's to poke fun at / criticize networks like ESPN in terms of how they cover the NHL vs. how they cover MLS.
With NHL, SportsCenter will still take time to show / talk about NHL games, even in the dog days of the regular season. They don't talk about it as much as NBA and NFL obviously, but they do devote probably 5 minutes of a 60 minute show to hockey... sometimes more (well they did before all the cuts the other day). But MLS, which only has a bit fewer viewers than NHL, relatively speaking, gets zero coverage from MLS. None. It'll get an occasional play in the Top 10 and that's it.
It's just amusing to me that sports networks haven't adapted to the times. NHL still gets the treatment of a "big four" even though it's on the same level of MLS.
Oh, sorry. They all look alike. My mistake.Ha jokes on you I haven't left yet
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I see you've now gotten to the gunslingerdick/strummingram phase of the argument where you just state what's important to you; everyone else be damned
I have yankee blood as my excuse - what's theirs?
I'm always on board to bash ESPN. And I'll admit that the NHL gets more time from them than MLS - but it has gotten to the point of being really marginal as well. A nice goal/save might crack the Top 10 every once in awhile, and they sit down with Barry Melrose for maybe 10 mins in a week, but other than that - it hasn't really got much more than the scrolling scores at the bottom of screen in at least a decade. And as you mentioned - what minuscule coverage they had is now gone since they fired the few people they had that covered hockey.
In regards to NHL popularity - I think it's a "chicken or the egg" argument. Did ESPN reduce their coverage of the league 10-15 years ago because interest in the sport was fading - or did viewership of the sport decline as a result of ESPN not giving it much air time? For better or for worse most younger kids sports viewing is done on ESPN and if they don't cover hockey - kids won't become interested in hockey. Same argument can be made for the MLS I guess.
I think NHL is a regional sport much like MLB is, so I don't think ESPN's reduction of coverage would've affected it. By regional, what I mean is... in NHL and MLB, you consume the content regionally unless you're a team of a national favorite like the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Blackhawks, Maple Leafs, etc. If you're, for instance, a Braves fan, you know ESPN won't ever show your games. You watch all the games on your regional Fox Sports network and get your Braves news from local sports talk. I'd imagine same thing happens with smaller market NHL fans.
85% of MLB teams may as not even exist, if you go just by ESPN coverage.
Lookin like a pitching duel here at the Bosh. Seth Beer for Clemson is a stud. JB doing this usual thing.
Michael Busch w a pinch hit bases clearing double to put us up 4-1. Wooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!
Diamond Heels w the 5-1 victory!!
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