Gareth Bale, LAFC lead MLS Cup to top U.S. audience in 25 years: Sports on TV

Major League Soccer probably couldn’t have asked for a better championship matchup on Saturday afternoon when the top two teams met in the MLS Cup.

Viewers packed in the best drama in overtime and the ensuing penalty shootout at Bank of California Stadium between Los Angeles FC and the Philadelphia Union.

33-year-old Welsh football superstar Gareth Bale, who will lead his national team in a World Cup group stage match against the United States on November 21, came off the bench late Saturday afternoon as LAFC held off the title match in 128 minutes. With a header, his club won 3–0 to clinch their first championship since entering the league in 2018.

doing what we all know he does.

to Llongyfarchiadau @GarethBale11 with the acquisition of #MLSCup Last. #ArBenYByd | | #TogetherStronger

pic.twitter.com/kMtSFYPmvH

— Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@Cymru) November 5, 2022

But the thrill couldn’t overcome the harsh reality that football is a distant cousin to American football.The MLS Cup, which started at 4 p.m. , with 2.15 million viewers including Spanish TV viewers.

that is reportedly It was the highest-rated combined English and Spanish title game since 2.2 million viewers watched DC United beat the Colorado Rapids on ABC in 1997. That match 25 years ago was in English only. The 2016 MLS Cup (Seattle-Toronto) averaged 3.5 million viewers on English/Spanish TV in the US and English/French TV in Canada.

The MLS Cup broadcast had the misfortune of pitting against a college football game between Georgia and Tennessee, which began at 3:30 p.m. on CBS. That match averaged 13 million viewers, surpassing all on TV on Saturday.

Clearly, MLS has no control over what its championship games will face on TV or streaming.

This year was also the earliest MLS Cup since 2003 when it was moved to November or December. Since 2012, there have been only two matches in November (2019 and 2022).

A year ago, New York City FC’s 4-2 penalty shootout victory over the Portland Timbers was watched by an average of 1.51 million viewers on ABC/Unimas/TUDN. It was he who kicked off at 3:00 p.m. on December 11, but a major college football game was a traditional Army-Navy game, and viewers were treated exactly like a major SEC or Big Ten game. It never attracted.

The MLS Cup typically draws an audience of approximately 1 million or more. The first title game in 1996 holds the league’s US television audience record of 3.1 million.

MLS regular season games on the Disney Network (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2) averaged 309,000 viewers, an improvement from 276,000 average viewers in 2021. Around Sports Business Journal. The league averaged 198,000 viewers on Fox and FS1 this season, down from 210,000 averages last season.

Spanish audience numbers are also important for MLS (beating Mexico’s top division on U.S. television), and the league saw viewership average down to 244,000 across Univision, Unimas and TUDN this season. did. According to SBJ, this is the lowest on those networks since his 240,000 three years ago.

The largest regular season singles match viewership this season was Minnesota United vs Portland Timbers on ABC with 593,000.

This season marks the end of Major League Soccer’s traditional media rights situation. Next year, he will transition to a primarily streaming deal for all games under his 10-year, $2.5 billion global deal with Apple Inc.’s Apple TV ecosystem.

MLS and Apple are creating a standalone streaming service that runs within Apple. And the new deal boosts the league’s media rights from the current $600 million paid by ESPN and Fox over eight years under a deal that began in 2015.

There are still MLS wireless games under a non-exclusive deal, where the league is expected to strike on traditional television broadcasts.

College football: On Saturday afternoon, Georgia treated Tennessee roughly, averaging 13 million viewers on CBS, the best college football viewership so far this season.

The Bulldogs were leading 24-6 in the first half, so it wasn’t quite a point win, but it wasn’t a fiasco either. The Vols scored a 4th quarter touchdown to make it 27-13 finals. Punks are bad for TV audiences, as fans often switch to something more appealing, but it’s unclear to what extent that happened in this game.

According to CBS Sports, since 1997, Georgia vs. Tennessee has had the largest viewership of 13 million viewers.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the top college football viewership numbers so far this season.

No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 Michigan could maintain season-high ratings through the conference title game, bowls and playoff games if they remain undefeated heading into the November 26 showdown in Columbus. I have.

LSU’s Alabama upset averaged 7.6 million viewers on ESPN’s 7 p.m. kickoff. It aired at the same time, and 3.21 million people watched Notre Dame upset Clemson.

The gale battle between Ohio State and the lowlands of the Northwest averaged 4.8 million as of noon on ABC.

Last season saw more than 10 million viewers watch regular season games until Week 13, the final week before the conference, Buckeyes vs. Wolverines (15.89 million, Fox) and Alabama vs. Auburn (10.36 million, CBS). There was no title game. Still, only the SEC and Big Ten games earned him double-digit millions of viewers.

NFL: According to CBS, midseason games averaged 17.76 million viewers, the highest number of viewers since 2015, and the NFL broke the record for overall regular season average viewership (18.1 million). The year it was recorded.

Last Sunday’s late afternoon window on CBS was just the Buccaneers rallying to beat the Rams, who averaged 20.2 million viewers. The 1:00 p.m. window, in which the Jets dominated the Bills, averaged 13.87 million viewers. Other of his early CBS games included the Dolphins Bears, the Colts his Patriots, and the Raiders Jaguars.

Sunday at Fox was a single header. This meant that the match was only at 1:00pm or 4:00pm. That early slate averaged 15.49 million viewers and included the Packers-Lions, Chargers-Falcons, Vikings-Commanders and Panthers-Bengals. The only late game was the Seahawks versus the Cardinals.

The Titans-Chiefs matchup on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” averaged 17.68 million viewers (18.9 million including streaming).

The Eagles’ 29-17 victory over the Texans on “Thursday Night Football” was interesting in terms of viewership. Because the rain delayed the World Series for him by a day and put him against the NFL. (See the full World Series ratings breakdown here.) Due to its contractual obligations, the Fox affiliates in Houston and Philadelphia were required to run the World Series, not TNF (due to Amazon’s streaming deal with the NFL). , is required to broadcast the game locally on TV). at the home market of the participating teams each week).

The game was broadcast on the Fox-owned or affiliated MyTV cable channel in both markets (KTXH/My 20 in Houston and WPHL-17 in Philadelphia).

Live NFL games on MyTV? That’s the strange world we live in today.

Amazon does not publish TNF viewership numbers from either channel. why? The channel switch occurred late, resulting in very low viewership, and many fans may have watched the World Series on TV and had TNF on his second screen, according to Amazon. , first-party viewer tracking is not broken. Streaming by market.

This means I don’t know how many people in Houston and Philadelphia saw it. Local TV viewership added him over a million viewers to the TNF viewership total for several games this season.

According to Amazon, the game had an average audience of 7.86 million (Nielsen) and 9.4 million (Nielsen + Amazon metrics). We don’t know how many numbers are out of linear TV, after his eight games in TNF this season, last week’s game was on his Oct. 20 Cardinals-Raiders (7.8 million vs. 8.9 million). It ranked next as his second least watched match.

This week, the NFL will host its first regular season game in Germany with the 1976 expansion teams, the Seahawks and Buccaneers, at the 75,000-seat Allianz Arena, the home pitch of FC Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga.

The game will begin at 9:30 a.m. ET and will air nationally exclusively on NFL Network and NFL+. Participating teams home His Market will air locally on his KIRO-TV Ch., a CBS affiliate. His 7 in Seattle and his WFTS-TV Ch.28 in Tampa on the ABC affiliate.

Auto racing: A 10-race playoff at America’s premier stock car circuit culminated in Joey Logano’s victory in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday. Look for the breakdown of his NASCAR TV season this year soon.

Horse racing: Although not a Triple Crown race, the Breeders’ Cup Classic has been a key event in the horse racing world since its inception in 1984, with 988,000 racing on Saturday at Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington, Kentucky, on the 8 1/4 flight line. I saw it win by length.

The race was posted at 5:40 p.m. and aired on NBC and its Peacock streaming service. Brothers network USA Network televised the Breeders his cup race for the rest of the weekend.

All viewing data is from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, as well as other metrics via TV networks, Nielsen, Sports Media Watch, ShowBuzz Daily, 506Sports.com, and leagues. Always Eastern unless otherwise noted.

(Photo: Robert Hanashiro/USA Today)