TV Sports Ratings

As reported by Fanhouse, ESPN is considering abandoning the vintage sports format and turning ESPN Classic into “ESPN3″ - using English Premier League programming as a cornerstone.  Late in 1997, ESPN acquired the Classic Sports Network for a reported $175 million, slapped the ESPN name on it and integrated the channel into the Disney family.  This enabled Classic to overcome a crucial disadvantage - lack of distribution.  Currently, the channel is in about 62 million homes - on par with ESPN News.

However, no one is watching this channel.  Looking at Total Day coverage area Male 18-49 ratings for 2Q to date (through 5/11), ESPN Classic ranks 59th out of 68 ad-supported channels measured daily by Nielsen.

Not only is Classic ranked behind all other targeted sports networks, but it also trails the female-targeted WE channel….IN Men 18-49.

In terms of average audience, Classic has just 43,000 viewers - ahead of only VH1 Classic and Fuse.

Bottom line - this format is just not a big enough draw.  Now that Classic is not producing any original content (Cheap Seats, Ringside) around the branding, it’s clearly poised for a change.  Given the amount of content ESPN has rights to, there is more than enough programming to populate an ESPN3 schedule that would yield a larger audience than Classic. 

However, positioning the channel around soccer is a risky proposition.  It’s likely that MSOs would treat this as a specialty channel and push to relegate it to the lesser-distributed sports tiers.  Depending on their current agreements, though, ESPN could have some time to demonstrate that this relaunched channel would cast a wider net.  Time will tell.