TV Sports Ratings

Nothing drives Derby ratings like an infusion of drugs.  The 2008 edition, driven by a record-setting performance from recovering addict Josh Hamilton had the highest male demo ratings since the juiced 1999 telecast and the largest average audience since the equally PED’d 1998 contest.

Airing from 8:19-11p* on ESPN, the telecast averaged a 5.96 among Men 18-49, a 6.48 in Men 18-34 with an average audience of 9.1 million viewers.

The audience was 70% male with a median age of 41 years.

*In a bit of craftiness, ESPN broke out the lower-rated 8-8:19p Pre-Derby segment as a separate telecast.  Legit, but a departure from past years.

Game 5 of Celtics/Lakers (ABC; Sunday 6/15/08) hit series-high levels with 9.2 ratings in both Men 18-49 and M18-34 and an average audience of 17.4 million viewers.

This was the highest rated Finals Game 5 since 2004:

Through 5 games, the 2008 Finals are averaging 7.7 ratings in Men 18-49 and Men 18-34 (up 57% vs. the 2007 Finals full 4 game average) and 14.6 million viewers (up 57%).

Celtics/Lakers is sure to be the highest rated Finals since Lakers/Pistons in 2004, but is unlikely to meet or surpass those lofty numbers.

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.