Why Television Sports Ratings Are Soaring

[Cowperson]

Looks like it's Karma (a series of league champions in big cities) and HDTV.

http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...010746,00.html

I find baseball looks pretty amazing on HD TV but it's one of the few sports with declining ratings.

Cowperson

[Sylvanfan]

Baseball seems to be the one sport where people enjoy the experience of going to the live event considerably more than watching it on T.V.

Whereas with the NFL, a lot of people are happy to sit in their Basement on Sunday with three T.V's hooked up to Sunday ticket and their computer going and keep tabs on their fantasy team. Really the Internet and live stats updates does allow one to enhance their T.V. viewing experience when it comes to sports. You no longer have to wait till tommorrows box score to see how many yards Adrian Peterson racked up, you can log on right while you're watching the game.

[Fire]

I thought the increase of ratings lately had to do with the new formula they were using to determine the number of viewers.

[Finny61]

I think we can thank reality tv for helping out. Tv shows mostly suck these days except for Lost of course.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Fire

I thought the increase of ratings lately had to do with the new formula they were using to determine the number of viewers.

I'm not sure if there's a new formula, but there are new trackers that test individuals carry around with them that picks up on signals in the area. So if you go out to a bar and there's a game on, you're recorded as watching that game, regardless of whether you're actually paying attention to it or not. All sports ratings in Canada took a massive leap last year because of this system.

[Caged Great]

Television and Movies have sucked for the last 5-10 years with extremely few shows or movies that are worth wasting time over, let alone being good.

It makes perfect sense why sports ratings are going up, there really isn't much else in terms of distractions....

[troutman]

Other factors possibly:

The proliferation of all-sports talk radio stations has created more sports-junkies.

Sports gambling is easier to participate in than ever before. Fantasy Drafts have exploded.

Are women watching sports more than ever before?

[Erick Estrada]

I'm a sports junky so while I don't watch more sports due to HD I have to admit it's the single greatest thing to ever happen to sports. Football, hockey, soccer, and tennis come to mind as sports that are just more enjoyable to watch on television. My biggest beef with Shaw's NFL Sunday ticket package was that only a small handful of games were shown in HD and if you cheared for a bad team like me (Raiders) you were stuck watching the majority of games in SD and it is really hard to watch once you get spoiled with HD. Thankfully Shaw has got their act together and this year all games are in HD.

I'll be honest here and while for sure some of it has something to do with now having a young family and less time but I attend a lot less Flames games than I used to and I honestly believe that the HD telecasts have a little bit to do with it.

[Hessen]

The overall availability of programming is king. When i can sit in my basement with a beer and watch any team in any sport as opposed to paying increased prices for a live game, the choice is easy.

With the "recession" alot of people are being more choosey with their dollars which contributes to more television watching as well.