ACC TV Ratings 2015

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2016/06/20/Media/ESPN-Big-Ten.aspx


FYI

ACC #1 in TV Basketball Viewers - 2015 Nielsen

The Nielsen ratings numbers for 2015 are out, and guess which conference was #1 in TV viewers? Yeah, trick question... the ACC had a 700k per game lead over the SEC and over a 1 million per game lead over the other power conferences. In fact, I have to figure that the SEC Network is the only thing which allowed the SEC to remain as close as they did - that constant hype paid off, I guess. Curious that the Big Ten didn't perform any better...

How do these ACC numbers compare to football?
The top ACC football games averaged 6.1 million viewers; the top games for the B1G and SEC averaged over 8 million. So, yes, there is a big difference between regular season viewership in football and basketball.*

What about combined viewers? Ah, that's where the ACC does far better than average...

Conf -->Basketball---->Football---->Combined
SEC ------->2.3 M -------->8.1 M -------->10.4 M
B1G ------->1.6 M--------->8.5 M--------->10.1 M
ACC ------->3.0 M-------->6.1 M----------->9.1 M
XII---------->1.4 M--------->5.0 M ---------->6.4 M
Pac--------->0.8 M-------->4.5 M----------->5.3 M

When you consider basketball and football combined, the ACC is right up there with the Big Ten and the SEC in terms of viewership.

* Note: these average viewership numbers are for the top 10 games only, so bad games on week nights had no effect on these averages, since those ratings were thrown out.

The issue for the SEC’s national viewership is that SEC powers like Alabama not drawing interest from major media markets. “SEC country is watching the Playoff regardless,” Barnett writes. “But they’re not breaking into the New York and Los Angeles markets like USC, Notre Dame and the Big Ten powers.”

Growth of Sports TV Advertising on Cable

Over the last 10 years, the media market has undergone a drastic transformation, which has positively affected sports on TV. There is an enormous amount of sports content to choose from and a shocking amount of hours viewed. In 2015, there were over 127,000 hours of sports programming available on broadcast and cable TV and 31+ billion hours spent viewing sports, which is up 160% and 41% respectively from 2005.
Cable TV networks have seen better results over the last five years in sports advertising -- up 8% to $4.1 billion.

ESPN takes the lion’s share with $2.4 billion, rising 6% over five years.

NFL Network is at $407.5 million (a gain of 34%).

Followed by ESPN2 at $362.3 million.

Golf Channel at $302.0 million (up 7%).

And NBC Sports at $200.0 million (up 14%).

• Sports accounted for 93 of the top 100 live viewed TV programs in 2015, compared to 14 in 2005. The amount of time spent on sports sites with a smartphone went up from 57 minutes in 2014 to 70 minutes in 2015. Streaming probably has an impact on that as well.
• The College Football Playoff national title game, it was the third most watched sports broadcast of the year, trailing the Super Bowl and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament championship game.
• According to Nielsen Scarborough, the highest percentage of college football fans lie in the Southeast and Midwest (SEC and BIG10). The SEC actually finished second in viewership by conference.