Someone please explain this to me
DMZ · August 11, 2011 at 9:55 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Is ESPN contractually obligated to show preseason football on its flagship channel? I know, I’m out of things, I don’t understand who is getting paid for what… and yet the NFL lockout makes pre-season NFL football look like split-squad (and B-squad at that) spring training games. And just in the world of baseball, there’s two games between teams #1 and #2: the AL Central division Indians-Tigers, with Verlander, and an NL Central division title game with Pujols.
There’s even a Yankees game on! How does that not get televised?
Is it tied to Monday Night Football? Help me understand.
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Yes,
It’s tied to MNF for the game tonight. They had to show it. Plus they don’t have MLB game rights for Thursday so MLB Network is the one which gets to show the games.
DMZ – Let me try to help you understand:
Imagine a 1-dollar bill. Simple, right? Now imagine a stack of 100 bills, each one of them a 1-dollar bill. This stack is about half an inch thick. OK, now imagine a stack of 9,000,000,000 one-dollar bills. This stack would reach from sea-level up over 610.79 miles (statute miles). That’s nearly three times higher than the orbit of the Space Station!!! Now imagine handing that much money out every single year.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the NFL.
(Note that I am not making a value-judgement about whether this is good or bad; just pointing out the financial impact/motivation)
Yes they are, but they’d show the first preseason football game anyway in order to get a higher rating.
The way you pose the question seems to indicate you’re not quite in touch with how much, much, much more popular football is than baseball in the U.S. of A right now. It doesn’t matter that it’s bad and meaningless; America as a whole doesn’t give a hoot about baseball in comparison to their beloved NFL.
Funny thing is, Seattle/SD tonight was probably the least interesting game from a national standpoint. Hell, I consider myself a pretty big seahawks fan as well and I struggled to watch much of it.
But yea, ESPN pays nearly $2 Billion a year to show monday night football, they gotta try and get their money’s worth!
I think it’s tied to the same reason ESPN thinks its a good idea to have a 24/7 channel devoted to Longhorn football… apparently somebody is willing to pay to see this crap.
$$$$$$$$
you’re not quite in touch with how much, much, much more popular football is than baseball in the U.S. of A right now.
Actually I disagree. In terms of total tickets sold, or total number of TV viewers, MLB dwarfs the NFL.
Yes, that’s because MLB plays every day of the week…and the NFL only one day a week.
So to make things fair, let’s have the NFL play every day and see how that works out.
Baseball still rules.
Baseball is highly regional.
It’s generally decently popular. Attendance nationally shows this. But, people only watch and care about theihr own team.
I watch a lot of Mariners games, and consider myself a baseball ‘fan.’ But I have no interest in watching a regular season game between any teams that aren’t the Mariners.
But I will watch any NFL football game.
So NFL TV ratings absolutely destroy baseball ratings.
I’m so tired of ESPN shoving the NFL down our throats. I barely even watch ESPN and Sportscenter anymore, especially on Mondays in the Fall. I’ve actually switched over to the MLB Network now to get my baseball fix.
It’s all about whetting the appetite for the Season-That-Shall-Be (and of course MNF in particular). What I find amusing are the NFL shows that air in the spring, and how manic the hosts are at that time of year.
screw espn- mlb.tv rulz
According to this article, last year’s Bengals/Cowboys preseason game drew a 7.6 rating, while a concurrent Yankees/Red Sox game drew a 2.7 rating. Insane? Clearly.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/463256-2010-nfl-tv-ratingsthe-mlb-ratings-sliding-fast-nfl-is-americas-new-pastime
Jack Cust signs with Philly.
Good luck, Jack!
Football exemplifies two bad things about American Life: Committee meetings punctuated by violence.
I still like watching it, but definitely not during the pre-season.
Football games are events (once per week) – where drinking and gambling are often encouraged. Some people like doing that … just before having a committee meeting punctuated by violence.
ESPN is to Football as…
Mariners are to Figgins.
Why?
As others have stated, its about the money. Baseball has attendence numbers over football, but in terms of profitability, football is king and has been for years.
Baseball still rules? Somebody is still living in the 50s. Football has been the number one sport in America (by a longggggggg ways) for a long time now, most notably due to the fact that it’s a once a week event which parties and what not can easily be centered around, and gambling on the sport is so popular. Throw in how much more popular fantasy football is over any other sport’s fantasy games, how much better football is on TV than any other sport, and you have a system in place.
Wouldn’t this be like asking why Megan Fox appears on so many more magazine covers than Meryl Streep?
One is hot, sexy and exciting. The other is dignified, old fashioned and reliable. We know what American’s tend to prefer…
[name-calling]
They also have to get out the kinks in whatever new technology, new camera people, new announcers, whatever, they’re using before the regular season.
But I must admit I was so completely out of it I had no idea there was a football game on. We were watching “Project Runway.”
You’re expecting logical decisions from an organization that keeps subjecting us to that DREADFUL Neil Everett (“she’s a beauty, that number nine” — wasn’t funny the first time, d-bag, let alone lo these umpteen-thousand iterations later), who has been using the same three jokes that were at best chuckle-worthy when he first used them as an anchor several years ago on ESPNNEWS, but you didn’t care because you knew there was no chance — none — that this unctious boob would ever be, say, a fixture on the mothership. But the peoples must like him, well, because there he is, along with some of the shittiest “professional” football I’ve ever seen (at least Arena Football kick returners being manhandled in the end zone by fans has some “entertainment” value). But, here again, what do I know? I’m figuring out how to meet my financial obligations, whereas the folks in Bristol have a license to print money…insert H.L. Mencken quote here re: not going broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
Sorry for the rant, but, I guess I couldn’t agree more, Derek.
It’s very simple. Football is the most popular sport in the country, and this off-season in particular has been exciting because most fans didn’t think there would be games, or at least a full season.
Websites devoted to football have been getting record numbers of hits, especially during the free-agent frenzy that occurred right after the lockout was lifted.
I imagine that the viewership for preseason games will diminish as the preseason goes on, but when (as a fan) your entire week (or spring and summer) has been a build up, you watch the only opportunity you can.