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09-02-2003, 07:17 PM
Among American sports, NFL is king
By Charles Elmore, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 31, 2003
TV ratings for the NBA Finals have sunk to their lowest level since the Carter administration. Ratings for the Stanley Cup finals dipped 19 percent overall from the previous year, despite a Game 7 that featured the best single-game viewership in 19 years. Baseball attendance has slid 1.7 percent from a year ago, even with improvement by the Florida Marlins and a strong August league-wide.
And the NFL?
Well, things are going well enough that it can afford new equipment to squirt mist on hot days. Not on the players. On fans wearing feathers, horns and dog noses in bars.
The spritzer system under construction in at least one West Palm Beach sports bar shows confidence in the fourth law of thermodynamics: that grown-ups wearing Redskins headdresses and Steelers helmets and Cowboys towels tend to retain heat, even when other leagues wilt under economic slowdown, war and acid-reflux disease. A new smoking law that pushed puffers to the patio helped spark the innovation, but it's hard to think of any other sport at the moment whose season opener would send bar owners scrambling so quickly to engineering manuals.
"We've got people installing it right now in time for opening day," said Shawn Morrissey, a Palm Beach Ale House manager.
That would be one week from today, when the NFL is hoping that nothing puts the fire out on the league's charmed performance relative to its competitors.
Paid attendance at NFL games set a record in 2002 at 17.6 million. Ninety percent of games sold out last year in time to lift TV blackouts, the highest percentage ever. Super Bowl XXXVII remains the most-watched program ever with 138.9 million total viewers.
Outside of Super Bowls, ratings for all sports events, including football, have eroded somewhat amid ever-growing TV choices. But the average regular-season broadcast rating for NFL games of 10.3 dwarfed the NBA's 2.9 and baseball's 2.5 last year. NASCAR's 5.7 average rating came in second.
It shows up in merchandising, where 32 percent of fans in a 2002 ESPN poll owned NFL-licensed apparel, compared to 17 percent for baseball, 12 percent for the NBA and 5 percent for the NHL. Or check out video games among the top 100 sellers: The NFL has seven licensed titles, the NBA has four and MLB and the NHL have one each, according to a video industry report.
Why?
"Uncertainty of outcomes," said Patrick Rishe, a professor at Webster University in St. Louis who specializes in sports economics.
"Partly because of the salary cap structure, partly due to the scheduling formula used in the NFL, there is more parity in the NFL than in any other league," Rishe said. "This gives each and every team a glimmer of hope, keeping local fans happy, and makes the casual sports fan watch because any given Sunday, anything can happen."
Then there is the stability of a media package that splits up $2.2 billion per year through 2005, plus the ability to contain costs through a hard salary-cap system.
"These combine to make almost every team profitable," Rishe said. "Comparatively, you have between five and 15 teams in each of the other leagues legitimately losing money."
That means every team can afford at least some of the higher-priced players or coaches, even Cincinnati, where Bengals fans hope new coach Marvin Lewis can turn it around.
Almost half of American adults identify themselves as football fans, according to a survey of 1,020 adults conducted in late July by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, N.J. Seven percent call themselves "fanatics" and 10 percent label themselves "passionate." Thirty-six percent of fans are women, including 23 percent of the "fanatics." More women watch the Super Bowl than the Academy Awards (38.3 million to 25.8 million last year).
"It truly is America's pastime, with all due deference to baseball and our Little League team," said Browns fan Chuck Edgar, a Palm Beach Gardens attorney. "Games come once a week, so you don't get oversaturated. You don't burn out on it. You wait and wait for it. Particularly in a place like Florida, where so many of us are from somewhere else, it's a reason to gather together. It's like going home."
When they aren't at one stadium or another, fans strap on their dog masks, or what have you, and gather around the big screen in the rec room, or seek out others of their kind at various watering holes. Joe Rooney, co-owner of pubs in Jupiter and West Palm Beach, said nothing beats the NFL for intensity. He's adding three outdoor TVs for smokers in Jupiter. The only problem with being part of the family that owns the Pittsburgh Steelers is that some fans half expect him to get on the phone and call plays.
"If a game starts to go bad, I hide in the office," he said.
Other leagues say such comparisons sometimes lose perspective.
"It's once a week, so it's easier to promote it as event programming, " said Major League Baseball spokesman Rich Levin. "Other than the Super Bowl, ratings for every major sports event have declined in recent years. Our ratings were pretty much flat, which is something of an accomplishment. We've had a great August in attendance, and if it weren't for bad weather, Iraq and a bad economy earlier in the season, we'd be well ahead of last year."
Maybe, but tell Adam Gompers of West Palm Beach, a walking J-E-T-S billboard from his green and white T-shirt to his logo visor, that next weekend is nothing special.
"The NFL as compared to other sports?" he said. "It's once a week. It's the violence of it. It's the intensity of it. For 60 minutes, you can't compare it to any other sport."
OK, cool down, NFL fans. Don't make us spray you.
charles_elmore@pbpost.com
By Charles Elmore, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 31, 2003
TV ratings for the NBA Finals have sunk to their lowest level since the Carter administration. Ratings for the Stanley Cup finals dipped 19 percent overall from the previous year, despite a Game 7 that featured the best single-game viewership in 19 years. Baseball attendance has slid 1.7 percent from a year ago, even with improvement by the Florida Marlins and a strong August league-wide.
And the NFL?
Well, things are going well enough that it can afford new equipment to squirt mist on hot days. Not on the players. On fans wearing feathers, horns and dog noses in bars.
The spritzer system under construction in at least one West Palm Beach sports bar shows confidence in the fourth law of thermodynamics: that grown-ups wearing Redskins headdresses and Steelers helmets and Cowboys towels tend to retain heat, even when other leagues wilt under economic slowdown, war and acid-reflux disease. A new smoking law that pushed puffers to the patio helped spark the innovation, but it's hard to think of any other sport at the moment whose season opener would send bar owners scrambling so quickly to engineering manuals.
"We've got people installing it right now in time for opening day," said Shawn Morrissey, a Palm Beach Ale House manager.
That would be one week from today, when the NFL is hoping that nothing puts the fire out on the league's charmed performance relative to its competitors.
Paid attendance at NFL games set a record in 2002 at 17.6 million. Ninety percent of games sold out last year in time to lift TV blackouts, the highest percentage ever. Super Bowl XXXVII remains the most-watched program ever with 138.9 million total viewers.
Outside of Super Bowls, ratings for all sports events, including football, have eroded somewhat amid ever-growing TV choices. But the average regular-season broadcast rating for NFL games of 10.3 dwarfed the NBA's 2.9 and baseball's 2.5 last year. NASCAR's 5.7 average rating came in second.
It shows up in merchandising, where 32 percent of fans in a 2002 ESPN poll owned NFL-licensed apparel, compared to 17 percent for baseball, 12 percent for the NBA and 5 percent for the NHL. Or check out video games among the top 100 sellers: The NFL has seven licensed titles, the NBA has four and MLB and the NHL have one each, according to a video industry report.
Why?
"Uncertainty of outcomes," said Patrick Rishe, a professor at Webster University in St. Louis who specializes in sports economics.
"Partly because of the salary cap structure, partly due to the scheduling formula used in the NFL, there is more parity in the NFL than in any other league," Rishe said. "This gives each and every team a glimmer of hope, keeping local fans happy, and makes the casual sports fan watch because any given Sunday, anything can happen."
Then there is the stability of a media package that splits up $2.2 billion per year through 2005, plus the ability to contain costs through a hard salary-cap system.
"These combine to make almost every team profitable," Rishe said. "Comparatively, you have between five and 15 teams in each of the other leagues legitimately losing money."
That means every team can afford at least some of the higher-priced players or coaches, even Cincinnati, where Bengals fans hope new coach Marvin Lewis can turn it around.
Almost half of American adults identify themselves as football fans, according to a survey of 1,020 adults conducted in late July by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, N.J. Seven percent call themselves "fanatics" and 10 percent label themselves "passionate." Thirty-six percent of fans are women, including 23 percent of the "fanatics." More women watch the Super Bowl than the Academy Awards (38.3 million to 25.8 million last year).
"It truly is America's pastime, with all due deference to baseball and our Little League team," said Browns fan Chuck Edgar, a Palm Beach Gardens attorney. "Games come once a week, so you don't get oversaturated. You don't burn out on it. You wait and wait for it. Particularly in a place like Florida, where so many of us are from somewhere else, it's a reason to gather together. It's like going home."
When they aren't at one stadium or another, fans strap on their dog masks, or what have you, and gather around the big screen in the rec room, or seek out others of their kind at various watering holes. Joe Rooney, co-owner of pubs in Jupiter and West Palm Beach, said nothing beats the NFL for intensity. He's adding three outdoor TVs for smokers in Jupiter. The only problem with being part of the family that owns the Pittsburgh Steelers is that some fans half expect him to get on the phone and call plays.
"If a game starts to go bad, I hide in the office," he said.
Other leagues say such comparisons sometimes lose perspective.
"It's once a week, so it's easier to promote it as event programming, " said Major League Baseball spokesman Rich Levin. "Other than the Super Bowl, ratings for every major sports event have declined in recent years. Our ratings were pretty much flat, which is something of an accomplishment. We've had a great August in attendance, and if it weren't for bad weather, Iraq and a bad economy earlier in the season, we'd be well ahead of last year."
Maybe, but tell Adam Gompers of West Palm Beach, a walking J-E-T-S billboard from his green and white T-shirt to his logo visor, that next weekend is nothing special.
"The NFL as compared to other sports?" he said. "It's once a week. It's the violence of it. It's the intensity of it. For 60 minutes, you can't compare it to any other sport."
OK, cool down, NFL fans. Don't make us spray you.
charles_elmore@pbpost.com