The UFC had stolen WWE viewers. I wonder if this is aimed at weakening the UFC 's negotiating position as its contract expires. NBA ratings are up. MLB regular season ratings are up. The NFL is down. The UFC recently had its lowest rating ever for an original prime time show. Its show on Fox last Saturday got poor ratings despite a decent card, down almost a third from last year. WWE ratings are up. It could look like Vince McMahon is a man with answers.
Not sent from an iPhone. On Dec 19, 2017, 10:37 AM, at 10:37 AM, Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: >On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 12:57 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> >wrote: > >> Haven’t we established in prior threads that — for a myriad of >reasons — >> football ratings are down, earnings at sports networks are down, and >> layoffs are common? As a business decision, it would make more sense >to >> invest in an abacus company than a new sports franchise. >> > >I would say all that means is it makes no sense to replicate the NFL. >The >NFL and media companies made their multi-billion dollar contracts under >the >assumption that the demand for NFL games would grow forever. Once the >ratings drop everybody scrambles to make up lost revenue. A new league >made >to a smaller scale would not have those burdens. Even with falling >ratings >football still has the largest audience and largest revenues by far. >And >there's a large enough group of recent college players and NFL rejects >to >put together teams in a small league. > >Two lessons from the previous version of the XFL: no broadcast network >is >going to touch it. And with the concerns with brain injuries, making >rules >to encourage more violent collisions will be very unpopular. > >The main reason I think the idea of a new XFL will come to nothing >(assuming it's not the equivalent of vaporware right now) is that there >is >a form of off season football being played now which is arena football. >On >the last page of the sports section of the print newspaper (I am that >old) >there is a roundup of "other leagues," for sports that do not have >local >teams. One thing I have noticed over the last few years is how the MLS >is >growing while the Arena Football League is shrinking. Without doing >research, it looked a few years ago like the arena league had 20 teams >while MLS had 6. Today the opposite is true. I don't think a new XFL >would >do any better than the arena league. > >-- >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >Groups "TVorNotTV" group. >To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >an email to [email protected]. >For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
