What’s a losing season worth?
Posted by sportsprof on October 2, 2006
Tim Tucker summarizes the Braves attendance and ratings for 2006.
Fans reacted ambiguously to the Braves‘ worst season in 16 years.
Roughly as many people attended games at Turner Field as the year before, but dramatically fewer watched games on television. Entering this weekend’s final series of the season, attendance was up 1 percent and TV ratings down as much as 31 percent vs. last season.
On balance, though, “the team probably did better off the field than on the field” this year, said Braves president Terry McGuirk, who quickly added: “That’s not meant to be a pejorative remark about the team.”
The divergence in the response between attendance and TV viewers is interesting.
TBS’ rating for Braves games dropped 30 percent in the metro Atlanta TV market vs. last year, from 7.2 to 5.0, which translates to a loss of about 48,000 Atlanta households from the average audience. Outside Atlanta, TBS’ already-beaten-down national rating for Braves games dropped another 14 percent, from 0.7 to 0.6.
In the Atlanta market, the combined average ratings for Braves games on regional cable channels Turner South and FSN South dropped 31 percent, from 6.1 last year to 4.2.
I bet there’s a good test question in all of this information.
