I've been doing all TV ratings entry for BTN this past week and came across looking at the baseball numbers for the spring. Here are some trends I found:
BTN broadcasted 24 regular season games with total impressions of 148,327 out of 619,534,800.
The combined regular season of Big Ten baseball drew an 0.5746 rating. On average, each broadcast pulled a 0.02394 rating.
Comparatively, a November 5th football game between Minnesota and Purdue finished with an 0.68 overnight, outdrawing the entire Big Ten regular season in baseball.
The SEC Network's numbers for baseball and softball are not publicly available, but an April 9th game between LSU and Alabama on ESPN2 drew 161,000 impressions, nearly 13,000 more than the entire Big Ten regular season.
In the spring of 2017, baseball on BTN was far outdone by softball and lacrosse.
Despite having just four games broadcast on BTN this year, games involving Nebraska drew about 20% of the total regular season viewing audience.
15 total games of the Big Ten Tournament outdrew the regular season numbers 149,821 to 148,327, pulling a combined rating of 0.5804 with an average of 0.03869.
Nebraska’s three games accounted for 17.7% of the total tournament viewing audience.
One can conclude from this that the conference interest in baseball is really much lower than we even thought. BTN isn't coming to broadcast games because baseball is even more of a revenue killer for the network than it is for the teams themselves. I'd have to go over the numbers again, but right now, it looks like baseball is the Big Ten's #8 sport behind football, men's basketball, women's basketball, volleyball, men's soccer, softball, and lacrosse.
If you have any more data questions, I'll be working on these TV ratings for the next couple weeks.
Edit for new information:
The Big Ten Network derives their ratings delivery from Nielsen, which uses a 12-meter-market cumulative audience for the Big Ten footprint, with four east coast markets and 8 regional markets.
Get this - while there may be significant amounts of Nebraska fans in these markets, not one of them is even close to a significant minority (20% or more) NU market.
The 8 regional markets are Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis.
With three "home" markets within those eight, Ohio State dominates BTN ratings for football, basketball, volleyball, etc. There's not much interest in baseball in the area, so the Buckeyes, especially on down years like this, scrape the bottom of the barrel in ratings.
The one pertinent thing on this that relates to baseball is that Nebraska games drew about 20% of the total regular season audience - without a Nebraska market in the ratings book.
So the original thread title may be wrong ... Big Ten baseball may be more popular than is reported on the ratings sheet.
BTN broadcasted 24 regular season games with total impressions of 148,327 out of 619,534,800.
The combined regular season of Big Ten baseball drew an 0.5746 rating. On average, each broadcast pulled a 0.02394 rating.
Comparatively, a November 5th football game between Minnesota and Purdue finished with an 0.68 overnight, outdrawing the entire Big Ten regular season in baseball.
The SEC Network's numbers for baseball and softball are not publicly available, but an April 9th game between LSU and Alabama on ESPN2 drew 161,000 impressions, nearly 13,000 more than the entire Big Ten regular season.
In the spring of 2017, baseball on BTN was far outdone by softball and lacrosse.
Despite having just four games broadcast on BTN this year, games involving Nebraska drew about 20% of the total regular season viewing audience.
15 total games of the Big Ten Tournament outdrew the regular season numbers 149,821 to 148,327, pulling a combined rating of 0.5804 with an average of 0.03869.
Nebraska’s three games accounted for 17.7% of the total tournament viewing audience.
One can conclude from this that the conference interest in baseball is really much lower than we even thought. BTN isn't coming to broadcast games because baseball is even more of a revenue killer for the network than it is for the teams themselves. I'd have to go over the numbers again, but right now, it looks like baseball is the Big Ten's #8 sport behind football, men's basketball, women's basketball, volleyball, men's soccer, softball, and lacrosse.
If you have any more data questions, I'll be working on these TV ratings for the next couple weeks.
Edit for new information:
The Big Ten Network derives their ratings delivery from Nielsen, which uses a 12-meter-market cumulative audience for the Big Ten footprint, with four east coast markets and 8 regional markets.
Get this - while there may be significant amounts of Nebraska fans in these markets, not one of them is even close to a significant minority (20% or more) NU market.
The 8 regional markets are Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis.
With three "home" markets within those eight, Ohio State dominates BTN ratings for football, basketball, volleyball, etc. There's not much interest in baseball in the area, so the Buckeyes, especially on down years like this, scrape the bottom of the barrel in ratings.
The one pertinent thing on this that relates to baseball is that Nebraska games drew about 20% of the total regular season audience - without a Nebraska market in the ratings book.
So the original thread title may be wrong ... Big Ten baseball may be more popular than is reported on the ratings sheet.
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