2008 Year in Review: Sports Ratings Roundup

David Morgan-Mar called me a “webcomics reviewer” this weekend. While webcomics reviews are what I do with my “webcomics” tag, I don’t prefer to brand myself with that brush, and I don’t want to go down the path of an Eric Burns(-White) of becoming primarily known for webcomics while wanting to branch into more fields. So with that in mind, allow me to prove just how wrong Morgan-Mar really is!

Last year – well, really late two years ago – Sports Media Watch had what was, to me, one of the most useful posts of the year, including lists of the top-rated games on cable, the top-rated non-NFL games on cable, and every verifiable sports rating over 5.0.

Sadly, SMW did no such thing this year – especially sad considering the addition of the Olympics to the rating comparison – so I’m going to do so myself. And I’m going to do one better and include every rating over 3.0, and some over 2.0, to ever be recorded by SMW (and some other sources) over the course of the year, AND color-code it for ease of readability. (In so doing I may be risking Nielsen getting all up in my ass about it and needing to downsize this post in the future, based on their behavior with certain others.) I think it’ll be interesting to see the trends. Get ready for a lot of scrolling! Let’s see if I can force a jump and save you people reading Da Blog proper (who could probably care less) some trouble…

Each row is colored as follows: Blue=NFL; Yellow=Olympics; Cyan=College football; Purple=Baseball; Red=NBA; Orange=College basketball; Green=Golf; Brown with (hopefully) white text=NASCAR. All other sports are white. Names of events in bold italics are championships, just plain bold events are part of championship tournaments (BCS bowls for college football). Olympics events are marked in bold italics if and only if they involve Michael Phelps. Other Olympics primetime coverage is in bold. The Daytona 500 is in bold italics and Chase races are in bold. Networks in bold are cable networks. Cable ratings are national ratings unless SMW doesn’t have those.

NFL complete except one preseason game and Thanksgiving games on FOX and CBS. Also, singleheaders and Game 1 of doubleheaders are available only for Weeks 2, 3, and 9. Studio show ratings are included if they are over 2.5 and came from Weeks 1-3. The OT ratings are only available for Week 1, and the Fox and CBS pregame shows are only available for Weeks 2 and 3. College football complete except games not on broadcast or ESPN (all games not on broadcast or ESPN assumed to be too small for this chart, all games on Versus known to be), and some bowls. Also, based on this, I suspect SMW’s numbers for this year’s bowl ratings are inaccurate. Last year’s Orange Bowl and non-BCS bowl ratings courtesy BCSfootball.org.

Olympics reflect NBC primetime coverage only (non-NBC coverage is assumed to be too small for this chart), plus Team USA’s basketball game against China to start the basketball tournament, and should be taken with a grain of salt as ratings could be chopped up any way NBC wants. Also, trials do not include MSNBC numbers (but they are assumed to be too small for this chart) or any events after July 6. Baseball complete except for ESPN games after July 6; all listed regular season games aired on Fox or ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. (Exceptions to no-ESPN-games-after-July-6: the last game at Yankee Stadium, and Yankees/Red Sox on 7/27. The 7/12 Fox telecast is not considered.) However, with the exception of TBS’ coverage of the last game at Shea Stadium, all other baseball coverage slots (Monday Night, Wednesday Night, and TBS Sunday) are assumed to be too small for this chart.

NBA includes no NBA TV games (but they are assumed to be too small for this chart), or regular season cable games. NASCAR complete but no Busch Nationwide series ratings, with a couple of exceptions. All non-NFL, non-Olympic ratings over 9.2 through SEC championship game complete. Golf ratings include final round ratings only, and only select third-round ratings, but any final round ratings not on this chart are assumed to be, or actually are, too small for it. College basketball ratings, and ratings for sports not color-coded (except for the finals of tennis’ US Open), are very incomplete, but this season’s college basketball ratings are assumed to be too small for this chart. For example, the NHL Stanley Cup Finals only covers the games on NBC. Sweet Sixteen ratings courtesy TVByTheNumbers; I have one rating representing all of the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Soccer numbers may be underrepresented because of a lack of data on Spanish-language stations.

Below I’ve extended the ratings below 3.0 to as low as 2.0, although these ratings are more incomplete.