2020 was a year of transformation in many ways, even in the world of sports.
Rather than rejecting the left wing radicalism of kneeling during the national anthem, pro-sports embraced the whole thing.
It had a disastrous effect on ratings as millions of Americans simply turned off the TV or changed the channel.
Breitbart News reports:
Pro Sports Suffer Ratings Disasters, Lose Billions in Revenue in 2020
The year of the coronavirus was a major disaster for professional sports as every league suffered ratings declines, and lost billions in revenue in 2020.
TV viewership was not off by just a little, either. It was off an average of 50 percent over last year’s numbers. Even though many Americans were stuck at home as their jobs and cities shut down, TV viewership for sports still cratered.
According to Front Office Sports, one of golf’s big games, the U.S. Open, lost 56 percent of its viewers over 2019. Basketball suffered greatly, as well. The NBA finals were down 49 percent over last year. Tennis’ Open also cratered, losing 45 percent over 2019’s games. But the worst of all was Hockey’s Stanley Cup. The NHL’s big game lost a whopping sixty percent over the 2019 championship series.
Thus far the NFL is also cratering, being down at least seven percent over last year. It has been so consistently bad this year that advertisers are starting to rise up to demand concessions for their high advertising spending since viewership has been falling each week.
The ratings this year are so bad that the NFL has been offering “make-goods” to advertisers who spent vast sums of cash to appear on TV during games but are now finding far fewer viewers than they were promised.
Remember, there were a lot of empty seats in sports stadiums before the pandemic.
Now, even with people home and looking for something to do, many of them are not watching pro-sports anymore.
Cross posted from American Lookout.
