[Cracked Sidewalks] 'Embarrassing' for ESPN: More Watch Basketball Title Than Football Championship

[CrackedSidewalks]

'Embarrassing' for ESPN: More Watch Basketball Title Than Football Championship

Paint Touches and others note low ratings for Fox Sports Big East telecasts last year. However, I point out in this piece that with at least $6 billion a year committed to various leagues long-term, ESPN cannot afford to have their football championship draw less than the NCAA title game, or the Rose Bowl draw millions of viewers less than the average March Madness game telecast. Maybe it wasn't all about football, and the Big East ended up in the best spot possible after all.

In an almost unheard of turn of events, more Americans watched the college basketball national title game than the college football national championship, as the ratings disaster continued for ESPN.

The New York Times reported the 23 percent drop to 25.7 million viewers and the fact that millions fewer viewed the football national championship than the NCAA tournament final. The Big Lead called it “embarrassing.”

CBS Sports’ basketball title game between Wisconsin and Duke peaked at 33.4 million, and averaged 28.3. The NCAA boasted that the average viewership of the 65 games over three weeks on CBS, TNT, TBS and TruTV drew 11.3 million—more than three million more than ESPN’s one-and-only Rose Bowl.

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Source: 'Embarrassing' for ESPN: More Watch Basketball Title Than Football Championship

[CTWarrior]

I'm not surprised the other bowl games are down.  They are basically just another game to watch, it doesn't matter who wins.  But the national semifinals and chanpionship game low ratings are a big surprise.

[GooooMarquette]

Football Basketball drives the bus. 

[auburnmarquette]

Yes, that's where I was going with this :-) Living on a campus where 60,000 showed up to see Cam Newton and the Auburn football team get trophies, and then all walked past the basketball gym where the national contender Florida Gators were playing in front of 1000 fans, it's really nice to get up to the Bradley Center :-)