CWS TV Ratings Down Both Nights

– July 5, 2010Posted in: 2010 CWS, 2010 NCAA Tourney

Last week’s College World Series broadcasts on ESPN were down significantly in viewership, as reported by SportsMediaWatch and PIFeedback.com.

Game 1 had 1.192 million viewers, good for only a 0.8 US rating on ESPN. That was down 52% from 2009′s Texas vs. LSU Game 1 matchup. However, the CWS still drew more viewers than a Stephen Strasburg start for the Washington Nationals on ESPN2.

The clinching Game 2 drew better, with 1.853 million viewers, good for a 1.2 US rating. Despite the increase over Monday night, the broadcast was still down 29% from last year’s Game 2 (which was a non-clinching game.)

What do you think led to the drop in ratings for the CWS? The participating teams? Not going to a Game 3? Feel free to discuss this in the comments.

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Tags: 2010 CWS, 2010 NCAA Tourney

About Kat Hasenauer Cornetta

Kat Hasenauer Cornetta serves as the Assistant Editor for College Baseball Daily. She has written for BU Today, Inside Lacrosse, SBNationBoston, New England Lacrosse Journal, and Yahoo Sports. During the day, she works in education. She can be contacted at sportsgirlkat at gmail.com and followed on Twitter @SportsGirlKat.

Beau

Would be interesting to see a few years of ratings to see if there is a trend but my guess would the participating teams. Neither team has much history in NCAA baseball. Both Texas and LSU travel well and have loyal followings around the country.
Jim

South Carolina has a huge following in state and its a college baseball state, but UCLA has little following outside of basketball and a Texas/LSU matchup will be hard to beat in any year. I bet this series did better than the 2 OSU-UNC series prior to last year.
Baseball Fan

With the exception of a couple, most of the games were not very exciting. They were one sided with no comebacks.
Capt Obvious

The World Cup!!!! I had a hell of a time getting bars to show any games, as they’d rather show World Cup reruns and analysis than college baseball.
big Kat

Weather delays, big named teams not in cws, wimbledon going long into CWS windows and World Cup was the reason for this year’s decline in ratings. Not to mention only a few games were close.
6-4-3

I also think the World Cup was a factor. Heck, they had it on in the broadcast booth at the CWS.

http://thecollegebaseballblog.com Brian Foley

But the World Cup games did not go H2H with the CWS at all.

college baseball rocks

The World Cup without a doubt!
Gerard

The World Cup was the first thing I thought of no question it was a big factor Congrats South Carolina
Dave

Brian–I get it that you are saying that the World Cup wasn’t playing during the Championship games and that these ratings are taken from the Championship Series. I still think the World Cup had something to do with viewership. The average person can only take in so much TV each day/week, and I think the World Cup took a large percentage of peoples TV time. It also had a large part to do with the two teams. When the camera panned the crowd, it was really hard to believe that the final two games at Rosenblatt Stadium did not even appear to be sell-outs. Correct me if I’m wrong.
http://thecollegebaseballblog.com Brian Foley

The UCLA/TCU elimination game drew only 12k people.

Just the CWS Championship series was played at night while the World Cup was played during the day when alot of people are working.