(08-02-2017 10:25 AM)YNot Wrote:  

(08-01-2017 02:22 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  This isn't hard.
The number of viewers for college football in the NYC television market is virtually identical to the number of viewers in the Birmingham market.

You want to talk viewers for MLB, NBA, Big Bang Theory, NYC is more valuable but the NYC TV market does not tune into college football with the intensity in other areas.

The Birmingham market consistently averages about 9.0 rating for ESPN college football. Birmingham has 696K TV households - so, about 62K CFB-viewing households on the average. (Note that Iron Bowl often draws a 50.0 rating in the Birmingham market - that means that 50% of the households watching TV in the Birmingham market watch the Iron Bowl!!).

For NYC to pull similar overall viewers as Birmingham, it needs to attract a 0.85 rating. 7.35M TV households X 0.85 rating = 62K CFB-viewing households. I'm not sure what NYC's CFB ratings are, but I doubt they are less than 0.85 rating. (the top-25 CFB markets - in terms of ratings - generally land on or near the 2.0 rating). However, the saturation seen in Birmingham is likely extremely juicy to TV advertisers.

Atlanta is the only top-10 TV market (in terms of number of TV households) to also grab top-10 college football *ratings*. Past ESPN announcements show that Atlanta consistently gets about a 3.3-3.4 rating for ESPN college football. Atlanta has about 2.4 million TV households - so, 79K+ CFB-viewing households on the average.

Accordingly, I believe this supports the claim that ATLANTA is the #1 college football viewership market in terms of NUMBER of TV households actually watching college football.

I also note that the top-20 markets (in terms of overall market size) of Detroit, Cleveland, Orlando, Tampa, and Phoenix have grabbed over 2.0 CFB ratings. This means that these markets actually have MORE actual viewers than most other top-10 CFB markets - in terms of in-market ratings. For instance, 2.2% of the Detroit or Tampa market is more than 5.0% of the New Orleans or Jacksonville market.

In terms of sheer viewers, yes, I've seen stats that Atlanta is actually the top college football market. It makes sense since it's such a strong cross-section of local UGA and GT fans plus the entire SEC and a large portion of the ACC. Note that Tuscaloosa is only 3 hours away from Atlanta, which is actually slighter shorter than the distance from Austin to Dallas, so a school like Alabama is effectively tapping into a much larger market than its own home state would suggest.

I'm a large believer in the importance of network effects of multiple schools when it comes to larger markets. Do I believe that Illinois and Northwestern have fan bases as large as the pro sports teams in Chicago? No and it would be foolish to argue otherwise. However, when you combine Illinois and Northwestern with all of the Big Ten alums and fans in that market, that's a huge difference in terms of leverage where you can position it as a true "Big Ten market" (and that *does* carry a lot of value in marketplace as evidenced by the Big Ten's TV revenue). It's the same thing with the Pac-12 in LA, the SEC and ACC in Atlanta and other Southern markets, the Big 12 in Dallas and Houston, etc.