Photo credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
In the same city that Major League Soccer calls home, which is also the number one TV market in the United States, MLS’s two teams in the New York region have been a TV ratings disaster.
Despite the two MLS teams being accessible in more than 7.3 million homes in the New York area, TV ratings for nationally-televised games featuring New York City FC and New York Red Bulls have not “moved the needle” for the top-flight soccer league in the United States.
Take a look at the recent regular season games that have been televised nationally on English-language TV featuring New York teams playing away:
90,000 viewers for Sporting KC-New York Red Bulls (April 14, 2019)
119,000 viewers for Minnesota United-New York City FC on ESPN2 (April 13, 2019)
216,000 viewers for DC United-New York Red Bulls (September 16, 2018)
61,000 viewers for New York City-New York Red Bulls on FS1 (August 22, 2018)
191,000 viewers for Seattle-New York City on ESPN (July 29, 2018)
176,000 viewers for Orlando City-New York City on ESPN (July 26, 2018)
To put that into context, MLS games this season are averaging roughly 240,000 viewers.
When national MLS TV broadcasts feature at least one team from the New York area, viewership for games decreases 15.23% when compared to broadcasts that featured no New York MLS teams. This is for English-language cable broadcasts only across ESPN, ESPN2 and FS1. Broadcasts featuring at least one New York club averaged 186,563 viewers in 2018 and broadcasts featuring no teams from New York averaged 220,083 viewers.
In comparison, broadcasts featuring at least one of the Los Angeles MLS clubs saw a 4.74% increase in viewership.
The poor viewing numbers for the New York teams is a worrying trend for Major League Soccer. In the media capital of the world, New York City, MLS is barely visible. With the current TV deal set to expire in 2022, broadcasters have to wonder what else can be done to make the league relevant in the New York area. After all, if the league has a perception problem in the number one TV market in the United States, there are larger problems afoot.
Additional reporting by Collin Werner.
Interesting. Could see a couple reasons. One related to your recent discussions about southern locations or college towns being more supportive of soccer. NY has a mature sports market for the major US sports (and multiple teams in each league too!) and could see MLS being largely ignored (same here in New England).
Which brings me to a possible second reason. Demographics. While LA also has a mature sports market with the like of the Lakers and Dodgers, they also have a larger hispanic population that would be more enthusiastic about soccer.
Show fewer games nationally with NY teams. It’ll help the ratings.
There are 4 years left on this TV deal…so whatever problems are a few years away. Even then, MLS had poor ratings before signing a new deal in 2015. They consistently sell out their ad inventory and I’ll bet with the networks craving “content” the MLS/SUM deal will hit 150+ million from it’s current 90 million. Not EPL money but an improvement. People have been saying the sky is falling re: MLS TV ratings for year. It will continue to plod along.
I agree, whatever the tv ratings are, the network will still throw stupid money at MLS/SUM because that’s what these networks do and they do not want to be the one who missed out. Plus, MLS/SUM will point to the 2022 world cup and how that will get more people interested and therefore some executive will say “let’s do it.” I’ll admit, I’m a eurosnob and prefer the premier league over the MLS, but when it comes to tv deals, MLS is going to get paid.
More context would be helpful- how does this compare to other markets? Prior years? What’s the TV competition nationally and in-market? It would help bolster your point.
My hunch is MLS really screws the pooch on scheduling and thinks of itself as an established sports TV property rather than the reality of being a niche TV property that should be creative in avoiding head-to-head competition against other local pro sports. While not completely avoidable, MLS seems to go out of their way to schedule home games head-to-head against local MLB home games. While ticket sales are going to be impacted, there’s a far larger impact on viewership, especially for MLS teams that get relegated to “local RSN plus” when their local MLB team is playing.
I think it has to do with the fact that NYC is a sophisticated place in the eastern time zone. That means that soccer fans can comfortably get their soccer fix at breakfast by watching the EPL or other European leagues. There is no need to ever tune in for the MLS. EPL gets way better ratings than the MLS anyway but it is probably more pronounced in NYC.
Looking at those numbers, the NY “derby” had the lowest ratings of them all, which makes no sense. Is it because more people watched it in bars and not at home?
More and more people are moving to streaming and cutting cable. So if this is only for cable broadcast from three channels, it could be the reason.
Do streaming numbers flow into the ratings?
YoutubeTV, Hulu, ESPN+ are all major players now, I have not had cable for 3+ yrs.
Probably because our TV deals puts all of our locally-televised matches on cable, with none of them set aside for over-the-air channels in case of being pre-empted by teams like the Yankees (like NYCFC, so you’re forced to find YES2 or go on the Fox Sports GO app to watch it) or with cable networks like MSG, the Red Bulls broadcaster owned by greedy owner of the failing Knicks, James Dolan, being too slow in making any extra carriage deals with internet TV providers outside of FuboTV. The lack of coverage by the local print and TV media isn’t helping either.
There are many foreign born in NYC that know good football intimately…MLS AIN’T IT!!
Will be interesting to see the TV ratings once and if the talked about tripling of the Salary Cap happens next season after the off season CBA is negotiated and ratified.
I can watch NYCFC, NJRB, or NER and I don’t because I don’t like any of them for numerious reasons. The owners of my local NPSL team basically gave up after winning the Championship in their first season and are not playing after only playing 2 seasons so I might start watching the new USL team Hartford Athletic. The last MLS game I watched was the NYCFC at MinnU so I could see the new stadium and that was basically it.
Christopher,
Do you have access to the ratings numbers for the local RSNs which I understand would be MSG for the Red Bulls and YES for NYCFC. I would be curious to see how they compare to the RSN ratings for other MLS teams.
I don’t have access to them. But I’ve heard that the numbers are shocking how few people watch MLS games on those channels. Not sure how that compares to other markets, however.
MLS wants to have the viewers of the PL without the investment in top tier talent. Don Garber always says that the teams are spending on academies, but there is no guarantee that those academies will produce a future Lionel Messi in a short time frame. Even if those academies produced a noteworthy player, how much are they going to pay him? Unless the minimum league salary becomes $1 million, no one is going to want to play in MLS.
The league needs to get rid of its “Dollar Tree” business model and start spending better on medium to lower top-tier players and improve the league’s quality.
As long as the league’s current owners are satisfied with the status quo, nothing will change in the MLS. The stadiums are full in many cases…why would they want more? The current salary structure will never tempt a world class young player to come to the MLS…Ibra WAS first class…he is enjoying his virtual retirement playing in the US…additionally he could no longer command a huge salary like he was making during his “real” career. Carlos Vela (yuk,yukMLS Messi) a star in Europe?…I doubt it very much. As long as you have fans who are happy with the exciting mediocrity that is the MLS nothing will change…Hopefully our national team will avoid a majority MLS squad which would virtually guarantee elimination at the opening group stage. Short term thinking on behalf of the owners of the MLS teams is indeed understandable. Increasing expenditures on quality players will most probably mean even greater profits for the club ownership. I am quite sure the current owners consider such action as harmful in the short run (which unfortunately is going to be the only way they think for the foreseeable future).
I think MLS must move to an autumn to spring calander with winter breat as Bundesliga in order to win over sizable soccer snobs in NY and other soccer hubs in the country and improve image and exposure. The fact MLS does not play parallel to major European leagues does not help its image.
Drop the salary cap. Have some bored billionaires take over some teams for ‘a laugh’. Raid the world for the best players (pay them more and they’ll soon be posing hand-on-heart ‘I’ve always wanted to play for Chicago Fire – it was a boyhood dream of mine to play in the USA’) or whatever.
The MLS would then get worldwide attention – which would increase the national interest.
Def need to restructure as well. If not pro/rel then make it 32 teams. 8 leagues of 4. Top team in each league goes to post season. Win=in. Full stop. Strictly geographical. Make the games that *really* count for your team easy to get to home or away.
At the mo it’s farcical – ‘half the league’ makes the post season.
Plus try and make the post-season not clash with the start of the NFL season. That is shocking timing. A lot of people like soccer and the NFL. NFL only has 16 games. You don’t want to miss many.
(obv none of this will every happen – hears to a story every month about how ‘nobody watches the MLS’…. – shame, cos the interest in the sport is here – just needs shaking up)
NY Red Bulls are playing in Harrison NJ next to the Portuguese and Brazilian community and when was the last time the had a Portuguese player? I don’t remember of one… Games played at the same time of Benfica, Porto and SportingCP wouldn’t help either in attendance and TV ratings. And I know many the still support the team.