Sunday Night Football Beats World Series in TV Ratings

[MassNole]

Regular-season football beats World Series baseball in overnight ratings | ProFootballTalk.com

This has to be the final nail in the coffin for anyone who claims baseball is our national past time. It's now where the NFL has lost enough respect for MLB to air a regular season game opposite the World Series and they won the ratings battle. Sure some will say because it wasn't major market teams in the World Series, but well they lost to a game featuring an historic NFL team but neither city is a real major market and I believe both are smaller markets than the MLB teams who played last night.

[z Revis]

Didn't MNF beat out the ALCS a couple weeks ago? It was Jags/Titans too...

[wwharton]

Yeah, this really isn't new news... and though I think most agree that football is more popular in the US than baseball at this point, it's not a fair comparison either. Going up against game 7 is a better comparison.

I'm actually curious to see the ratings after tonight. I'm confident that MNF will win, but interesting none the less. You have a football game on a cable network vs baseball on free tv. You have a potential series ending game vs a regular season game (though it's for first place in arguably the toughest division in the NFL). You have big draws like Manning, Wayne, Johnson, Schaub and Foster (for the hard core NFL fans) against arguably the two best pitchers in the MLB going head to head... one for the series and the other to save his team's chances for one more game.

Again, I expect MNF to win. If I were to wander into a sports bar in a city with no vested interest in any of the teams involved, I'm wondering which game will get the sound.

[z Revis]

There's actually a poll on ESPN regarding that wwharton. The question is what will you be watching tonight.. 34% said Colts/Texans. 20% said Giants/Rangers. and 44% said flipping between both.

I'm actually curious as I've always wondered this, how do they determine ratings? What do you have to do to count towards the ratings? Just tune in for a little bit? Do you have to watch the entire game?

[ProfessaPackMan]

I thought it was known for awhile now that Baseball was no longer America's #1 Sport?

[MassNole]

Quote: Originally Posted by wwharton

Yeah, this really isn't new news... and though I think most agree that football is more popular in the US than baseball at this point, it's not a fair comparison either. Going up against game 7 is a better comparison. I'm actually curious to see the ratings after tonight. I'm confident that MNF will win, but interesting none the less. You have a football game on a cable network vs baseball on free tv. You have a potential series ending game vs a regular season game (though it's for first place in arguably the toughest division in the NFL). You have big draws like Manning, Wayne, Johnson, Schaub and Foster (for the hard core NFL fans) against arguably the two best pitchers in the MLB going head to head... one for the series and the other to save his team's chances for one more game. Again, I expect MNF to win. If I were to wander into a sports bar in a city with no vested interest in any of the teams involved, I'm wondering which game will get the sound.

If the NFL wins tonight from a game on cable against a broadcast network World Series game then MLB has hit an all time low when "competing" with the NFL.

[MassNole]

Quote: Originally Posted by ProfessaPackMan

I thought it was known for awhile now that Baseball was no longer America's #1 Sport?

This is true but in the past the NFL had the courtesy to not play a SNF game when the World Series was on, now they are going head up and winning decisively.

[Dog]

Considering a Rangers-Giants World Series matchup is terribly boring for any non-baseball fans, this comes as no surprise