DirecTV and Versus Still at Odds

The NHL's regular season begins play on Thursday but for fans of hockey in the U.S. who are DirecTV subscribers they will be unable to watch the games. As I wrote about earlier in the month, DirecTV and Versus (the main carrier of NHL games in the U.S.) are at odds over what the worth of Versus is. Allegedly Versus feels that subscriber rates for their network should be increased from 21 to 26 cents, while DirecTV contends that ratings for the channel don't warrant it. In any case it looks like barring a last minute miracle millions of subscribers will be unable to view the NHL's debut.

The NFL is kind of a big deal

There has to be a peak for the NFL popularity growth right? Maybe not. The juggernaut, Megatron of a league just continues to grow by leaps and bounds each and every season. I've already touched on their excellent early season TV ratings but not to be outdone is the league's popularity online.

With NFL teams kicking off pre-season games, August saw an increase in activity on the field and online. NFL.com ranked among the month's biggest gainers, growing 123 percent month-over-month to reach 6.5 million unique visitors (UVs). The top three most visited NFL team sites, DallasCowboys.com, Steelers.com and PhiladelphiaEagles.com also drove traffic, contributing to the Football category's 14.5 percent UV increase over August 2008. - Source: TNS Media

Desperate Jaguars

It took only one game into the new NFL season before Jacksonville Jaguars' owner Wayne Weaver started discussing his teams' potential plans for next year's draft. Way to get your fans excited about this season.

Weaver has brought up the idea of drafting local Jacksonville product and College QB extraordinaire Tim Tebow in an effort to generate interest and spike ticket sales amongst the struggling Jags' fan base. The Jags lost 17,000 season ticket holders, tarped off 10,000 seats in the stadium over the off-season and are in constant danger of having local TV blackouts for their home games.

Weaver told The Associated Press this week that drafting Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner who grew up in Jacksonville and has top-ranked Florida seeking its third national championship in four seasons, is something he will consider next year.

Think LeBron James in Cleveland. James, from Akron, Ohio, turned the foundering NBA franchise into an Eastern Conference power and made the Cavaliers the hottest ticket in town.
"Star power is incredible, and Tebow is an iconic figure," Weaver said, noting that Brett Favre's arrival in Minnesota prompted about 7,000 season ticket sales. "That's very compelling. He clearly is an outstanding football player and would be an asset to any football organization."

Weaver pointed to Tebow's popularity, marketability and leadership skills as reasons he would be a perfect fit in Jacksonville. Weaver also believes there's no doubt Tebow will play quarterback at the next level. Source: ESPN

Ottawa Senators Promoting Other Teams' stars

An uninspiring non-playoff year, a disgruntled star wanting out, a cynical fan base. The Ottawa Senators are up against it to resell their fans on tickets for a new season. While the free agent signing of Alexei Kovalev did bring about a small boost in sales the Sens have chosen to take a different approach to selling game tickets. Unlike previous seasons, the Sens have been heavily pushing individual game tickets by selling the opposing players.

Here's an example of one of their emails that are promoting games against the Islanders, Thrashers and Penguins by selling John Tavares, Ilya Kovalchuk and some dude named Sydney Crosby (kinda tough to screw up the spelling of the NHL's poster boy)

The NBA has become all a twitter

Last month I wrote about the NFL and their attempts to quash the usage of social media tools like Twitter by their players. The NFL has restricted Twitter updates on game-day.

The NBA will announce their stance against players' usage of social media communication. According to an article by Marc Stein from ESPN, the NBA's policy won't be as strict as the NFL's and will simply limit "tweets" during the game. We'll call this one the Charlie Villanueva rule.

Mayweather-Marquez PPV Numbers

I guess we should hold off on writing that eulogy for boxing.

Despite going head-to-head against UFC last Saturday in a matchup of combat PPV's , the Floyd Mayweather - Juan Manuel Marquez headlined fight drew an incredible 1 Million plus PPV buys.

The fight generated $52 million in domestic pay-per-view revenue and is only the fifth time in boxing PPV history that a nonheavyweight event has reached seven figures.

Mayweather has participated in two of them. His May 2005 split decision victory against Oscar De La Hoya set the all-time record, generating 2.44 million buys. Source: ESPN

Even with this result boxing is still perilously trying to hold whatever ground it has against UFC. Mayweather is clearly a big draw, but sadly for boxing he's about the only one who still remains.

NFL TV Ratings Off to a Hot Start

The NFL's first week of action was full of dramatic moments that reminded each and every football fan how much they actually missed the NFL over the last 7 months. From Gus Johnson's call of Broncos' WR Brandon Stokley's miracle tip drill game winning catch to Leodis McKelvin and the Buffalo Bills' inexplicable and stomach punch loss against the Patriots on MNF the NFL delivered with plenty of must see moments.

The ratings as broken down by Nielsen, show that the NFL, if you can believe it, is growing significantly. Here's the breakdown of the ratings from last year's Week 1 games versus this year.

TELECAST - 2009 VIEWERS - 2008 VIEWERS - % CHANGE
NBC Thurs Kickoff (TEN-PIT) - 20,909,000 - 13,478,000 - 55%
FOX National (NY-WAS; STL-SEA; SF-ARI) - 25,109,000 - 20,921,000 - 20%
NBC SNF (CHI-GB) - 21,102,000 - 18,352,000 - 15%
ESPN MNF (NE-BUF) - 14,001,000 - 12,501,000 - 12%
ESPN MNF (SD-OAK) - 11,945,000 - 9,665,000 - 24%

Perhaps most impressive, NBC's telecast of the Packers win over the Bears was the highest rated Sunday night game for the NFL since 1987.

If the trend of strong ratings continues, based on Week 1's strong performance and the carry over effects of last year's Super Bowl between the Steelers and Cardinals, which was the most watched Super Bowl of all-time we're going to be looking at the most successful year ever for the NFL in TV by a large margin.

The Ultimate Fighter = Ultimate Ratings

Last night, Spike TV debuted their 10th season of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) series to big time ratings. Last night's 10pm premiere episode drew a network all-time high for Spike with 4.1 million viewers.

Impressively the MMA show drew massive numbers in the most desirable demographics: young men.

The Spike TV telecast bested all competition on television in the advertiser-coveted demographics of Men 18-34, M18-49, M18-24, M25-34 including the highly-promoted network originals "The Jay Leno Show," "America's Got Talent" season finale, "Glee," "So You Think You Can Dance" and the premiere of "Beautiful Life."

Overall, the record-breaking Spike TV telecast drew a 5.3 rating (1.5 million) in Men 18-34, a 4.3 in M18-49 (2.4 million), a 2.9 household rating and 4.1 million total viewers.

Source: PR Newswire

The highly anticipated TUF Heavyweights season had a lot of hype going into the premiere highlighted by the inclusion of backyard brawler Internet sensation Kimbo Slice as one of the competitors. As well, the inclusion of the charismatic Rampage Jackson who is a coach opposite Rashad Evans makes for some terrific TV. It's no wonder that Rampage has won the Mr. T role in the upcoming, updated adaptation, movie version of the A-Team

Washington Redskins Rescind Lawsuit against Grandmother

Sometimes all it takes is a pull on the heart strings to drop a $60K lawsuit settlement. That an painting a NFL club as scrooge ripping off grandmothers.

An article ran in Thursday's Washington Post, that told the story of 72-year old season ticket holder Pat Hill and her inability to afford her season tickets, which she signed a 10-year contract for at a cost of 5,300 a year. Because she backed out of her contract with the club, the Redskins sued and successfully won a settlement of $66,364 that she had to pay them.

After the story ran, the Redskins decided to drop the suit against her the very next day and free her from any contract obligations.

Now if only sports clubs would redirect their legal focus to players who renege on their contracts I think we would all be happy ***cough***Ottawa Senators***cough***Dany Heatley.

DirecTV vs. Versus

As it stands right now DirecTV subscribers in the U.S. will not be able to watch NHL games aside from games carried on their regional FSN network. DirecTV and Versus, the NHL's primary carrier of games are at an impasse that recently saw DirectTV blackout Versus from their cable offering.

DirecTV posted a statement on their website concerning why the negotiations between the Comcast owned Versus network and itself have faltered. BTW - Comcast and DirecTV are direct competitors which adds another wrinkle to the situation.

The deal that just expired was well above market value and beyond what other significant distributors were paying. To add insult to injury Comcast demanded we carry Versus at a 20 percent premium in a new deal, thereby forcing us to take down the channel. We're not happy about this, but we hope you understand that we must hold the line on programming costs in order to protect our customers from unwarranted price increases in this difficult economic climate.

We have successfully negotiated hundreds of carriage deals, but sometimes you need to stand up to a bully and there is a strong possibility that if Comcast makes these same demands to other distributors, they will also be forced to drop Versus resulting in significantly reduced exposure and availability of the sports you like to watch on Versus. Maybe that's what Comcast wants; other than greed it's the only other explanation.

There's still time before the start of the NHL season in October for a deal to be reached between the feuding sides but judging by the comments offered up a resolution doesn't seem eminent. While DirecTV isn't the only carrier of Versus, the fledgling network can ill afford to deplete it's already smaller viewer base of about 75 million homes. Without DirecTV Versus would lose 14 million subscribers.

This dispute certainly adds to the argument that the NHL would be far better off by getting themselves back in partnership with ESPN.