Logo

Turner, Nielsen Team to Track Out-of-Home Baseball Viewership

Nov 2, 2008  •  Post A Comment

As the song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” suggests, not everyone who’s watching baseball on television is doing it in his living room.
Turner Broadcasting, which televised baseball’s American League Championship Series last month, commissioned new research to find out how many people are watching games out-of-home.

Willy Aybar

HOME RUN Turner Broadcasting scored big numbers when Willy Aybar and the Tampa Bay Rays faced the Red Sox in the 2008 American League Championship Series.

The research, conducted by Nielsen with IMMI, found that tallying out-of-home viewing added 262,000 viewers in the adult 18 to 49 demographic, or 7%, to the audience of its six prime-time ALCS games. It got a 7% bounce among viewers 18 to 34, and 6% more viewers in the 25-to-54 age bracket.
Those viewers could be watching in offices, bars, fitness clubs or hotels, all places not normally measured when Nielsen compiles its ratings.
Networks have always known there is some viewership outside the home, particularly for sporting events.
“Measuring that extra viewing is important because it helps more accurately gauge the popularity of sports programming,” said Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner. And, he added, “Sooner or later we’d like to get credit for all of the viewing that happens. Advertisers are not only interested in media exposures that happen in someone’s home.”
The information is valuable to Major League Baseball as well, because it shows that while the sport is thought to appeal to an older audience, a big chunk of younger viewers are watching—but not at home.
Turner found another 126,000 18- to 24 year-old viewers in the out-of-home audience, which raised total viewership by 13%.
“There are people watching who are young who are now able to be captured, when beforehand we assumed they weren’t watching,” Mr. Wakshlag said.
Exactly where those younger viewers were watching wasn’t reported by Nielsen and IMMI. Only half of them could be in bars legally. Mr. Wakshlag guessed they could be in restaurants or at parties where the game is on.
IMMI gives its sample viewers a special cell phone to carry that picks up the sound of television broadcasts. It matches the soundtrack’s digital signature to determine what the viewer is watching. An in-home beacon lets the device know when the viewer is not at home.
Because it uses sound, if a viewer is watching a game in a bar where the television is turned down and the jukebox is playing, the system wouldn’t count that toward the audience.
But Mr. Wakshlag said the system produces more precise numbers than the industry has had before.
“This is all about capturing as much TV viewing as possible, whenever and wherever it takes place,” he said.
“This is important,” he added. “We’re trying to innovate with new and different ways to measure media, and in this case we’re experimenting with a company that can give us cross-platform media measurement.”
Mr. Wakshlag said Turner might use the service again for other sporting events.
“It’s not cheap,” he said. “We wanted to try something new and different to see how the market would respond to this kind of information so next time around we can see how we can leverage this kind of information to our benefit.”

23 Comments

  1. what is the estimate total tv viewership of all 162 pro baseball games,playoffs,championship games for 2009? and the same for all 16 games for pro football and playoffs? tv viewership, not attendance. thanks

  2. Greetings from Denmark. Like your blog!

  3. How are you, i am thrilled to browse the whole content of this post and am very elated and excited to say that the blogger will continue to do a very fantastic service here to put all the goodies and information right here, i must spread the word on this information with a recommendation on my blog.

  4. I like this sport. You like it? what you think of it? If you have some time, it may wish to continue your article to share with you the happiness.

  5. This is the best blog I’ve ever seen in my life! I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to share your this with everyone.

  6. I am extremely impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself? Either way keep up the nice quality writing, it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one these days.. 🙂

  7. Wow, amazing blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy.

  8. Amazing freakin blog here. I almost cried while reading it!

  9. Kudos to you! This is a really good blog here and I love your style of writing. How did you get so good at blogging?

  10. Nice blog here! Also your website loads up fast! What host are you using? I wish my website loaded up as fast as yours lol

  11. Interesting layout on your blog. I really enjoyed reading it and also I will be back to read more in the future.

  12. This is good info! Where else can if ind out more?? Who runs this joint too? Keep up the good work 🙂

  13. Amazing freakin blog here. I almost cried while reading it!

  14. Wow, amazing blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy.

  15. Kudos to you! This is a really good blog here and I love your style of writing. How did you get so good at blogging?

  16. Neat blog layout! Very easy on the eyes.. i like the colors you picked out

  17. Kudos to you! This is a really good blog here and I love your style of writing. How did you get so good at blogging?

  18. Keep focusing on your blog. I love how we can all express our feelings. This is an extremely nice blog here 🙂

  19. Dreamin. I love blogging. You all express your feelings the right way, because they are your feeling, focus on your blog it is great.

  20. Neat blog layout! Very easy on the eyes.. i like the colors you picked out

  21. I really enjoyed this article and have book marked it. Nice Site! I also do blogging and post videos online about my weight loss journey, feel free to visit me (I put the link above, in the website field). Thanks so much for your post. Will be back to read more soon! Carissa.

  22. whoah! i d isagree along with your no.one greatest id 😀 sorry?- I suppose AOL do notdeserve it.. 🙂

  23. Helpful info. Fortunate me I found your site by accident, and I’m stunned why this twist of fate didn’t came about earlier! I bookmarked it.

    https://google.li/url?q=https://www.google.com/maps?ll=42.638298,-83.326198&z=16&t=m&hl=en&gl=US&mapclient=embed&cid=18076696521438692304

Leave a Reply to weight loss blog Cancel Reply

Email (will not be published)