Despite Media Fragmentation, Sports Audience Delivery Has Never Been Higher.
Sports media consumption is thriving!
Netflix, Amazon Prime, on demand and streaming services are all having a dramatic impact on the way people consume content and changing the media landscape – especially linear TV.
However, despite all of the new devices and media fragmentation, sports programming remains an outlier from other genres of media.
Dominant On Live TV
While the rise in time-shifted viewing largely altered viewership trends for most program genres, live viewing remains the standard for sports according to Nielsen’s 2015 “Year In Sports Media Report”
- 95% of total sports events viewing happened live!
- In comparison, only 66% of “General Drama” viewers watched live.
This is likely a result ofthe increased number of aforementioned options that are now available to catch up on a missed episode of “Regular” programming.
So now, sports events have grown to dominate TV watching in real time.
While live sports are viewed on TV, sports news and updates are consumed across platforms.
Strong Smart Phone, Social Media Activity
In 2015, there was over 69 million minutes, or 1.2 million hours, spent on sports coverage sites via smart phones.
And while sports events make up only 1.4% of TV programming, according to Nielsen Social, last year sports comprised close to 50% of all Twitter TV conversation.
And these outlets do not cannibalize traditional media for live sports events as reported in recent blog about Olympic coverage.
Radio Delivers “Day-After” Audiences
When games are over, win or lose, fans want to consume more sports. And local talk radio thrives on filling that interest until the next contest.
A great local example is Mondays during the NFL season.
The audience on Indianapolis Colts’ flagship radio station 93.5/1070 THE FAN increases by over 60% on these days versus a regular Monday throughout the rest of the year!
Reason for this is two-fold.
- Consumers have insatiable appetite for sports.
- Local popular personalities – Grady & Big Joe, Dan Dakich and JMV – know how to feed that hunger with colorful commentary and insightful guest analysts.
Radio is the ‘water cooler’ a community gathers around for conversation about games, teams, players, etc.
Takeaways For Advertisers…
Sports content delivers audiences that consume marketing messages in real time.
And a sports media consumer is also participating – whether intently viewing, listening or commenting via any given platform. This user is in an active media consumption mode, as the game or conversation is not something going on in the background.
These reasons dramatically increase chances that your ads will actually be seen/heard/engaged-with… Isn’t that, or shouldn’t it be, the expectation of why you spend money on advertising in the first place?