Just over a week ago, Nielsen unveiled its annual list of trends and data sets for sport in 2016 as part of the annual Nielsen Year in Sports Media Report, examining the engagement with the Olympics, NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NASCAR, Indycar, UFC, soccer, golf, college sports and hockey. Nielsen Sports also broke out the science behind “what’s next,” as it relates to measuring fans’ consumption behavior, monetizing content across platforms and creating deeper partnerships across the sports ecosystem. Breakout conclusions included: Esports evolving from niche to mainstream; richer, deeper partnerships across the sports ecosystem built around content; OTT, social media and out-of-home viewing creating an omnichannel environment; edging closer to cracking the code on ROI; and data becoming driving force in optimizing fan relationships and maximizing revenue

Cynopsis Sports spoke with Stephen Master, Regional Head of Revenue for Nielsen Sports, about its report, changes in tackling audiences and the breakouts from 2016.

Master on 2016: This has been one of the most exciting sports years ever. You had the Cubs come back, you had the Cavaliers come back, you had the Patriots come back, Michael Phelps came back you had the NCAA basketball tournament decided on the last shot and the NCAA football championship decided on the last play. It was an incredible year for sports. So if you think about all of the turmoil going on in the political world, sports served as an escape for us with some many great iconic moments that we will be talking about for many years ahead.

On audiences: World Series Game 7 was the best it’s been in viewership in 25 years, NBA Game 7 drew the best since the Michael Jordon era. Others, such as the college football championship, were not quite what they were because of some changes in their programming but they still drew really big numbers. Even the Olympics, people will say that the average audience wasn’t what it was in London, but if you look at some of the big moments, they delivered some enormous numbers. Overall, what people weren’t saying was that the Olympics reached 198 million unique viewers across the nine television networks, and that doesn’t even include digital. In the NFL, there was so much debate about the ratings, but if you looked at it, after the election, they pretty much bounced back. So despite some of the noise about the decline, sports continued to show extremely strong results.

On the impact of cord-cutting: We are now in an era of counting total audience, so we are truly in an omni-channel environment. There are so many ways to stream the content, and what we are doing now here is to count those viewers who weren’t previously counted. The amount of time spent daily on a mobile device went from less than an hour two-years ago, and has now more than doubled, hitting over two hours and ten minutes, which is a significant portion of their day.

On approaching Hispanic viewership: It gets a lot into the segmentation, you can’t just say Hispanic is Hispanic is Hispanic. One of the biggest trends that we are seeing that is very applicable here, is that you need to take you fans and break them up into segments so that you can market to them differently. You can’t just lump women as a group, Hispanics as a group or young viewers as a group. They have all kinds of different behaviors and you can’t just say I’m going to target Hispanics. There are 50 million Hispanics in the US, so just saying you have a Hispanic strategy doesn’t work anymore.

On breakout sports in 2016: While traditional sports continue to do well, soccer and esports particularly had a good year. Major League Soccer continues to hit its stride, and they are really doing an amazing job in terms of expanding into new markets, really growing the game and getting people engaged. The MLS Cup saw a huge bump, getting over 2 million viewers in the US, which was a significant spike from 2015, in addition to a million and a half viewers in Canada. You also had the UEFA Champions League and Copa America, which saw close to nine million viewers for its final. The US didn’t even do very well in that tournament. I think soccer really has a tremendous upside at the moment.

The NHL’s 2017 Coors Light NHL Stadium Series battle between the Flyers/Penguins delivered a 1.18 Nielsen overnight rating for the breakout game on NBC, marking a rise of 13% over last year’s comparable primetime matchup. On the local front, Pittsburgh delivered 16.3 rating, while Philadelphia delivered a 5.1 rating.

A study completed by the Sports Industry group of EY found that the NFL’s game in Mexico City and its related events produced an incremental increase in the city’s Gross Domestic Product of $45 million, supporting 2,840 jobs in the city, the league reports. The study found that the sellout crowd included 9,500 international visitors mainly from the US along with 21,500 visitors who travelled from elsewhere in Mexico with each international visitor spending an average of more than 5 days in the country. Total domestic and international tourist spending was $43 million, of which $32 million was incremental to the Mexico City economy.

ESPN’s College GameDay Covered by State Farm is ending its regular season road show on the campus of North Carolina in Chapel Hill on Saturday ahead of the Saturday Primetime presented by AT&T ACC matchup between Duke/North Carolina on ESPN at 8:15p. College GameDay airs at 11a with an evening edition leading into the game telecast at 8 p.m. This will mark the ninth time the show has ended at the rivalry matchup, including the last six years.

In MMA news, Match TV locked in Russian rights to the UFC, and will now show Saturday’s PPV, UFC 209, pitting Tony Ferguson against Russian fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov. "The negotiation process was difficult, and we are grateful to our partners for their mutual interest in staging UFC broadcasts in 2017. We are seeing increased attention for this tournament, not only in the media, but also among viewers,” said Tina Kandelaki, CEO of Match TV. “We are confident that all broadcasts will bring great pleasure and enhance sports viewership. We believe that the start of the season with the fight of Khabib Nurmagomedov will lead to even greater increase in the audience to the sport."

Meanwhile, FIGHT SPORTS secured the rights to the WBA/WBC World Welterweight Championship bout featuring Danny Garcia/Keith Thurman. FIGHT SPORTS will now feature previous bouts and support programming on both fighters leading into the live broadcast in over 30countries, including Germany, Spain, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and throughout the Caribbean.

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ASICS locked in a multi-year agreement with French tennis star Gael Monfils and the launch of tennis shoe the COURT FF. Monfils originally became an ASICS worldwide tennis ambassador in 2013 will continue his contribution to the development of new ASICS tennis collections, offering his insight on the needs of top-level players, as well as infusing his personal style and providing feedback to the brand’s designers.

Blizzard Entertainment announced a deal with Chinese games company Banana Culture to partner for the first Overwatch Premier Series. Play begins on March 6, according to ESPN, and will feature two seasons as well as a total prize pool of nearly $600,000. Overall, 24 teams will compete in a preseason battle, and the top 10 finishers will earn spots in the OPS.

Challengeme Esports GmbH, a provider eSports Matchmaking & Tournament Platforms, announced the acquisition of US-based eSports Hero Inc., which will be responsible for the company’s operations in the North American market. The new structure will allow for a rapid expansion of the ChallengeMe.GG tournament and matchmaking platform beyond Europe with new territories that include North America, Southeast Asia, and Australia. “We believe in the strength of the combined entity and are very happy to become part of the Challengeme team,” said James Heldridge, CEO of eSports Hero. “We are looking forward to taking the North American and global market by storm. With eSports growing exponentially, we are well placed to become one of the leading companies in this space.”

European eSports team Unicorns of Love signed sponsor Gerolsteiner a mineral water company, in a deal brokered by Lagardere Sports. Gerolsteiner will now supply the Unicorns with mineral water and flavored drinks and see a logo presence on the UoL jerseys. “Gerolsteiner’s decision shows that the eSports market, and the UoL in particular, is an attractive platform to achieve ambitious communications goals and to reach a young, digitally savvy target group,” said Dr. Nicolas Gaede, Senior Vice President Marketing & Business Development at Lagardère Sports Germany. “The Unicorns are delighted to be supported by a strong and reliable partner starting at the IEM.”

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

 
Join Cynopsis Media in honoring this year’s Top Women in Digital at an awards breakfast celebrating the exceptional, the creative and the bold in the digital media industry. See the list of honorees here: http://www.cynopsis.com/event/2017-top-women-digital-awards-breakfast/

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: Name a Daytona 500 winner who also won an Indianapolis 500. Answer: Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt. Kudos: Jonathan Lipson-Active International/NY; Brian Schweibert-Publicis Media/NY; Michael Ritz-BucStar Consulting/NY; Chris Schwartz-International Speedway Corporation/Charlotte; Larry Kahn-Golf Channel/Orlando; Richard Sanders-Visit Panama City Beach/Panama City Beach; J D Spangler-JDL Broadcasting/Terre Haute; Paul Brewer-TV Talent Agents, Inc./North Augusta; Andy Pittman-TAMU/College Station; Beth Ray-40/29 TV/Rogers; Jason Brist-Outdoor Sportsman Group/Chicago; Michael Gardner-Zimmerman/Dallas; Christy Benson- Outdoor Sportsman Group  Networks/Denver; Matt Sautter-Imagine Communications/Denver; Judie Henninger-Valentine Productions/Santa Monica; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA; David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/Burbank; Paul Gygli-NBCUniversal Television Distribution/Universal City.

Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | Sports @VegasandVine
02.27.17

Roberta Caploe: Publisher @robertacaploe
Diane K Schwartz: Senior Vice President, Media Communications Group

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