That and most the younger fans I know don’t watch to watch teams. They keep track of players in their fantasy league. In fact I’ve noticed that when I go to a sports bar with some of my younger crew, they don’t want to watch games at all. They huddle around red zone to watch whatever team is scoring
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Football fans will reliably watch whatever garbage the league puts on TV if there’s nothing else on. But from the league’s perspective, the goal is to use prime time games to capture casual fans. And as you say in another post, even if casual fans care more about their fantasy lineup than any given team, it’s not like the Lions have had any fantasy players worth caring about either since Stafford left.
Seriously, I intend to watch every minute of Hard Knocks and likely every Lions game this season. But I have no expectation that casual fans with anything better to do with their lives would make that choice, and you shouldn’t either. The Lions are a rebuilding team coming off a 3-win season, with zero established stars, and at least at this point, very little to recommend them to anyone who’s not already invested.
My hope is that we just drafted two big-time stars, and that we will be a team the league can’t ignore much longer. But I don’t expect the Lions to get a sniff at marquis national games until that actually happens.
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Well put, brother - exactly right. I don’t blame the country for not wanting to watch us…I mean…I don’t wanna watch the Jags or Jets.
I don’t think they’re taking away Thanksgiving, and that I DO care about. Single reason Thanksgiving was always my fav holiday is that game, and the emotional anchors I have to it. It’s why my family could get along and not fight (the distraction of the football game lasted until overeating comatose set in.
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I don’t think that’s quite true. Swift, Hockenson, and now Amon Ra are going to be on a lot of fantasy teams. And with fantasy they don’t just watch to see how players on their teams do. They watch to see how the players on other teams in their league do
Stafford wasn’t the biggest fantasy pull when he was with the Lions. Going into 2020 he was fantasy ranked 111 as a mid tier qb draft
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I think these numbers are giving you a mistaken impression. TV ratings just represent the percentage of households in that market watching a given program. They are not telling you raw numbers.
So the Lions might be “middle of the pack” at 20.9%, but with a market of 1.85 million TV households, that’s about 389,000 households watching. Where the Jets might pull a “poor” 7.1 rating, but they’re doing it in a market with 7.35 million households, which translates to 522,000 households watching.
The Chargers and Rams are far more likely to get prime time games regardless, because they’re sexier teams with lots of star talent, high-profile QBs, and legitimate playoff implications–in addition to playing in the second-biggest market in the country (5.5 million households). The Jets and Giants will always get consideration because even if a relatively small percentage of viewers in their market watch them, that’s still a HUGE number of raw households that dwarfs higher ratings numbers in smaller markets.
Regardless, if you’re talking prime time games, I’d think the number to care about is the ratings OUTSIDE the home market. Though of course, as a consolation prize, the biggest markets (NY, LA, Chicago, Philly, Dallas) dwarf the rest of the country in terms of raw number of households, so will generate a pretty good return even if the rest of the country is less interested.
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Are you seriously trying to argue with me that the Lions have a star-studded roster that people who aren’t diehard Detroit fans give one second of thought to? Seriously man, I love the optimism, but you need to take off the Honolulu blue goggles.
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No, I am familiar with the term ‘percentage of’ households and I did mention that the markets are different sizes in my post. That’s not a particularly hard concept to grasp
I only mentioned it because you said the Lions weren’t supported even in their own local market. Which isn’t exactly true
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Doesn’t the NFL still have flex scheduling from week 11 onwards!?
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I don’t care if we get primetime games or not either, but one thing he said is true, Detroit is not a market draw. “Unattractive is not the right word…”, but it’s the word he came up with because he couldn’t think of a more politically correct word.
It does seem like it burns his behind that the Lions have the Thanksgiving Day game, and maybe explains why they always give us a tough opponent. (The other team can help boost ratings excuse)
They made a move a few years back to take the Turkey Day game away, didn’t Ford threaten to pull advertising or something? Anyway, that talk dried up. Maybe it was this guy North’s baby and he’s bitter. LOL
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Apparently you do, because you clicked, read, and participated in the thread.
I could care less about the spotlight games. I do find it interesting when the NFL lies about it though.
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Aren’t these local ratings? Which go by percentages. So, LA and NY are bigger markets, which may have a lower % viewership, but there still may be more people watching than in say, Buffalo or Green Bay. It would be interesting to see viewership for national games by team.
EDIT: <oops, should have read the whole thread, you guys have been here>…
I don’t at all, PT games start way too late and my old ass has to be in bed by 11
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I think throwing all of this in the leagues lap missing one key component.
I assume the networks get a voice on the games they want to telecast on their networks.
The networks only care about one thing.
Making money.
They are picking the most attractive match ups that they think are going to make them the most money.
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FWIW, I didn’t get that at all from North (the guy Florio was quoting), just from Florio himself. North’s comments are about what I’d expect: “Hey there big guy! Don’t you worry about those mean-old “prime time games.” You have a VERY special national TV game on Thanksgiving, yes you do! Now go run along and play…”
In all seriousness, it’s a miracle the Lions have a national game locked in ever year at all. The Lions are a joke to most of the country, if they’re thought about at all.
Showcase matchups are driven by stars, juicy QB drama, exciting offenses, historic bad-blood rivalry matchups, and playoff implications. The Lions don’t check any of those boxes, and until they do, nobody outside Detroit is going to want to see them (and you can’t blame 'em).
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That’s a bingo!
a 10.5 share in LA is worth a loooooooooot more than a 10.5 in Detroit
He is saying that we have fantasy players on our team in 2022. It was in response to when you said our only fantasy guy left to QB for the Rams. He mentioned Swift, Hock and Sun God but you can also bet that Jamo will be picked up in nearly every league.
And now I will flip it and reiterate that the Lions are not the only team playing in the game. If I have a fantasy player going up against the Lions defense or if the guy I’m playing that week has a guy up against the Lions defense…I’m watching. That’s how fantasy football draws you in from so many angles.
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yes now that we all know how percentages work
I think we can agree that Detroit does at least an average job, in their own local market, of supporting the team. How is that guaged? Well, by looking at percentage of ratings of viewers per household in their market.
Without looking it up, can anyone guess the market that has the most percentage of viewers per household?
Ding ding ding! I think people are forgetting that networks like NBC and ESPN don’t carry a full slate of NFL games in local markets; they pay HUGE money to show one matchup a week. They expect to get a return on that investment, and they have say in which games they show to their audiences.
I thought I read a million years ago that, like, when it came to picking prime time games, FOX and CBS got to pick a certain number of matchups to hold onto, that would NOT be available as prime time games, and then NBC and ESPN got a chance to pick from the best matchups that hadn’t been reserved. Now with Amazon and NFL Network in on the bidding, they probably need a supercomputer to sort this stuff out.
The networks have a say but the league basically mandates that every NFL team gets at least one primetime game. Except for the Lions, of course. In week 16 on Thursday Night Football there is going to be a Jags vs Jets matchup. Not because its compelling, but because it was a good week to get both teams out of the way at once. Neither team has any other primetime games.
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I know what he’s saying, and it’s a weak argument. Yes, there is no doubt that Swift was a #2/FLEX RB on plenty of teams in 2021, and that Hockenson was a starting TE. And that moves the needle how? Whether you want to look from a star power perspective or a pure fantasy perspective, you come to the same conclusion: the Lions have very, very little on their roster for the average football fan to care about, and haven’t since Stafford left (and realistically, since Calvin retired). I promise you, there is no national fantasy show that’s opening with a segment about TJ Hockenson’s matchup this week.
As I said, personally I think the lack of star power on this team is about to change. But until it does, I’m not expecting TV networks to plunk down cash for prime time Lions matchups.