The year of the coronavirus was a major disaster for professional sports as every league suffered ratings declines, and lost billions in revenue in 2020.
TV viewership was not off by just a little, either. It was off an average of 50 percent over last year’s numbers. Even though many Americans were stuck at home as their jobs and cities shut down, TV viewership for sports still cratered.
According to Front Office Sports, one of golf’s big games, the U.S. Open, lost 56 percent of its viewers over 2019. Basketball suffered greatly, as well. The NBA finals were down 49 percent over last year. Tennis’ Open also cratered, losing 45 percent over 2019’s games. But the worst of all was Hockey’s Stanley Cup. The NHL’s big game lost a whopping sixty percent over the 2019 championship series.
Thus far the NFL is also cratering, being down at least seven percent over last year. It has been so consistently bad this year that advertisers are starting to rise up to demand concessions for their high advertising spending since viewership has been falling each week.
The ratings this year are so bad that the NFL has been offering “make-goods” to advertisers who spent vast sums of cash to appear on TV during games but are now finding far fewer viewers than they were promised.
TV ratings are the least of the problems facing pro sports, tough. Revenue has imploded.
Again, thanks to Front Office Sports, we see that all the big leagues lost billions.
The site reported that Major League Baseball lost $5.2 billion in 2020. Baseball’s loss comes is the Big Leagues became the last major U.S. sport to become woke by joining the extreme progressive movement with constant paeans to Black Lives Matter and so-called social justice causes.
Baseball is far from the only league to lose billions. The National Basketball Association missed its severely lowered revenue projections by $1.5 billion. Major League Soccer’s revenue was down by about one billion. And the National Hockey League lost a more modest $630 million. And as far as football is concerned, it looks like the National Football League will lose upwards of $2.7 billion by the time the 2020 season comes to a merciful close.
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