Jon Greenberg of ESPNChicago has some facts to back up the open secret that Chicago baseball television ratings have been tanking like the teams.
Greenberg quotes information from Sports Business Journal on the state of cable ratings for the two clubs, on Comcast Chicago.
Both the Cubs' and White Sox's local cable ratings at the All-Star
break are in the bottom five of the 29 U.S.-based teams, according to a
Sports Business Journal study of Nielsen ratings for regional sports
networks.
The last-place Cubs rank No. 25 with a 1.48 average rating, that's
down 7 percent from this point last season and 8 percent overall. The White Sox rating is up 16 percent
from this point last season and 24 percent from last year's final
numbers, but that's only good enough for a 1.39 rating, and only two teams are lower.
Last season, the Cubs ended with a dismal 1.6 rating, while the
White Sox were essentially last with a 1.14. Only Houston, which had
major carriage problems with its RSN, CSN Houston, was lower.
Comcast SportsNet Chicago senior director of communications Jeff
Nuich told ESPN Chicago that Sox ratings are up 30 percent, compared to
2013 final numbers, in the key adults 25-54 demographic. The Cubs are
down 11 percent in that demographic.
The two teams' household averages are stunningly close, 52,000 for
the Cubs and 49,000 for the White Sox, Nos. 21 and 22, respectively, in
baseball.
It's not like everyone's flocking to the ballparks either. The Cubs
are down slightly (179 fans) from this point last season, averaging
32,469 in paid attendance, while the Sox are down around 1,700 fans per
game from this point last season, and are the third-worst draw in
baseball at 20,657.
It didn't use to be this way. In 2009, the year after both teams last made the playoffs,
Cubs' ratings were a hearty 4.18.
Their household average was 145,000, the fourth-highest in baseball.
The White Sox actually had a 2.28 rating with 80,000 households tuned in.
The Cubs are locked into their Comcast partnership through the 2019 season. The local broadcast rights are in flux, with WGN bowing out of both radio and television deals. In a recent Chicago Tribune article, contributor Ed Sherman wrote
that WGN is losing a reported $200,000 per game because of low ratings.
He also reported the Cubs could put those "70 to 75" WGN games on a
multicast channel, a "sub-channel for local over-the-air broadcast
stations," for a few years until they can put all their games on one
branded network.
It is hard to sell any new television partner, let alone advertisers, that the Cubs are a valuable broadcast property when fan and viewer interest is waning dramatically. If one counts the no-shows to the Wrigley attendance figures, the numbers are much worse, down so far approximately 300,000 from stated paid attendance figures at the All-Star Break.
Nielsen, the ratings giant, states that the Chicago media market is third in the nation with 3.95 million viewers. The Cubs are drawing around 1 in 100 viewers. That is not enough to generate a billion dollar megadeal to create a new Cubs channel in 2020. Even if one uses the Dodger demand of $4 per cable subscriber to carry games, a new Cubs channel would only gross $16 million per season or perhaps $320 million over a 20 year contract in the Chicago metro area.
The baseball rebuild has created a very bad team that is losing attendance at Wrigley Field and turning off fans from watching the Cubs on television. In the past, whether the team was good or bad, fans continued to support the club. But clearly, this has changed. The public's entertainment choices continue to expand and the prospect of the premium pricing to watch losing baseball teams is not to appealing to fans.
The Cubs are entering their own perfect storm. The team may be bad for so long that it permanently turns off their fan base. As a result of lack of interest, and the changing dynamics of entertainment media, the Cubs will not be able to create their own billion dollar a year Cubs channel. Without that huge influx of new money, the Cubs will not be able to spend for quality free agents to make a championship caliber team. The Cubs do not become the current Dodgers, but the current Astros.
