Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post notes that viewership for the Nationals' television broadcasts is up 56 percent so far this season, which sounds great until you realize that increase basically amounts to 3,000 extra people watching each game.
According to Steinberg the Nationals are now averaging about 12,000 viewers per game, which is "easily the worst in the country" and "about a third the television audience of every other U.S. franchise" save for the A's. For comparison, the Orioles are averaging 34,000 viewers per game and the Yankees lead baseball at 320,000.
I'm absolutely shocked by an MLB team drawing only 9,000 or 12,000 television viewers per game, but apparently my perception of baseball's popularity within each market is simply way off base. In looking at Sports Business Journal's chart showing viewership numbers, nearly every team is significantly under what I'd have guessed.
Only the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cubs, Phillies, Mariners, Tigers, Dodgers, and my beloved Twins have an average TV audience over 100,000 people, and the Nationals and Orioles are among nine teams that average fewer than 50,000 viewers per game.
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As a Twins fan, I find this article to be incredibly frustrating (through no fault of Gleeman's). The Twins, a "small market team," have one of the largest television audiences, and as a result, ought to be receiving substantial revenues based on that large audience. The fact that Twins ownership doesn't spend any money is likely an ownership decision that is divorced completely from revenues collected. Yes, the other teams on that list are from larger cities, but Minneapolis/St. Paul is more affluent than a lot of those places (especially Detroit). The Twins have a new stadium opening up and should have vast sums of money to spend on holding onto or acquiring talent. The problem is, I doubt they will (other than spending to keep Mauer and Morneau, I hope!).
Who?
Who told you there was baseball going on in Washington???
Send them back to Montreal, we miss them up here!
The Twins pulls in that high of number because the dome is a dump.
"Viewers" is misleading since the numbers are in households. There could be multiple viewers per household.
Tom-- The Nationals new park is a dump, too-- no view whatsoever--- though admittedly much nicer than RFK, their previous dump, and, they would not sell me a ticket for less than $20. I actually do go to Twins games now, and will go to much fewer next year if cheap seat discounts go away as I expect. And that many people watch Twins TV primarily with the sound down, unless there are Minnesotans not insulted by the homerism of Dick Bremer. It amazes me that a broadcast so poor gets good ratings. (P.T. Barnum might have known something.)
I live 50 miles from Philadelphia and I cannot view a Phillies game on TV. Philadelphia Comcast, who televises Phillies games only supply their product to cable viewers but I live in an area of no cable and must use satellite. They will not televise over satellite. Thus I stay away from Philadelphia. There are hundreds if not thousands in my shoes. Greed rules at Comcast and the Phillies. I cannot get the Sixers or Flyer's either. They don't even answer my emails.
I wonder if they count MLB.tv viewers, or just real television.
So far this season I have missed exactly seven innings of the Twins, and the lion's share of that has been on MLB.tv.
Washington. First in war. First in peace. And last in the National League East.