Competition between sports hurts TV ratings: How to shift league calendars to optimize viewership

Abstract

Television is becoming an increasingly critical revenue stream in the sports industry, as media rights deals in the four major North American sports (NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL) continue to escalate by huge rates every time they are up for renewal. However, games frequently overlap with each other on the calendar, and this competition for viewership often has substantial negative effects on ratings. This paper attempts to isolate the effects of overlap from each sport, examine how that competition hurts viewership in each league, and quantify the value lost due to that overlap. We find that competition can have very damaging effects for TV viewership for every sport, most notably the NHL, and these losses can significantly diminish the value of a network’s investments in sports programming. In most cases, this overlap is entirely avoidable with some relatively unobtrusive season calendar shifts.