CFL Week 5 TSN Television Ratings; Toronto FC's Television Rankings Suck

Yahoo's Chris Zelkovich has all the television rankings for the weekend for Canadian sports programs (which I'm sure are dwarfed by the Bachelorette's, but what are you going to do).

Once again the three CFL games are on top, although the Yankees Jays games weren't bad.

1. CFL, Bombers at Lions, Friday, TSN: 857,000
2. CFL, Argonauts at Roughriders, Saturday, TSN: 830,000
3. CFL, RedBlacks at Tiger-Cats, Saturday, TSN: 670,000

The CFL games on average were higher than last weeks (and also above last year's average) although sadly the  Ottawa Hamilton game's had the lowest rankings. I'm not sure if Ottawa being a new team should help or hinder their rankings. Nonetheless those big numbers for Western based teams probably means good value for the money for Humpty's and Wendy's. Too bad Hamilton basically has neither.

Zelkovich also reported this nugget:

"DOG OF THE WEEK: Saturday's MLS game between Toronto FC and Sporting Kansas City drew a paltry 22,000 viewers to TSN2. Even by TFC's low standards for television, that's alarmingly low considering how much MLSE has invested in this team. It truly is a bizarre situation, with the team selling out its stadium but unable to attract flies to its TV product.
If anyone was hoping for a bump in interest after the World Cup, it obviously didn't happen. A Vancouver Whitecaps game on Sunday did better on the main TSN channel, but still failed to crack the 100,000 mark.
The answer: maybe the only ones who care are the 20,000 who show up at BMO Field."

Ouch. Considering all the money MLSE has spent on TFC transfer fees this season, that's not good for profits as this team needs TV money because just relying on the gate won't cut it. As a Bell shareholder which owns a part of MLSE, let's just say I'm disappointed. 

CFL Ratings on ESPN 2

Searching on Google I found this blog with ratings for ESPN and ESPN 2 for July 22 to 28th. What's interesting for CFL fans is that for ESPN down at ranking 19 there's the CFL (on a Thursday) with 273,000 viewers for three hours. In case you're curious that was a game in Montreal against Edmonton that was won 32 to 27 by the Alouettes.

Those aren't bad numbers, especially considering that ESPN 2 doesn't seem to have a lot of live sports during the summer. Considering that I posted yesterday that last week's Canadian CFL rankings were around 900,000 that's encouraging.

Since the Canadian television deal is around $40 million, could a US television deal be worth $12.3 million proportionately (assuming the $40 million for 900,000 per game versus 276,000)? Probably not, although with rumours that the CFL gets almost nothing for its games shown in the US, they're clearly worth something if shown on a channel with good availability in the US. I haven't seen ratings for the CFL on the the NBC sports channel although they may be lower as the channel is fairly new.

I actually found the blog on this forum, where they make the point that the ratings are higher than MLS on ESPN 2, which is kind of amusing. The forumers make the point that Americans love football and with the first half of the CFL season occurring during a football deficit, the CFL really needs to capitalize on it. Imagine the ratings if Tim Tebow showed up.