Season Of the Switch

Cable World,  August 11, 2003  

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Byline: ANTHONY CRUPI

Trying to predict the NFL team that will emerge as the Super Bowl champion when the preseason has barely begun is as doomed and foolhardy a notion as they come, akin to handicapping the race for the Democratic Party nomination eight months before Super Tuesday. Sure, the Detroit Lions would probably be better off staying at home this year, as would the Rev. Al Sharpton. The same principle applies equally to the Cincinnati Bengals and Dennis Kucinich; the Arizona Cardinals and Carol Moseley Braun. Until the campaign begins in earnest, everyone is essentially in the same boat.

That's a function of the parity born of the league's realignment strategy and its restrictive salary cap. Unlike baseball, where the plutocracy makes it nigh-on impossible for small market teams to win a World Series - essentially, the Yankees and a handful of other loaded teams are the only real contenders; everybody else is strictly from Bengalsville - in the NFL, everyone has a shot at the Lombardi trophy.

Preseason games are no barometer of a team's eventual success, either. Tampa Bay's 30-14 drubbing of the New York [sic] Jets in last week's America Bowl exhibition only proved that the defending champs are still hungry, but it cost the Bucs the services of running back Tony Taylor, who blew out his ACL and is out for the season. Taylor's injury is far from a deal-breaker for the Bucs - he's a reserve - but it is a painful reminder that no player is guaranteed any playing time in the NFL. A debilitating injury to a marquee player like DT/emotional linchpin/human wrecking ball Warren Sapp or Jets' QB Chad Pennington, however, could kill their respective teams' chances in the amount of time it takes to snap a piece of cartilage.

Luckily for cable, all the indicators for this year's NFL season are as sunny as Pennington's aw-shucks disposition. While network ratings have slid in the last few years, ESPN's Sunday Night Football numbers have jumped appreciably. Last season, the network featured eight games that earned an 8.0 household rating or higher. In fact, ESPN said its NFL telecasts drew an average 7.42 rating for the season, an increase of 17% from the previous year. Each week, Sunday Night Football was the highest-rated program on ad-supported cable.

If this season's Sunday Night slate is anything to go by, ESPN has certainly convinced the NFL of its intrinsic value (though some cable operators say they remain unconvinced). The network's 16-week, 18-game schedule features an impressive array of inter-conference matchups, most between bitter rivals such as the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears. The opening weekend alone could well break the 9.0 HH mark, as Super Bowl also-rans the Oakland Raiders travel to Tennessee to take on the Titans in a rematch of last year's AFC Championship game.

Thus far, ad sales have been brisk, says Ed Erhardt, president of customer marketing and sales for ESPN/ABC Sports. "We are very well sold with Sunday Night Football," he reports, estimating sell-through in the high 90s. "As it stands now, we have more people interested in inventory than there is inventory available."

While ESPN declined to reveal its spot pricing for its Sunday Night telecasts, buyers say that Fox is getting $250,000 to $300,000 per spot for its Sunday afternoon games, while ABC is bringing in between $275,000 to $325,000 for Monday Night Football spots.

That success may have been more of an uphill climb than Erhardt lets on. Some media buyers have remarked that because NFL CPMs are already much higher on average than network prime-time inventory, there's little room for any substantial growth. What's more, the NFL's leading advertising categories, automotive and financial services, continue to struggle.

Others say that the rise in ESPN's ratings will jibe with a similar rise in ad dollars hauled in. "The NFL is still a steady market," says one senior media buyer. "They'll see some slight increases - somewhere around 5% to 8%."

Erhardt says the network looks to fill out its inventory beyond the cars and banks category. "What's really kind of reemerged is men's grooming," he says. "Facial creams, razors, hair stuff, cologne, products that historically have not been marketed that aggressively but now are."

Many of the well-groomed young men that marketers hope to reach via ESPN aren't always accurately accounted for. Because sporting events are huge out-of-home draws - more than 17 million men watch TV each week in unmeasured out-of-home locations - ESPN and ABC Sports are adding data on the audience gathered in locations like bars and college dormitories. Montesano Marketing Research's Total TV Audience Monitor (T-TAM) has already helped ESPN lay claim to an additional 1.5 rating points by counting out-of-home viewers.

"I believe that this kind of research will boost our ability to monetize an extraordinary audience," Erhardt says. "We can confirm what everyone already knows."