Olympics Show Weekday Daytime is a Viable Live Sports Programming Window

Olympics Show Weekday Daytime is a Viable Live Sports Programming Window

Sporting events have been played, almost exclusively, in prime time for the last quarter century. But cultural and technological developments have seemingly made weekday daytime windows viable again.  

NBCUniversal’s live coverage of the women’s Olympic gymnastics team final, which aired from 12:15p-2:30p EST on July 30, drew an average of 12.7 viewers across NBC and Peacock. For context, that is more than any NBA Finals game this past June.

“The world has changed enough with remote and flex work that a volume sports property could place 10-20 daytime weekday dates on the calendar, and it would become an opportunity for them,” media consultant Patrick Crakes said.

Remember, almost everybody else in sports is playing games in prime time.

“Programming Strategy 101 calls for placing an asset where it will get the most viewer attention and won’t hurt the league,” Crakes added.

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Professional sports in America used to be played under the sun. Of course, MLB and the NFL debuted more than a century ago (1869 and 1920, respectively), in an era before quality outdoor lighting. 

Club owners came to understand that fans at work could not attend games, and began shifting inventory into the evening hours once the technology emerged in the 1930s (save the Cubs who didn’t add lights to Wrigley Field until ’88). 

The push into prime time was accelerated a half century later with the advent of the pay TV bundle. 

Regional “cable networks [in the late 1980s] were trying to build these new businesses that were competitive with broadcast television, and live games at night could draw an audience,” Crakes said.

The emergence of Nielsen’s electronic measurement system in 1987 confirmed as much and helped rights holders to monetize the eyeballs that were tuning in. By 2000, the bulk of sporting events were played once the sun went down, when the greatest number of people were sitting in front of their television sets. 

It remains that way today, despite recognition a viewership contingent eager to watch sports during weekday daytime hours exists.

“Shows on ESPN [like PTI and Around the Horn] are evidence of it,” Crakes said. “The problem is it was always only a pool of ~1M viewers, enough for debate and game shows, but not enough to justify expensive live Tier 1 programming–from a viewing or gate perspective.”

That demographic has shrunk with the remainder of the pay television universe. But overall TV usage in afternoon windows has risen in recent years. 

The emergence of streaming technology, which allows for viewership on the go, and the evolution of work post-pandemic have undoubtedly been factors. With people no longer bound to an office, a percentage are finding time to tune in.

The decline in television prices has also played a critical role in driving daytime viewership. As costs have come down over the last two decades, the number of public establishments with them has multiplied; and by proxy, the number of people catching a glimpse of programming as they run day-to-day errands has increased.

And remember, sports are shown almost exclusively on those sets. 

Think about it. When was the last time you walked into a restaurant or airport and saw a soap opera or reality TV show on?

But the biggest strict measurement lift comes from the way Nielsen now measures those out-of-home viewers.

“If there is just one person wearing a portable people meter, or has the software on their phone, and the TV audio is on, the establishment is now being counted,” Crakes said.

They weren’t previously.

So, many viewers who were always there (or at least have been for much of the last 20 years) simply weren’t being accounted for. 

None of that changes the fact a meaningful audience, that can be monetized, exists on weekdays during the daytime. Or that those windows can provide rights owners with a chance to reach younger audiences.

No one should expect hordes of 10-year-olds to start circling around the television sets simply because a league decides to start putting a game-of-the-week on after school. While older journalists like to pretend otherwise, there was never a ‘golden age’ of elementary school-aged children watching live sports.

But having some game inventory tailored to the demo would give the league another touchpoint and could position it to build fandom amongst those individuals later in life.

It’s fair to wonder if such a move would negatively impact the teams’ gate receipts. Historically, it probably would have.

“But people don’t necessarily work nine to five, anymore,” Crakes said. “You can now work for a few hours in the morning, head over to the stadium for a game, and then do a couple more hours of work in a place of your own choosing [afterwards].”

Weekday afternoon games could make sense for rights owners’ network partners too.

“If a broadcaster can reach the audience at some kind of scale, there’s value there,” Crakes said. “That’s a new opportunity for them to monetize, both with distributors of all types and advertisers.”

Logic suggests distributors would appreciate some of the live game inventory moving to weekday afternoons too. It’s currently all jammed up in prime time.

“If you can get more value by clearing earlier windows, why would you not ask to do that,” Crakes said. “Or at least take a look at it.”

Even if the games’ ratings were ~10% lower than in prime time, they would be occurring in a window that didn’t exist prior giving a large number of public establishments another reason to have the pay TV bundle or a subscription to their OTT service.

How much that is worth remains TBD.

So, what sport(s) should look to take advantage of available weekday daytime windows?

“The Olympics are different because they’re a 17-day event and [get an exorbitant] amount of promotion,” Crakes said. 

But it could be a fit for other ‘special events’. The men’s NCAA basketball tournament has long drawn strong viewership during its first two days.

The NFL isn’t going to move games to weekday afternoons outside of the rare holiday (see: Black Friday). Though, it probably could and still draw a massive audience. 

MLB already plays some ‘getaway’ weekday games. But with the most inventory of the other three major leagues, and the most to gain from an experiential standpoint playing under the sun, one could argue it should schedule more.

“If you put baseball in the summertime on two or three weekdays, certainly on a regional level, maybe even on a national level, it would draw,” Crakes said. 

The NBA and NHL might want to explore doing the same. 

“It could make sense to start games at 5p on a Friday night or something,” Crakes said.

As long those leagues are confident that the clubs could still largely fill their venues.

Emerging sports properties with less inventory and smaller fan bases might struggle to follow suit. 

“If the families [they attract] can only show up on Saturday evening, then they can only play on Saturday evening,” Crakes said.

But there are some, like the American Cornhole League, that should be able to juggle event timing. Much of their programming is on tape delay, anyway, and it’s not as if the ACL is drawing a massive gate regardless of when it takes place. 

For properties “looking for a clear place to get attention [and that have a core fanbase that will migrate], moving games to weekday daytime is not a bad idea,” Crakes.

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