Tom Mayenknecht: This week’s winners and losers of the sports world.
Bulls of the week
It’s been a good week for Major League Baseball, and not just because TV ratings for its All-Star Game in Arlington, Tex., on Tuesday night rose by seven per cent over last year’s record low in Seattle.
The All-Star Game numbers included a U.S. viewership of 7.433 million on FOX-TV, along with a 3.8 rating (the percentage of households watching a specific program) and a 12 share (the percentage with that program on among TVs in use in those households).
Chief among the special events at All-Star Week was the Home Run Derby. The average viewership of 5.45 million Americans for the derby was down 11 per cent from last year but still respectable given that Teoscar Hernandez and those featured in the homer hitting contest were up against the opening night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday and all of the bizarre news that has come with it the past week.
What’s clear when you compare how big the Home Run Derby (5.45 million) is with respect to the actual All-Star Game (7.43 million) — not to mention recent years of World Series ratings (between eight and 11 million for last year’s Fall Classic between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the eventual-champion Texas Rangers) — MLB continues to be the most relevant of the All-Star Weeks in North American major league sport.
The derby itself stands at the top of the charts of special skills competitions — ahead of the NBA’s Slam Dunk and Three-Point Shooting contests.
The relevance of the MLB All-Star Game stems largely from it being the most authentic replica of real baseball (a.k.a. regular-season baseball).
The NBA All-Star Game doesn’t sustain a thread of guarding or defence, while both the NFL and the NHL have decided to turn away and pivot entirely from real football and real hockey.
The NFL Pro Bowl is now a touch football game, while the NHL all-stars convene for three-on-three shinny.
Only Major League Soccer joins MLB for a reasonable facsimile of the real thing.
As long as MLB is driving high single digits when it comes to TV viewership for its All-Star Game, it’s a winning proposition for the sport, most notably its rights-holders and corporate sponsors.
Yet the most important audience for an all-star game is the next generation of young fans. That element of long-term fan development is what makes the all-star ritual sustainable for those leagues still staging them.
Bears of the week
Soccer was a net-net winner this week as Argentina defeated Colombia to win the CONMEBOL Copa America on Sunday evening and Spain beat England to take home the UEFA European Cup earlier that day.
The wall-to-wall soccer TV of the past month was strong, including in Canada and the U.S. That’s what superstars such as 37-year-old Lionel Messi of Argentina and up-and-coming stars such as 16-year-old Yamine Lamal of Spain will do for global TV.
Yet make no mistake that the tournaments had their share of operational glitches, none more disturbing than the Copa America finale at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami being stormed by un-ticketed fans and causing multiple delays onsite and on TV. That certainly wasn’t a great end to the tournament nor an enticing preview for the FIFA 2026 World Cup that is now less than two years away in the host nations of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.