New Year’s Eve Playoff Ratings Were So Bad, ESPN Owes Advertisers $20 Mill

Alex Buscemi10 years ago

I hated everything about ESPN’s atrocious idea to broadcast college football playoffs on New Year’s Eve. I hated the stupid song in the commercial for it. I hated that my team wasn’t in it. And I hated that I could hardly watch it because drunk people kept stepping in front of the TV and snapping party snappers and blowing streamers and socializing. Some girl made me turn the TV off so she could give a stupid speech about how “helpful” and “caring” her friends have been over the past year. We get it, Sarah, your parents are dead. Are you going to milk this shit another 12 months or can I watch the game?

The rest of the world had just as hard of a time tuning in. The ratings were total dog shit. So bad, in fact, that now, ESPN owes advertisers $20 million after hyping up what they thought was a brilliant business idea.

From Broadcasting & Cable:

Despite the efforts of the College Football Playoff committee and some media outlets downplaying the financial hit ESPN took by being forced to televise the two national championship semi-final games on New Year’s Eve, media buyers say the network owes upwards of $20 million in ad makegoods for ratings shortfalls for the two games.

ESPN may have gotten a bit greedy when setting its ratings estimates and offering higher guarantee levels to advertisers for the two games, knowing audiences might not flock to their TV sets, despite the optimism of the CFP committee. However, advertisers are concerned about next season’s potential audience levels for the games, which will also be televised on New Year’s Eve. Even if the ratings guarantees by ESPN are set lower, advertisers would prefer the games be moved to New Year’s Day or even on consecutive primetime nights, exclusive of New Year’s Eve, when more people would likely watch.

Both games were complete blowouts, which didn’t help things, but the moronic concept was destined to fail no matter what. Take the one night where almost everybody has no control over where they go because they have to go be social instead of a random Monday night or something.

They plan on airing college football playoffs next New Year’s, too..

[via Broadcasting & Cable]

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