Playfly Sports analysis finds local sports telecasts far outperform national broadcasts in same windows
A new analysis by Playfly Sports, first reported by Sports Business Journal, found that when local sports telecasts are aggregated across regional networks, they dwarf the viewership of competing national broadcasts. The gap was most dramatic in baseball, where the combined local audience was 466% larger than national telecasts, with local viewership winning on 94% of individual nights. Hockey showed a similar pattern at 327% and 93% of nights, while basketball's local advantage was smaller but still meaningful at 32% overall and 61% of nights. Single-market comparisons told the same story — for example, local baseball broadcasts in Milwaukee drew more than 15 times the audience of overlapping national games in that market, according to the report.
Why it matters
For brands: Streamers weighing bids for local broadcast packages can use this data to gauge the audience value of regional sports rights relative to national alternatives.
For media: Broadcasters holding national rights face a structural viewership ceiling when competing against locally aggregated coverage, which may affect how future rights deals are structured.
For collectives: Leagues building centralized local streaming hubs, particularly the NBA ahead of next season, now have quantitative evidence to support high asking prices for those packages.
Read the full story at Awful Announcing
Sources
- Awful Announcing · Drew Lerner: Analysis: Local sports broadcasts consistently outdraw competing national telecasts