NBC bets on football
SCOTT JAGOW: The most expensive place to see an NFL game? New England. The average ticket – 90 bucks. The cheapest team to watch – my very own Buffalo Bills, $41. The NFL regular season kicks off tonight when the the Pittsburgh Steelers host the Miami Dolphins. Sixty bucks in Pittsburgh. Or you can watch the game on NBC. Here’s Janet Babin.
JANET BABIN: For the first time in eight years, NBC is back on the pro football gridiron. With coverage of 17 regular season games, NBC hopes to crawl out of last place in the ratings among the major broadcast networks. Todd Chanko is an analyst with Jupiter Research. He says the strategy is something of a Hail Mary pass:
TODD CHANKO: Whether or not having the NFL franchise is part of NBC programming will help lift the network beyond its number 4 spot, that remains to be seen.”
Sports programming is expensive. And NBC paid the league more than $3 billion for the rights to air the games.
Chanko says NBC’s hoping to recoup that expense in ad revnue. But it’s a gamble as more advertisers migrate to the Internet.
I’m Janet Babin for Marketplace.
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