Rating: (0 votes - average)

Source: Wikipedia - List of television stations in North America by media market

Nielsen rankings of markets attached to NFL teams...

1. NY Giants, NY Jets - New York (#1)
2. LA Rams, LA Chargers - Los Angeles (#2), Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto (#20), San Diego (#29)
3. CHI Bears - Chicago (#3), Davenport-Rock Island-Moline (#98)
4. PHI Eagles - Philadelphia (#4), Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York (#41)
5. DAL Cowboys - Dallas-Fort Worth (#5), San Antonio (#31), Austin (#40), Oklahoma City (#45), Little Rock-Pine Bluff (#57), Tulsa (#61), El Paso (Las Cruces) (#85), Shreveport-Texarkana (#90)
6. WAS Redskins - Washington, D.C. (Hagerstown) (#6), Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News (#44), Richmond-Petersburg (#56), Roanoke-Lynchburg (#68)
7. HOU Texans - Houston (#7), San Antonio (#31), Harlingen-Weslaco-Brownsville-McAllen (#78)
8. SF 49ers, OAK Raiders - San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose (#8), Fresno-Visalia (#54)
9. NE Patriots - Boston (Manchester) (#9), Hartford & New Haven (#33), Providence-New Bedford (#53)
10. ATL Falcons - Atlanta (#10), Birmingham (Anniston and Tuscaloosa) (#43), Savannah (#93)
11. TB Buccaneers - Tampa-St. Petersburg (Sarasota) (#11), Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne (#18)
12. AZ Cardinals - Phoenix (Prescott) (#12), Albuquerque-Santa Fe (#47), Tucson (Sierra Vista) (#73)
13. SEA Seahawks - Seattle-Tacoma (#13), Portland, OR (#22), Spokane (#77)
14. DET Lions - Detroit (#14), Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek (#49), Dayton (#64), Flint-Saginaw-Bay City (#65)
15. MIN Vikings - Minneapolis-St. Paul (#15)
16. MIA Dolphins - Miami-Fort Lauderdale (#16), West Palm Beach-Fort Pierce (#37), Fort Myers-Naples (#55)
17. DEN Broncos - Denver (#17), Salt Lake City (#30), Colorado Springs-Pueblo (#91)
18. CLE Browns - Cleveland-Akron (Canton) (#19), Columbus, OH (#34), Toledo (#71)
19. KC Chiefs - Kansas City (#32), Formerly STL Rams - St. Louis (#21), Springfield, MO (#72), Wichita-Hutchinson Plus (#76)
20. CAR Panthers - Charlotte (#23), Raleigh-Durham (Fayetteville) (#25), Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville-Anderson (#38), Greensboro-High Point-Winston-Salem (#46), Charleston, SC (#94)
21. PIT Steelers - Pittsburgh (#24), Wilkes Barre-Scranton-Hazleton (#62), Charleston-Huntington (#70)
22. BAL Ravens - Baltimore (#26), , Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News (#44)
23. TN Titans - Nashville (#27), Memphis (#51), Knoxville (#60), Chattanooga (#83)
24. IND Colts - Indianapolis (#28)
25. CIN Bengals - Cincinnati (#35), Louisville (#48), Lexington (#63)
26. GB Packers - Milwaukee (#36), Green Bay-Appleton (#67), Madison (#86)
27. LV Raiders - Las Vegas (#39)
28. JAX Jaguars - Jacksonville (#42), Mobile-Pensacola (Fort Walton Beach) (#58)
29. BUF Bills - Buffalo (#52), Albany-Schenectady-Troy (#59), Rochester, NY (#80), Syracuse (#81)
30. NO Saints - New Orleans (#50), Mobile-Pensacola (Fort Walton Beach) (#58), Shreveport-Texarkana (#90), Baton Rouge (#97)

Added the market shares, the order changes, but Saints would still be last - and it's not close...

Even the Bills have a much larger market share and it doesn't account for Toronto just across the border in Canada...

Any questions now why Goodell was likely happy to see the Saints bounced?!?

vpheughan

EACH NFL team received $255.9 million in national revenue. That includes the national TV deals, road-game revenue sharing, and various other national revenue. According to multiple reports, most of the money in the national revenue comes from the TV deals.

Effectively, EVERY NFL owner gets a check for a quarter billion dollars before a single football game is played.

The premise about the vast divide between "big market" and "small market" teams, in spite of this revenue sharing, does not hold up to close scrutiny. The NFL's revenue-sharing coupled with the league's hard salary cap promotes substantial competitiveness with 22 of the 32 teams making the playoffs over the past five seasons alone including teams from the lower population areas like New Orleans, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Cincinnati.

SmashMouth

Does Herr Goodell feel the same way for the lower tier 5 teams on that list, or are the Saints extra special for him?

jeanpierre

Understand the revenue sharing of the NFL -

Emphasis I mad is big that pie is to share has a whole helluva lot with the hottest teams draw that year, especially in the Big Game, the SuperBowl...

And there are definitely a golden eight that Goodell want to see making deep runs drawing largest of fan bases to the NFL tournament...

vpheughan

Any questions now why Goodell was likely happy to see the Saints bounced?!?

He does what the bidding of the owners. They are the ones behind the curtain controlling the Great And Powerful OZ. He's the Master of Misdirection in the NFL Magic Show. He just got an extension didn't he?

TheOak

jeanpierre - I am trying to understand the correlation. I get the Nielsen rankings on markets, I do not get how those rankings are attached to a specific team or teams? Also not sold on the relevancy, reason being that putting the Jets at #1 doesn't add up to anything warranting favoritism. If you walk into stores selling jerseys etc. in Houston and they have 3 teams, Texans, Cowboys, and Saints (there is a huge market of Saints fans in Houston).

Just my take but the images showing the most vs least televised teams puts the Saints @ #9 in the league, and the Cowboys have the largest market.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...-every-sunday/

It isn't so much market size as it is which markets the NFL chooses to televise teams in.

jeanpierre

Giants, Jets are in the largest market in the country that's a lot of local media revenue and shows a larger fan-base to draw from the well...

Yes, NW Houston/Katy/Woodlands have an impressive number of WhoDats from the Diaspora, but even still, they're a small minority compared to Houston fans local and fans dispersed about the country...

Higher Ratings give leverage to the NFL in television contract negotiations and to Broadcasters in their negotiations with advertisers - ergo, higher ratings means a bigger pie...

The League Revenue Sharing Pie, as well Goodell's compensation, is tied to the League being able to leverage for higher advertiser spending when those larger markets show interests in the way of higher ratings...

Now I grew up a Celtics fan, Cowens-Hondo-Heinsohn-Jo-Jo then Bird-McHale-Parish and there was no bigger national viewing matchup of Boston-LA...

But even I found it a awkward of how ready the productions of the LA-Boston pieces were coming out the day after the conference championships...

Productions have to be story-boarded, footage researched, financially secured; then you have to get sports legends footage secured, compensated, produced (though Magic never met a mic he didn't like)...

Ratings were down for this Superbowl, but likely due to Patriots apathy (hey, until a teams uses their blueprint and beats them); but make no mistake - there's a high ratings floor when the largest markets are in it...

Ratings mean a bigger pie and the big banana in the negotiations ratings debate is the Tournament and SuperBowl...

Saints fan or naught, they've the most loyal fan base, especially considering the smallest market share - but numbers are numbers and that's what the bean counters need to justify spending...

It's not that my way is the right way, I just make the right way my way...

vpheughan

Ratings were down for this Superbowl, but likely due to Patriots apathy

BUT aren't the Patriots and Rams "LARGE MARKET TEAMS"?

Let's throw another can of worms into the "Ratings Pie" ultimately the TV networks provide the filling ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$) for the revenue sharing pie. After all if you're giving every team a quarter of a billion dollars you want to have the largest ratings you can get. Who wants it more? The NFL or the TV networks?

Who provides the TV networks with the $$$$$$$$$$ they give to the NFL? The sponsors!

Who provides the sponsors their money? THE LOWLY FANS! The same LOWLY FANS who hate watching the PATRIOTS.

"THE RATINGS WERE DOWN..............PATRIOTS APATHY"

So the NFL wants LARGE MARKET TEAMS for Higher Ratings that result in the worst Super Bowl in history and lower ratings?

They kept the "SMALL MARKET" Saints out and ensured the "LARGE MARKET" Rams would get in and result in lower ratings.

st thomas

And goodadolf is going to conduct an investigation into the fix , if found guilty he has to move to Venezuela

CHA_CHING

I don't but the "Patriots apathy" talk.

Ratings were thru the roof for SB 51 when they came back and beat the Falcons. Ratings for Patriots SBs are usually fine, but this was the first one that was something of a blow out. Sure, the score was tied 3-3 in the 4th quarter, but never at any point did it feel like the Rams were going to win. It would've been 23-3 or worse if the Pats don't screw around on offense all game and get those dropped interceptions (and the fumble that went out of bounds. The Pats were kicking their butts. If a youthful Brady had showed up, this would've been a bloodbath and let's be fair here; New England has been long overdue a Super Bowl where they just kick the ever loving crap out of someone. This was it. This was their SB blow out they have been due for.

Blow out SBs generally have bad ratings. No one wanted to watch the Broncos and Panthers, which was also something of a blow out. Despite the score being 13-10 most of the second half, never did you feel like Carolina was going to score. It felt like Denver was up several TDs with how much they were dominating them (if Peyton Manning wasn't a washed up shell of his former Hall of Famer self, Denver would've blew them the hell out). The Seahawks/Broncos SB had horrible ratings too and no one watched that except bandwagon Seahawks fans and Peyton Manning haters.

I hate to say it, but New England most likely would've manhandled us too; maybe not as badly as they did the Rams, but I seen nothing in our final month of the season (playoffs included) that told me that they would've beat the Pats.

I can already see how it would've went for us - New England would gameplan around shutting down Kamara and MT, then forcing Brees to beat them with the cast of no name receivers who did diddly poo all year. We would've been hoping and praying for our defense to bail us out again.

We can keep talking about how we got screwed, but as time goes by, I really don't think we would've won this SB and we did have multiple opportunities in the NFCCG to put it out of reach. I felt we were going to lose as soon as they tied it up 20-20. Something went horribly wrong for our Saints at the end of the year and they never figured it out. The offense broke and coach SP didn't figure out how to fix it. I was dreading the NFCCG just based off how bad they looked against the Eagles. I would just accept a fair beating rather than the non-call.

BTW, I hope everyone truly appreciated last year's defense. While the offense was piddling around the last month, t defense bailed us out of every game after the Dallas loss (and nearly bailed us out of that game too). They just couldn't do it one last time against the Rams and losing Rankins on the D-line was a major blow. We had zero sacks in the playoffs after he went down and going up against New England and their o-line, he would've been needed.