Negative trends for FOX Sports 1, Big East in 2015

There were plenty of theories about what caused the poor Big East ratings on FOX Sports 1 in 2014. Among the most prominent were:

No one knows where to find the channel.

It takes time to build a loyal base.

The product wasn’t great.

The results for 2015 are in, and the prognosis isn’t any more positive. Big East basketball on FOX Sports 1 is not a big draw in terms of eyeballs. Big East games averaged 104,516 viewers in 2014 while dropping to 100,439 in 2015.  

I’m not here to discuss reasons, or excuses or potential fixes, that can all come at a later date. I am just reporting the 2015 numbers compared to the 2014 numbers, as amassed by a spreadsheet.

Here is the monthly average:

If trend lines are more your thing, here’s that as well:

It’s not difficult to read. The red 2015 line finished both February and March beneath the blue 2014 line. I do realize the contract dispute with AT&T UVerse forced a major outage of Big East games for millions of people, but the month preceding that wouldn’t lead me to believe that this year’s numbers would have been much better than last year’s. 

And that’s the problem.

You could write off the poor TV numbers last year as a result of any of the claims at the top of this post. Yes, it was a brand new channel. Yes, people automatically turn on ESPN for sports. Yes, the Big East had an inferior product when Villanova or Creighton wasn’t on. None of that applies this year though. 

I’m not saying FS1 should be approaching ESPN numbers at the moment, not even ESPN2 results. But there should have been some sort of progress if I was to believe that familiarity with FS1 was the issue. It’s not. NASCAR and UFC are easily dominating the weekly FS1 ratings and are showing improved numbers from the previous year.

So if the channel itself isn’t the issue, the product is. The product, despite some unfavorable results over the weekend, was quite good this season. The problem, frankly, is that there simply isn’t a large enough fanbase for any of the teams. They are all private schools with modest enrollments. To bolster that claim, look at what the most-watched game this year was: Indiana vs. Butler. The third most-watched game was Kansas vs. Georgetown. It doesn’t take a genius to connect those dots.  

I said so two years ago and I will continue to say it. The Big East was very fortunate to get the contract it did when it did. I’ll have more comparative analysis in the weeks and months to come. For now, the top line is all that’s needed to see the issues at hand.

For those interested, below is the full game-by-game ratings log. Be warned though, the results are not pretty.