CFL Schedule Change

[DM83]

Should be Thursday, Friday Saturday and Sunday.  NFL is over hyped, and. A loser like Dak Prescott fleeced Jerry Jones.  The guy has not won anything.  Oh well a fool,and his money are soon parted. Dallas sucks

[pdirks67]

Interesting - the Banjo Bowl TV ratings were down 17% over last year. Hard to say how much of this is directly related to the decision to air the game (sort of) exclusively on CTV, but it would be hard to look at this result and call the experiment a success. I guess we'll see as the experiment continues through the rest of the season.

https://3downnation.com/2024/09/11/banjo-bowl-tv-rating-drops-over-17-percent-despite-riders-bombers-airing-on-ctv/

Banjo Bowl TV rating drops over 17 percent despite Riders, Bombers airing on CTV
The Canadian Football League's first game on CTV since 1986 did not produce an increase in television viewership as expected.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders traveled to Winnipeg for the Banjo Bowl on Saturday, which kicked off on TV at 3 p.m. EDT. The Blue Bombers won 26-21 in a game that did not have a winner decided until inside the final minute but the average television audience was over 100,000 viewers smaller than last year's edition.

Last year, the annual Labour Day rematch aired on TSN and drew 688,100 eyeballs across the country. That means Saturday's matchup between prairie rivals was down over 17 percent year-over-year. In 2022, the game produced 656,500 viewers, while 550,900 watched in 2021.

CTV first broadcasted three-down league games in 1961 and first aired the Grey Cup in 1962. TSN began airing CFL games in 1987 after CTV no longer had the broadcast rights.

Friday Night Football's matchup between the B.C. Lions and Alouettes combined English and French rating beat the Toronto Blue Jays (524,600) and the Green Bay Packers versus Philadelphia Eagles game (568,800), which was played in Brazil.

The Riders and Bombers' rivalry match topped the Blue Jays game on Saturday (554,900), though the University of Texas win over the University of Michigan pulled in more viewership (68,000) on Fox 29 as the Banjo Bowl on CTV Toronto (23,000).

Sunday Night Football on TSN posted the highest sports rating over the weekend as 894,800 tuned in to watch the Los Angeles Rams lose in Detroit to the Lions.

2024 Week 14 TV ratings

Friday
B.C. at Montreal — 458,200 TSN and 243,500 RDS (701,700 total)

Saturday
Toronto at Ottawa — 253,300 TSN

Saskatchewan at Winnipeg — 571,000 CTV

Calgary at Edmonton — 488,100 TSN

Total average: 442,650 (French included: 50

[Jesse]

Interesting - the Banjo Bowl TV ratings were down 17% over last year. Hard to say how much of this is directly related to the decision to air the game (sort of) exclusively on CTV, but it would be hard to look at this result and call the experiment a success. I guess we'll see as the experiment continues through the rest of the season.

https://3downnation.com/2024/09/11/banjo-bowl-tv-rating-drops-over-17-percent-despite-riders-bombers-airing-on-ctv/

Banjo Bowl TV rating drops over 17 percent despite Riders, Bombers airing on CTV
The Canadian Football League's first game on CTV since 1986 did not produce an increase in television viewership as expected.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders traveled to Winnipeg for the Banjo Bowl on Saturday, which kicked off on TV at 3 p.m. EDT. The Blue Bombers won 26-21 in a game that did not have a winner decided until inside the final minute but the average television audience was over 100,000 viewers smaller than last year's edition.

Last year, the annual Labour Day rematch aired on TSN and drew 688,100 eyeballs across the country. That means Saturday's matchup between prairie rivals was down over 17 percent year-over-year. In 2022, the game produced 656,500 viewers, while 550,900 watched in 2021.

CTV first broadcasted three-down league games in 1961 and first aired the Grey Cup in 1962. TSN began airing CFL games in 1987 after CTV no longer had the broadcast rights.

Friday Night Football's matchup between the B.C. Lions and Alouettes combined English and French rating beat the Toronto Blue Jays (524,600) and the Green Bay Packers versus Philadelphia Eagles game (568,800), which was played in Brazil.

The Riders and Bombers' rivalry match topped the Blue Jays game on Saturday (554,900), though the University of Texas win over the University of Michigan pulled in more viewership (68,000) on Fox 29 as the Banjo Bowl on CTV Toronto (23,000).

Sunday Night Football on TSN posted the highest sports rating over the weekend as 894,800 tuned in to watch the Los Angeles Rams lose in Detroit to the Lions.

2024 Week 14 TV ratings

Friday
B.C. at Montreal — 458,200 TSN and 243,500 RDS (701,700 total)

Saturday
Toronto at Ottawa — 253,300 TSN

Saskatchewan at Winnipeg — 571,000 CTV

Calgary at Edmonton — 488,100 TSN

Total average: 442,650 (French included: 50

I'm not sure why anyone would have expected the move to CTV to increase numbers.

[blue_gold_84]

I'm not sure why anyone would have expected the move to CTV to increase numbers.

What a silly and pointless decision.

[3rdand1.5]

Ok show it on CTV.....but why not also on one of TSN's channels also?

I found it slightly confusing......also Suitor c'mon man.....

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

What a silly and pointless decision.

Can't decide that after one game, have to run it for at least a full season to see if they can pull in more viewers. Nothing works well if judged on a one off situation.

[peg_city]

The conflicts with the Jets schedule this year are annoying:

September 21 (home Jets game, away bomber AT THE SAME TIME)

September 27th (Home bomber game, away Jets game AT THE SAME TIME)

October 4th (Bombers/Jets away game at the same time - both are away so not a huge deal)

October 11 (Jets season opener & Bombers game against argos AT THE SAME TIME)

November 9th (Jets play at 6:00pm in Winnipeg. CFL playoffs (east/west final) on this day as well)


NHL schedule makers really didn't factor the Bombers in at all.

[blue_gold_84]

Can't decide that after one game, have to run it for at least a full season to see if they can pull in more viewers. Nothing works well if judged on a one off situation.

I couldn't disagree more. TSN has more than enough feeds to handle the league's schedule, and moving a handful of CFL games to an affiliate network comes across as nothing more than a dumb, useless shuffle.

[bluengold204]

The conflicts with the Jets schedule this year are annoying:

September 21 (home Jets game, away bomber AT THE SAME TIME)

September 27th (Home bomber game, away Jets game AT THE SAME TIME)

October 4th (Bombers/Jets away game at the same time - both are away so not a huge deal)

October 11 (Jets season opener & Bombers game against argos AT THE SAME TIME)

November 9th (Jets play at 6:00pm in Winnipeg. CFL playoffs (east/west final) on this day as well)


NHL schedule makers really didn't factor the Bombers in at all.

Why would they?  CFL isn't gonna detract from their numbers in a large margin.  Plus most of these are nhl pre season games not too many people care if there is an overlap there. 

[BlueInCgy]

Not surprised that the move to CTV resulted in a drop in viewership.

1/3 of the game was overlapped with the TO OTT game, so those viewers likely didn't migrate over until that game was complete.

In the Era of cable cutting, there are many people who don't subscribe to CTV because you really don't need to.  You can watch the content free on demand for a week after it airs, and CTV doesn't offer a package like StackTV nor can you order it as a standalone channel, so if you no longer have a TV package you're not watching the game.

I am personally aggravated by the CTV thing.  I subscribe to TSN solely for the CFL games, and at the very least they should put the game in parallel on one of the 5 TSN feeds.  That being said, you might be able to watch it on TSN+ with the enhanced feed, I didn't think to look at that last week.

[blue_or_die]

The conflicts with the Jets schedule this year are annoying:

September 21 (home Jets game, away bomber AT THE SAME TIME)

September 27th (Home bomber game, away Jets game AT THE SAME TIME)

October 4th (Bombers/Jets away game at the same time - both are away so not a huge deal)

October 11 (Jets season opener & Bombers game against argos AT THE SAME TIME)

November 9th (Jets play at 6:00pm in Winnipeg. CFL playoffs (east/west final) on this day as well)


NHL schedule makers really didn't factor the Bombers in at all.

As pointed out, the first 3 are just preseason. I am annoyed I'll miss the Jets game on the 11th, though.

If we are in the West Final and hitting, got two years the NHL graciously moved the Jets conflicting home game later to allow fans to either get home or go to the rink to watch so I would hope for that exact scenario again.

[TecnoGenius]

Can't decide that after one game, have to run it for at least a full season to see if they can pull in more viewers. Nothing works well if judged on a one off situation.

The rest of the reg season will be just as bad!  The BB is the marquee match-up, big-numbers game of the season.  If this game can't pull in the viewers, then no game will.  Maybe the playoffs & GC will up the numbers, but until then it'll be disappointment after disappointment.

And the whole shmozzle about whether Canadian streamers could access the game didn't help.  Everyone saying you couldn't stream it in Canada until magically the day before the game was insane.

Your loyal customers are all paying for either the TSN cable package, or the TSN streaming service, and you tell all of those people to go pound sand and make them scramble to watch the game?  Even if it ended up being streamed at the last second, and cable people could just switch to 104, you don't make things harder for your best customers!  And you don't want to confuse the 60-75yo demo that is the mainstay of the league!

Weeks before the game this thread was filled with advice to buy rabbit ears or pirate foreign streams.  Not horrible advice, but is this what the league wants to force their loyal customers into because of their inane choices?  How many went and bought new rabbit ears?  0.01%?  How many signed up for a new VPN to lie about where they are and illegally access content?  Or just pirate it completely with a pirate stream?  You want to push people into illegal activity that nets you nothing?  Really?

CFL/TSN should announce tomorrow that all the "CTV games" will also be shown normally on the TSN feeds AND streamed to the normal TSN streaming services.  Everything should be NORMAL but with the added BONUS of it being on OTA CTV.  Then no one has to change any behavior at all and all you do is add new viewers.

This isn't rocket science.  What a complete botch job.

P.S. Viewership should have been 100k more this year because SSK is doing very well in the standings, and excitement is up in both provinces with the proof being both stadiums massively sold out for the back-to-back.

[Jesse]

Can't decide that after one game, have to run it for at least a full season to see if they can pull in more viewers. Nothing works well if judged on a one off situation.

You will never pull in more viewers just by switching to CTV. People who want to watch the CFL have TSN, whether as part of their cable or stand alone streaming. You're cutting off a large segment of your viewers. If they had the game on both networks, then we would have seen a larger total number, but I don't think networks are going to share rights to single games.

This must be more about laying the groundwork for a multi-network deal, or are trying to convince non-TSN subscribers to add on to their packages.

[ichabod_crane]

Why would they?  CFL isn't gonna detract from their numbers in a large margin.  Plus most of these are nhl pre season games not too many people care if there is an overlap there. 

Never in my life have I gone to an NHL pre-season game nor listened/watched one! What's the point unless I'm a scout for another team?  Even most regular season NHL games are for drifters with no intensity unless a rivalry game or original 6 teams.

I think Jets are going to tank this year anyway or no better than the past few years? What new blood did they bring in to change their playoff fortunes? Many issues in JetsVille!

[markf]

It's quite possible, and I think likely, that Bell CTV thought us cable cutter TSN subscribers would pony up the money for a TSN + sub for this game.

Rider, Bomber fans... leagues best fans right? Desperate to watch the banjo bowl.

In other words a little grade A gouging. 

Nope.

I emailed them about it. Guess what? No response.

They are not stupid, they know what they are doing with this kind of thing. No different than the cell phone subsriptions. Same people.