There are those who question the value of sports rights in an era where media fragmentation is a seemingly inevitable and accelerating trend.
You won’t find many of them in and around Fox Sports this week though.
The broadcaster of Sunday’s ‘best game ever’ Super Bowl have released a slew of figures about audience and engagement which show the value of sport to a big broadcaster.
Even though the official TV viewing figure is down slightly on last year to a figure of 111.3 million, the overall number of those watching at least some of the game through online and other services is estimated at 172 million which would make it the most watched programme in the history of US television.
The number that will matter most though to the TV executives pondering whether sport is worth the massive fees is the $509.6 million dollars which is estimated to have been earned in Advertising revenues through this one single broadcast.
The four additional slots that came in Overtime generated $20 million of that but even without it, that figure, for one evening of broadcasting is staggering in its scale.
To put it into context that is three and half times the total annual commercial revenue which RTÉ generated in 2015. In one six hour broadcast.
Away from the television there were other numbers which paint a picture of sports engagement in the early days of 2017.
There were 27.6 million tweets under the #SB51 Hashtag, 240 million interactions on Facebook and 150 million on Instagram.
There were 262 million views of Superbowl related videos on Facebook through the night and 90% of the interactions came through mobile.
Last year Sport for Business hosted a popular Future of TV Sport event at the studios of RTÉ. We will shortly be announcing details of this year’s media focused event for sports and brands looking at the more diverse world of sports content.
Let us know if you are interested and we will be in touch shortly with details of this event
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