The NRL’s Las Vegas showcase has failed to win over American viewers, after ratings showed just 61,000 tuned in to see the Rabbitohs take on the Sea Eagles in prime time on Saturday night.
The NRL has emphasised the sport’s goal in going to the US was to increase television audiences, sell subscriptions to its Watch NRL platform and build American gambling revenues.
However the ratings for this year’s season launch – which also show 44,000 for the later Roosters versus Broncos game – suggest the league has work to do.
Owner of SportsMediaWatch.com, Jon Lewis, said “there’s no way you can kind of squint your way into thinking, ‘this is a pretty nice sampling’.”
“It’s an insufficient sampling to grow the game,” he said.
A Fox Sports spokesperson in the US said the figures were an increase on the 16,000 viewers that watched the last time Fox Sports One showed regular season NRL on a Saturday, in 2020.
NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo said the numbers set a new audience record for NRL games in the US, and were similar to some Major League Soccer games on Fox Sports 1.
“These are positive signs in the first year of the long term venture,” he said. “We are proud of what we achieved this year in Las Vegas and have been blown away by how positively Americans have responded to rugby league.”
The headline figure of 61,000 for the Rabbitohs-Sea Eagles match represents an average audience per minute over the entire broadcast. However, viewership peaked at 79,000 towards the end of the first half.
Australian Rugby League Commission chair Peter V’landys said on Sunday after the matches he was looking forward to seeing the ratings, but they wouldn’t change the fact that this was a five-year endeavour.
“This is just the foundation. It’s like building a house. You’ve now done the foundation. We’ve set a benchmark. We’re going to improve from there next year,” he told Fox Sports.
“But the results are going to be coming through with American viewers. So we’ll be interesting to see how we went on Fox One tonight, how many viewers we got.”
Although the American ratings were low, the initiative helped drive record Australian ratings.
The matches were the most-watched league games ever on Fox Sports locally. 838,000 tuned into the first match which was exclusive on pay TV and streaming service Kayo, and almost as many stayed for the second, which attracted more viewers than the simultaneous broadcast on Channel Nine.
“We all live in hope that a wonderful concept and great effort by many will be rewarded but there’s no better feeling than when the reality arrives in record numbers,” said Steve Crawley, Fox Sports executive director on Tuesday.
“What a ripper. What a result.”
Nine’s coverage attracted 796,000 viewers and was the sixth-highest rating free-to-air program of the day.
The league has been broadcast on the American Fox Sports network previously, but never in a Saturday evening slot on the main Fox Sports One channel.
That is no guarantee for success given much of the United States is asleep by then, but it can still draw large audiences.
Two weeks ago, a men’s college basketball game between Arizona and Arizona State drew 223,000 on the same channel at the same time.
Yet in the equivalent slot a week before the NRL matches, only 68,000 viewers tuned in for the women’s college basketball game between UNLV and Nevada.
“From that perspective, maybe you look at it as a missed opportunity on television,” Lewis said. “Because it’s not nearly enough viewers to make it worth your while to bring in these Australian teams to America if TV was your intention.”
Although NRL coverage was scheduled for Fox Sports One at 9.30pm Eastern Time, the preceding college basketball ran long. It meant much of the first half was shown first on Fox Sports 2, and the game switched to Fox Sports 1 when the basketball finished.
Those initial 25 minutes attracted just 28,000 on the secondary channel according to Lewis, undermining local anticipation for the matches.
“Let’s be real about it,” Lewis said. “Anything below 100,000 viewers on American television is very low. There’s no question, there’s no sugarcoating it.”
The US ratings expert suggested the NRL could look at coming back in May when the television calendar is clearer if it wanted larger audiences, or alternatively pursuing a deal with a larger network.
He noted international rugby union has rated well for NBC, including last year’s World Cup final, which attracted 496,000 viewers on a Sunday in October.
US television ratings are collected by Nielsen from a sample of approximately 40,000 and the headline numbers typically used represent average viewers per minute.
The highest rating program on Fox Sports One on the same day as the NRL was Nascar, which attracted more than a million viewers. The lead-in game of college basketball that ran long attracted 162,000.
