Data and Insights
Open Championship: Inside the viewership numbers
Looking back at the viewership trend for the Open Championship, golf’s oldest major. Dating back to 2005, the highest viewership came in 2018 for Francesco Molinari’s win at Carnoustie, drawing nearly 6.5 million viewers. But Molinari’s win came with Tiger Woods directly in the mix late on Sunday. W...
WNBA All-Star Game: Inside the viewership numbers
Looking back at WNBA All-Star Game viewership dating to 1999. The league has seen a clear boost from Caitlin Clark’s arrival, with 2024 averaging more than 3.4 million viewers. The only other years to cross 1.0 million viewers were in 2003 and 2005.
SBJ Tech: AI extends College Football Hall of Fame visits by 28%
The July 16 edition of the SBJ Tech newsletter looks at how AI is seeing fans extend their visits to the College Football Hall of Fame and how Baseball America is benefiting from Pramana Labs' new AI agent.
MLB All-Star Game: Inside the viewership numbers
Looking at MLB All-Star Game viewership going back to 1972. The game peaked at more than 36 million viewers in 1976 but has tailed off in recent years, not cracking the 10 million mark since 2015.
The Athletic’s WNBA player survey sides with Fever’s Clark as future face of league
Fever G Caitlin Clark was voted as the “overwhelming choice” by WNBA players to be the face of the league in five years as part of The Athletic’s anonymous player poll, according to Merchant & Pickman of THE ATHLETIC. Nearly 40 players took part in the poll, which began at the start of the 2025 ...
MLB ASG notebook: Expect plenty of drones on ESPN for Home Run Derby
ATLANTA -- ESPN’s coverage of this year’s T-Mobile Home Run Derby is set for ESPN at 8pm, with a StatCast Edition airing simultaneously on ESPN2 (sources tell SBJ to watch for lots of drone coverage tonight, especially on The Deuce). Mariners C Cal Raleigh, a switch hitter known as “Big Dumper” who ...
MLB All-Star week in Atlanta brings highest ticket prices in a decade on secondary marketplace
Ticket prices for the marquee MLB All-Star week events in Atlanta are the “highest in over a decade” on secondary ticket marketplace Vivid Seats, according to Maxwell Millington of AXIOS. The “average sold price” of the T-Mobile Home Run Derby is “$1,041 and $1,183 for the All-Star Game.” The “next-...
FIFA finishes with average attendance of 39,557 for Club World Cup
The first 32-team edition of the FIFA Club World Cup finished with an average attendance 39,557 for 63 matches this summer in the U.S., capped off by a tournament-best crowd of 81,118 for Chelsea’s victory over Paris Saint-Germain on Sunday at MetLife Stadium. The total announced attendance for the ...
The next competitive edge in sports: investing in your people
Something special is happening in sports -- a quiet but powerful evolution. For decades, we’ve celebrated performance metrics: exit velocity, spin rates, wins above replacement. But the future of sport isn’t just about sharpening data, it’s about strengthening people.
SBJ Jersey and Helmet Sponsor Directory
The first Major League Soccer gameday jersey deals were announced late in 2006 and corporate names began appearing on team jerseys in the 2007 season. The early sponsor roster was diverse, ranging from the first signing - Real Salt Lake’s deal with juicemaker XanGo - to regional plays such as Glidde...
Pacers turn local alliance with Lucas Oil into jersey patch deal
The Pacers have expanded a community partnership with Indianapolis-based Lucas Oil with a multiyear jersey patch deal that debuts at this week’s NBA 2K26 Summer League in Las Vegas. The deal was negotiated in-house.
Audience Analysis: Wimbledon starts hot; F1 stays hot; ION hot even without Caitlin Clark
ESPN got off to a hot start on Monday with Wimbledon, averaging 539,000 viewers from 6am-4pm ET. That marks the network’s best Day 1 on record for Wimbledon, and an increase of 37% from Day 1 last year.
Audience Analysis: Travelers Championship has big weekend; Full NBA Playoffs up 5%
CBS on Sunday drew the best Travelers Championship final round since 2021 (3.5 million viewers), as Keegan Bradley held off Russell Henley and Tommy Fleetwood by a stroke (Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Scottie Scheffler also finished in the top 10 to help with star power). Saturday’s 2.4 million w...
Audience Analysis: UFL title game down big in Year 2
ABC drew 983,000 viewers for the UFL Championship on Saturday in primetime (D.C. Defenders vs. Michigan Panthers), down 38% from just under 1.6 million on Fox last year for Birmingham Stallions-San Antonio Brahmas in a late Sunday afternoon window. In 2023, NBC drew 1.2 million viewers for the USFL ...
Study looks at brand support with women’s sports
Forty-three percent of fans who support women’s sports are more inclined to buy a brand if it has a partnership with a female athlete, according to Parity’s “U.S. Women’s Sports 2025: Give The Fans What They Want” study. Fans who say they watch women’s sports frequently are 67% more likely to choose...
European soccer continues growth in Deloitte annual financial review
The growth of the European soccer industry “continues to show little sign of slowing” after collective revenues for the 2023-24 season climbed to a record $43.6B, according to Philip Buckingham of THE ATHLETIC. Deloitte’s 34th Annual Review of Football Finance reported an 8% increase in turnover acr...
Audience Analysis: Belmont, Red Sox-Yankees score gains for Fox Sports
Sovereignty’s rematch against Journalism helped drive a 5% viewership increase for the Belmont Stakes on Saturday afternoon. Fox and FS1 combined for 3.83 million viewers for the race segment, which is the best of Fox’s three Belmont races since acquiring rights prior to the 2023 event. The race las...
Study shows NBA teams earned 8% increase in sponsorship revenue this season
NBA teams earned a total of $1.62B in sponsorship revenue this season, “an increase of 8% since last year” and 91% from the $850M earned five years ago, according to Lillian Rizzo of CNBC.com. The figures come from third-party data firm SponsorUnited. While the “volume of deals was up just 2.5% sinc...
Report: WNBA signs TV data reporting deal with Nielsen
Nielsen has “struck a new multiyear deal with the WNBA alongside the NBA to measure its television viewership across traditional TV and streaming,” according to a source cited by Sara Fischer of AXIOS. It is the “largest commercial measurement deal that Nielsen has ever struck with a women’s sports ...
Best Sports Business Cities: Soccer
In Sports Business Journal’s third year of its Best Sports Business Cities franchise, we rank the 25 U.S. markets with the strongest soccer economies by factoring in key drivers such as market-specific fan avidity, venue development and commitments from investors and brands (read more about our meth...
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Quote of the Day
My love of football is well known, but it feels special to me that I make my move into club ownership with Swansea City. The story of the club and the area really struck a chord with me. This is a proud, working class city and club. An underdog that bites back, just like me.Rapper Snoop Dogg, on why he wanted to join the ownership group of EFL Championship club Swansea City
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