Many in the sports industry were already bracing for a likely fourth-quarter ratings hit due to the upcoming U.S. presidential election. But the ongoing reformation of the all-important political race now threatens to amplify that expectation and reshape the landscape for multiple sports leagues and television networks.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to not accept the Democratic Party nomination and withdraw his bid for reelection, announced Sunday afternoon, quickly led to networks shifting several sports events from broadcast channels to cable and online platforms—including NASCAR’s Brickyard 400, the NFL’s Flag Championships, the LPGA’s Dana Open, and The Basketball Tournament—to allow for breaking news coverage.
But the still-volatile nature of the presidential election and sharply divided nature of the U.S. electorate suggests more sports programming shifts and ratings hits to come. The Democrats, though rapidly lining up behind Vice President Kamala Harris, have yet to make a formal nomination, and the party’s convention isn’t until Aug. 19–22 in Chicago.
Lessons From the Past
The 2016 election, the last presidential contest not impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, is instructive. NFL ratings that season fell 8% from the prior year, with the decrease particularly concentrated in the first half of the regular season and before the election that year.
“It’s an encouraging rebound,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said that December as ratings bounced back somewhat post-election. “I think it proves that the election was certainly a factor.”
MLB’s two League Championship Series that year were also down by double-digit percentages before the league ultimately hit the jackpot with a World Series win for the Cubs that was the team’s first since 1908. The Cubs’ seven-game victory over Cleveland marked the best World Series viewership in more than a decade, and hasn’t been approached since, further serving as an outlier.
The NFL has a particularly lofty perch from which to fall, as its 2023 season delivered across-the-board viewership increases, including a 7% boost in the regular season to an average of 17.9 million viewers per game. That was the league’s best mark since ’15—the year before that ’16 election.
Big Dollars
Despite the potential viewership attrition to not only football and postseason baseball but early-season basketball and hockey and postseason soccer, the political race also promises to be a sales boon for many networks with sports content.
Harris and the Democratic Party raised $100 million in online donations in the 24 hours after Biden’s decision to withdraw, marking the single-largest fundraising day of this election cycle for the ActBlue organization. That adds to the $96 million that Biden previously raised and banked. Republican nominee Donald Trump has $128 million in cash on hand.
A meaningful portion of that money is set to be spent on TV advertising in sports, as the genre has no equal in reaching mass audiences. In 2023, 93 of the top 100 programs in U.S. television, regardless of genre, were NFL game broadcasts.
