I have worked under the premise, for most of my time writing sports media, that having a winning professional sports team in the New York media market can boost viewership league-wide. For example, those who study television viewership can tell you the impact the Yankees have nationally. You may hate the pinstripes, you may be tired of Aaron Judge cut-ins (nods to every college football commentator on this site), but the Yankees consistently draw the highest regular-season viewership of the teams featured on national windows. I believe if the Knicks were consistently good, the NBA overall would benefit from the uptick.
So I’ve been thinking about this and I wondered if the premise applied to the NFL. Would a winning Giants team — they are currently 4-1 — or Jets team — they are 3-2 — impact the league viewership overall? My initial instinct was they would. Call it bias for New York — the state I have spent more time in as an adult than any other — but I figured on the population size alone of the New York media market, a competitive Giants and Jets team would impact the league. (Keep in mind: Overall NFL ratings are made up of a combination of Sunday regional game ratings on CBS and Fox, the Sunday CBS and Fox national games, NBC’s Sunday night game, ESPN’s Monday night game, Amazon’s national Thursday night game and the odd NFL Network game.)
Not so fast, I was told.
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