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Execs hail return of the Rams, and L.A. viewers

Television viewership from the Los Angeles Rams’ first preseason game clearly shows why the NFL wanted to get a team into the country’s biggest media market.

It’s impossible to draw any real conclusions off only one meaningless preseason game, and I know that the rating for the Aug. 13 Cowboys-Rams game is unnaturally high due to the fact that it was L.A.’s first home NFL game in 22 years. Still, it’s hard for TV network executives not to be giddy — at least a little bit — over the first game’s numbers.

The Los Angeles Rams’ first preseason game averaged 580,000 viewers and a combined 6.9 rating.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
The combined 6.9 rating (5.2 on KABC and 1.7 on ESPN) marked the Los Angeles market’s biggest NFL preseason rating in at least 12 years (or, as far back as ESPN has tracked preseason NFL ratings).

The game’s average of 580,000 viewers that tuned into the game in the L.A. market dwarfed last season’s four-game preseason average for Rams games in the St. Louis market, which was 164,000 viewers. Bigger markets generally mean more viewers. The smaller St. Louis market would post much bigger ratings (last season, the average rating for the Rams’ four preseason games was a 9.4) but those bigger ratings would not translate to more viewers.

That’s the lift the NFL expects to get throughout the season with a team in such a huge media market.

“Historically, L.A. has always been a terrible preseason market,” said Artie Bulgrin, ESPN’s senior vice president of global research and analytics. “But it remains a big market for the NFL even though they haven’t had a team all these years.”

The Rams are in the NFC, which means that most of the team’s games will be on Fox Sports. Fox executives have said that they expect L.A.’s ratings for the Rams to be similar to New York’s ratings for the Giants.

Ratings from the first preseason game suggest that’s a good comparison. The Rams 6.9 rating more than doubled both the Jets (which posted a 3.4 rating in the New York market for the team’s Aug. 11 game against the Jaguars) and the Giants (which pulled a 3.2 New York rating for their Aug. 12 against the Dolphins).

The Rams’ local rating even outpaced the Bears’ local rating for their first preseason game (6.3 for an Aug. 11 game against the Broncos).

ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” will carry one Rams game this season — the second game of ESPN’s opening week doubleheader against the 49ers at Levi’s Stadium. Bulgrin expects the game — which will be the first NFL regular season game with a Los Angeles team since 1994 — to help push ESPN’s ratings higher than usual.

“The Rams got off to a fast start,” Bulgrin said. “I’ll take that as a positive.”

John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.

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