Viewership of live sports on TV has "fallen short of advertisers' expectations," but it "remains the best option for advertisers to reach a large number of people at the same time," according to Tim Peterson of DIGIDAY. Advertisers had "high viewership expectations for the return of live sports to TV," and fueling those expectations were the "high viewership figures for the sports programming that filled the gap in April and May." Many advertisers had "opted to wait for the major sports leagues' return to spend the ad dollars they had earmarked for reaching people earlier in the year." Agency execs said that some had even "put their entire linear TV budgets on hold until major sports returned to TV." Peterson notes this "pent-up demand made it even more important that viewership live up to expectations so that networks would have enough inventory available to meet advertisers’ reach demands." Compounding matters, the TV networks "seem to have had similarly high expectations and didn’t lower the audience guarantees offered to advertisers." In light of schedule "abnormalities," agency execs are "hesitant to read too much into how viewership has fared compared to prior years." Some nets are "trying to settle these debts now" by "taking advantage of higher viewership for playoff games or the start of the NFL and college football seasons" (DIGIDAY.com, 9/24).
