Two days after the baseball season opened, ESPN research and ratings guru Artie Bulgrin convened what, by unofficial tally, was his gazillionth focus group featuring the breadbasket of the sports television demographic, the 18- to 34-year-old.
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Teams have found that attractions such as The Dugout
Club (above) at Dodger Stadium draw younger adults
looking to socialize at games. |
(We pause here while Madison Avenue applauds).
To advertisers, 18- to 34-year-olds are precious gems, rare and uncut. They are notoriously difficult to reach, watching less television than older viewers. Their preferences in programming pull them far from the TV mainstream. The Internet, cell phones, video games and digital video recorders promise to make them even more elusive in the coming years.
Yet marketers can’t write them off. There are about 67 million 18- to 34-year-olds in the United States, according to census data, making them about one-fourth of the nation’s populace. And they’re at an impressionable stage of their lives, choosing brands that they’re likely to stick with for decades, if not forever.
Bud or Miller? Ford or Chevy? Verizon or Cingular? Sure, some of them will graduate to microbrews. They’ll discover Toyota and Honda. They’ll switch carriers. But lots will stay, enough of them that brands will spend hundreds of millions from their collective advertising budgets trying to get in front of them while they’re young.
67
million | | Number of 18 - 34-year-olds in the U.S. | |
This is why Bulgrin and his counterpart at Fox Sports, Mike Mulvihill, put so much time and effort into tracking and talking to 18- to 34-year-olds, and particularly 18- to 34-year-old males.
There were 23.5 million men in the 18-34 bracket in 1982, when CBS, NBC and ABC agreed to pay the NFL what was then a jaw-dropping $2 billion to carry games for five seasons. The networks estimated that about 45 percent of men in that demo watched football. About 8 percent watched “Dallas,” which then was the No. 1-rated show.
Technology has redefined the media landscape in t he 24 years since then, hatching hundreds of cable and satellite channels and then the Internet. Video games are media now. You can get highlights on your phone.
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The 18-34 demo gives advertisers a chance to develop
brand loyalties that could last a lifetime. |
And yet, on the morning after this latest chat with his 18-34s, Bulgrin remains unshaken in his belief that ESPN will retain its firm hold on the most slippery demo in the country.
“In the scheme of everything available for them to view, sports still stands out,” said Bulgrin, senior vice president of research and development at ESPN, where he has worked since 1996. “It has become even more compelling to this demo, probably because they never have to be without it.”
Fact is, people spent more time watching television — that’s traditional, Archie Bunker, big box in the middle of the living room television — last year than ever before. In September, Nielsen announced record viewership for 2004-05, with the typical person averaging 4 hours, 32 minutes a day. That continued a steady increase that started eight seasons ago.
While men 18-34 are watching less of the big four networks during prime time, veering into niches like Cartoon Network’s after-hours “Adult Swim,” their overall time watching TV has held steady. ESPN and ESPN2 both are coming off their most-viewed first quarter ever. The highest-rated demo for both is men 18-34.
7.5 | | Average number of hours 18 - 34-year-olds listen to sports radio each week | |
“It’s amazing that TV usage, overall, among men 18-34 is a little bit higher today than it was 10 years ago,” said Mulvihill, vice president of research and programming for Fox Sports. “Think about what’s happened in those 10 years. We just passed the 10-year anniversary of the Netscape IPO. You had the tech economy boom, bust and boom again. You had the emergence of wireless. The emergence of broadband. And yet the net effect on television has been really none at all.
“I think it’s remarkable, when you look at how TV has weathered the development of the Internet. It’s amazing that TV is king in this country.”
Focus group
While Nielsen numbers clearly bear that out, we couldn’t help retaining a healthy skepticism toward advertiser-based television staying king. There are simply so many temptations to draw viewers — and particularly youngerviewers — in other directions.
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Sure, the big box has withstood the challenge of the Web, but what about when broadband video improves? And when more people have DVRs? And what if the cell phone truly becomes the third screen, as many predict? What happens now that a Madden football game is a dead ringer for a live broadcast on Fox?
And what does it mean when an entire, tech-savvy generation lives by the credo of on-demand — my way, my time, on my terms — as do today’s 18-34s and those who will follow?
The networks didn’t invite us to their focus groups, so we put together our own informal gathering last month, bringing together nine people, ages 22-34, from within the building that houses our offices in Charlotte. Some were employees of SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily. Did we get a broad cross section of interests? Hardly. We were heavy on avid sports fans and unanimously Charlotte-based.
But we got sports fans of both genders and at a good range of age.
Most told us that they were tech savvy, though not all viewed themselves as early adopters. As both of the research gurus pointed out, growing up in a rapidly changing world doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be among the first to try something new. They like the gadgets that they see as making their lives easier or enhancing their entertainment, but most are cost-conscious, particularly at the younger end of the pool.
Some observations:
- The overwhelming majority of them download music, but only half of them have bought iPods, citing cost. Most said they’re willing to pay for music now, even though many went through high school and college during the file-sharing heyday of Napster.
- Those who have not already jettisoned the land lines in their homes said they’ve at least contemplated it and might do it if their cellular coverage were better. The consensus: “Why would you have a land line?”
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19.1 | | Percent of 18 - 34-year-olds who say they have watched video online | |
DVRs are beloved among those who have them and desired by those who don’t. Again, cost is an issue. None use them to time shift sports unless it’s to keep from missing an event.
- While they all consider the Internet the first place to go for news and information, none are fans of blogs, chats or message boards. They don’t consider them credible and aren’t particularly interested in the opinions of people they don’t know or respect.
- Text messaging is a last resort for the older end of the group, but those on the younger end see it as a more efficient means of communicating simple thoughts or observations, such as sharing revile for Duke during the NCAA tournament.
- Not only are they connected, they expect everyone else to be. All said they become frustrated when they can’t reach someone and get a prompt response, either by cell phone or e-mail. That goes for both professional and social life.
- Seven of the nine members of our group had broadband access in their homes. But none of them use it to watch or listen to sporting events live. They all said they’d watch highlights and other snippets of video on the computer, but are most likely to do it at work, where they have faster connections.
- They prefer any reality show to most scripted television, and will watch anything that fits into the genre at least once.
- All but a couple get scores on their phones and consider it a demarcation line between their age groups and older friends and siblings. One told the story of playing softball during the NCAA tournament along with lots of other 20-somethings who were checking scores on their phones. Her brother-in-law, who is 35, used his cell phone to call home for updates. “He doesn’t know how it works and doesn’t care to know,” she said.
- Scores on the phone are cool. Highlights on the phone, they don’t get. Even the youngest in the group couldn’t see the attraction. “You have so many ways to see highlights, like ‘SportsCenter’ and ESPN.com,” he said. “Why would you want to see it on your phone when there are so many other places that are so much better and easier to deal with.”
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For the most part, they confirmed the image of the demo. Their opinions fell in line with many of those that Bulgrin and Mulvihill reported — although it is worth noting that Bulgrin, whose company now is in the phone business, insists that his focus groups show the network is “clearly on the right track with wireless, the personal portal of the future, which can be very important to sports.”
Mulvihill wasn’t sure that the resistance to things like checking scores on phones that they perceive among older friends and relatives will be in play much longer.
“Whatever differences there are in the way they use cell phones and DVRs, that washes out,” Mulvihill said. “That all trickles up to the older set. It always has and always will. That (person) who can’t access scores on his phone — call him back in six months. He’ll change.”
Those in our informal group, who all were over 22, also made it clear that their styles and preferences differ significantly from family and friends who are a few years younger.
Dissecting the market
Marketers often cut the 18-34s into two subsets, 18-24 and 25-34, to account for the dramatic differences between college students and the young couples who populate the upper end of the age bracket. About 34 percent of the nation’s 27.1 million 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled in school, according to census figures. The median age at first marriage is 25 for womenand 27 for men.
A single 20-year-old, a single 27-year-old, a married 27-year-old and a married 30-year-old with two children clearly have different preferences and priorities. Then, there are the differences often seen between the Generation Xers at the older end of the demo and the Gen Yers at the younger end.
“They’re two very different types of people,” Bulgrin said. “The Gen Y is more likely to be a person who never knew a day without the Internet, never knew a day without sophisticated gaming technology, and perhaps never knew a day without a cell phone. So the tech savvy of the person up to 25 is a little greater than the person older than that.”
Their tastes in television programs also vary quite a bit, with one exception: sports. That’s why many of the advertisers who target 20-something men and women choose to spend their money on sports programming and in cable niches, rather than on shows that draw larger, broader audiences but miss the younger set.
In 2005, the 10 top-rated shows among viewers of all ages and both genders were: “American Idol” (both nights), “CSI,” NFL coverage on Sundays (Fox and CBS), “Survivor: Palau,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Survivor: Guatemala” and “Without a Trace.”
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Women 18-24 listen to the radio 18 hours a week,
and most often on weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. |
Of those, only the NFL cracked the top 10 among 18-24 males (see chart, page XX).
Along with football, they liked: “Family Guy” (ranked No. 2 among the young males in 2005, currently 95th among all viewers), “American Dad” (105th overall), “War at Home” (tied with “American Dad”), “American Idol” (ubiquitously No. 1) and “The Simpsons” (73rd overall).
Among 18-24 females, the top 10 includes: “Simple Life 3” (No. 58 overall last season), “O.C.” (currently 125th), “America’s Next Top Model 5” (132nd) and “America’s Next Top Model 4” (124th).
The 25-34 males list reads like it was compiled at the NFL’s Park Avenue offices. Pro football occupies seven of the top 10 slots, joined by “American Idol” (both nights) and “Apprentice 3.”
Going deep
Both Bulgrin and Mulvihill say that today’s 18-34s have a greater innate appetite for information than their predecessors because they have grown up in an age where the Internet has put so much of it at their fingertips. As a result, they want more information about the sports theyfollow and their favorite teams.
“The depth of information is making people so much smarter and so much more comprehensive as sports fans, and that’s an important change” Mulvihill said. “Ten years ago, when people were looking at declining ratings, we thought we needed to go outside and bring in people who are not traditional sports fans. Over the years what we found out is really the way to grow ratings is to take the people who are interested and make them even more interested.
“We’re seeing (18- to 34-year-old) fans go to a depth of fandom that not only not many people were at, but not many people were able to get to.”
