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Mens ratings up 100%

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Updated: 5:23 p.m. ET Sept. 12, 2005
NEW YORK - The ratings for Roger Federer's win over Andre Agassi in the U.S. Open men's final Sunday were up 100 percent from last year, which saw the lowest-rated championship match ever.

Federer's 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (1), 6-1 victory Sunday over Agassi earned a 6.2 overnight rating with a 12 share for CBS. That's up from the 3.1 with a 16 that Federer's 2004 win over Lleyton Hewitt received.

________________

Let's see, what's different...US Open, 2004, Federer and Hewitt...lowest ever ratings.

Wimbledon, 2005 (just 8-weeks ago)...Federer and Roddick...among the lowest ratings ever (I think the Hewitt-Nalbandian final did just a tad worse).

I wonder what happened...let me rephrase, I wonder WHO happened???

jcm
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Wait a minute. I confused. If this year's telecast had 12 shares of the viewing audience over last year that had 16 shares...

Wouldn't that actually be lower?
:eek:
It really depends on the size of the shares. Keep in mind Americans get fatter every year. So 12 shares of Americans this year, may be bigger than 16 last year.
Don't worry about shares, total viewers are what matters. A 6.2 rating averages out to 5.7 million viewers that wached some part of the match - damn good considering it was NFL Opening Sunday.
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So let that be the end of threads asking why ESPN always shows Americans when possible and does not give the public a chance to appreciate foreign stars.
These ratings are impressive, undoubtedly a US player's presence plays a big role. On top of that a well known one for years.

But these are only US ratings. In Australia, I am sure last year with leyton's playing the ratings were higher for the finals than they are for this year. Similar, since 2003 I am sure Schweiter/deutsch TV has higher ratings for Wimbledon than any time even when Pete played. It is not very surprising that there is this parochial nature to ratings
at my school i live on floor in dorm hall with basketball and football players and almost every room had the final on and the Blake vs Agassi match.
It's good to hear RDucky. Agassi is still at 35 the biggest draw in tennis.
:worship::yeah:
Agassi did help, but the reasons it beat Wimbledon are numerous. Wimbledon is not the US Open... Americans like things with "US" in them. Also, the Wimbledon final is on relatively early, when all the good Americans are in church and the rest of us are in bed.
The time zone thing is a MAJOR factor. If you live on the West Coast, you have to get up around 7:00 on SUNDAY to watch the Wimbledon final. Only for us die-hards is it worth the lack of sleep to watch another predictable beatdown of Andy Roddick.
buddyholly said:
So let that be the end of threads asking why ESPN always shows Americans when possible and does not give the public a chance to appreciate foreign stars.
Lets not kid ourselves here. Fed is probably the most skilled player yet but he doesn't draw crowds. Most people don't even know the guy though they will after the final. Many people watched because it was on at a convienet time and featured Agassi. I'm not saying Fed sucks because he doesn't but i'm just pointing out the facts.
joycomesmorning said:
Wimbledon, 2005 (just 8-weeks ago)...Federer and Roddick...among the lowest ratings ever
So , what does it mean? Americans don't care about Roddick, or RF is as 'good' as AR at drawing crowds? ;)
ExpectedWinner said:
So , what does it mean? Amricans don't care about Roddick, or RF is as 'good' as AR at drawing crowds? ;)
Or that nobody wanted to get up at 7 to watch Wimbledon when they had other things to do. Besides your fact doesn't make any sense because if RF was good at drawing crowds then they would have had a bigger turnout.
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nkhera1 said:
Besides your fact doesn't make any sense because if RF was good at drawing crowds then they would have had a bigger turnout.

Learn to read. I said 'as good as Roddick', allocated the word "good" and put a smile. Last thing I need here is a serious response.
Check it our folks... In an SI article (June 1999) S.L. Price wrote an article about TV ratings, pointing out that tennis had been on a real downer with TV ratings UNTIL the French Open, 1999...he pointed out that the last time tennis had gotten such good TV ratings was, well, the summer of 1995 (most especually the US Open final)...

He commented that it didn't take a genius to draw the correlation...just a very few...a RARE few...have that "whatever" to draw non-tennis people (and that's what you need to achieve the BIG ratings numbers) to watch tennis on TV. Agassi has that...Serena playing Venus has that...Jimmy Connors playing whomever had that...McEnroe playing Borg or Connors had that....

Of course, the time difference is an issue (however, this final came right in the middle of hte FIRST pro football Sunday in the USA)...but when Agassi is playing, people watch...heck, the boring 2003 Aussie final with Agassi and Schuettler got good ratings.

The surprise is that Roddick has not captured the numbers...yet!! Should he develop an on-going rivalry with another player, there's potential.

Federer is THE BEST tennis has seen...but he won't ever draw big numbers outside of the tennis community...but I think that's OK with him as it was with Pete...they're about personal achievements and record books...that, too, has it's place.

jcm
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This is interesting...This blurb indicates that Suday's final was the highest US Open final ratings-wise since 1999, Agassi VS Martin...Is anyone else surprised that the 2002 Pete vs Andre wasn't higher than that...Of course, the 1995 Pete VS Andre and those 1980 finals with Mac and Connors may not be reachable anymore....


__________

Fan favorite Andre Agassi's surprise ascent to the title match of the U.S. Open against Roger Federer (4:30-7 p.m. ET) spiked the overnight household rating Sunday to a 6.2 with a 12 share -- twice last year's 3.1/6 for a Federer/Lleyton Hewitt match, according to Nielsen. Federer topped Agassi, three sets to one.

It was the highest-rated men's final of the U.S. Open on CBS since 1999 (7.1/14), when Agassi defeated Todd Martin.
I'd be very interested to know how the ratings were for Blake-Agassi.

edit
Never mind, I sortakinda found my answer... :D

U.S. Open Generates Record-Setting Numbers

By Tennis Week
09/13/2005

It was a record-setting fortnight in Flushing Meadow. The USTA today announced that the 2005 U.S. Open set several records in attendance and website traffic and generated significant television ratings growth over last year.

An all-time attendance record was set at 659,538 fans, breaking the previous record set in 2001, by over 20,000 fans. The U.S. Open remains the highest attended annual event in sports. The daily total attendance record was set at 58,589 on Saturday, September 3rd, and again the following day with 58,817 on Sunday, September 4th.

The national overnight rating for the men’s final between world No. 1 Roger Federer and eight-time Grand Slam champion Andre Agassi on CBS Sports was 6.2, doubling the 2004 rating. Total viewership for the Saturday night primetime women’s final featuring fourth-seeded Kim Clijsters vs. 12th-seeded Mary Pierce was up 28 percent from vs. 2004. Viewership of Super Saturday (both men’s semifinals and the women’s final) on CBS Sports increased by 56 percent compared to 2004.

Total ratings of the U.S. Open on CBS Sports were up 18 percent from the previous year. USA Network’s total viewership for the key 18-49 demographic increased 24 percent vs. 2004. Total viewership on USA Network was up 8 percent.

Traffic on USOpen.org, the official tournament website set an all-time record of 27.0 million visitors vs. 15.4 million last year, up 75 percent. The average visitor spent a record 81 minutes on the site. USOpen.org remains a top-five most-trafficked sports website.

- - - -

Agassi to the Rescue Again
By Bill Dwyre, Times Staff Writer

Just when you think tennis is working its way to the back pages with the Nerf ball scores, the pigeon-toed bald guy from Las Vegas rides in on his white horse and saves the day.

If you watched Andre Agassi beat James Blake in a five-set thriller that went late into the night Wednesday in New York City at the U.S. Open, and if you have a heartbeat, you have a sense of what Agassi continues to do for his sport. To succeed, any sport needs drama and charisma. Class helps too.

Agassi brings it all.

And it has started to rub off. If the way Blake played, and conducted himself in the aftermath, isn't a precursor of great days ahead for him and his sport, then we all need to junk our crystal balls.

In a sport that continues to try to find itself in the midst of too many tournaments that don't matter, too many players who don't care, and too much whining and pulling out of events with hangnails, there always seems to be the U.S. Open.

It is the Grandest of the Slams, the one time and place where the civility of tennis gives way to the animal magnitude of the city in which it is playing.

The Australian Open is a gentle sail on clear blue waters in an uncrowded land far, far away. The French Open is great restaurants and culture. Wimbledon is tea and crumpets and all that British stiff-upper-lip stuff.

The U.S. Open is hot, ugly, crowded and let's go kick the other guy's butt. It's about as subtle as one of its city's cabbies, cutting off another and acknowledging the maneuver with an extended middle finger.

Agassi's five-set victory — at 35, he rallied from two sets and one service break down and went for it all with a huge forehand on match point — was manna from heaven for the sanctioning United States Tennis Assn., which generates more money during this two-week event than the gross national product of some small countries.

It isn't so much that these USTA guys are great organizers or have some sort of formula for success. They have the right place and the right time of the season for fireworks. The U.S. Open is tennis' Fourth of July.

Agassi-Blake was Pete Sampras throwing up all over the court and going on to win. It was Jimmy Connors, at 39, fist-pumping to a night crowd of beered-up stockbrokers and most of them fist-pumping back.

It was what the sport needed so that the guy at the water cooler the next day could forget for a moment whether Mike Scioscia should have yanked a pitcher or whether Kobe can carry the Lakers all the way back.

Tennis isn't mainstream. Agassi is.

The reality of that usually sends a collective chill down the spine of tennis, because the next question always is: For how long?

It is a premise that we all accept as doctrine: He is 35, he has had some injuries, he is at the end.

But, maybe, Wednesday's match taught us a lesson we'd previously missed. Maybe there is more of this left than we think. Maybe we shouldn't take every Agassi loss in a major event as the book closing, the curtain coming down. Maybe he doesn't know it, and we don't know it, but tennis may have several more years of riding on his shoulders.

Asked about retirement during his news conference in the wee hours of Thursday morning, Agassi said, "When I get asked that question, I'm just a bit numb to it. All I can say is what I feel, and it's been the same, it's no different. I don't know what is going to happen."

Another way to answer that, although Agassi clearly couldn't and wouldn't, is that Connors was a U.S. Open semifinalist at 39 and, suffice to say, Connors, although fit, never ran up and down hills on Christmas Eve in conditioning drills.

Roger Federer will probably win this tournament. At 24, he is so good that he is rapidly earning his way into the same paragraph as Rod Laver, Sampras and Roy Emerson. Agassi might not even get past another red-hot young American, 22-year-old Robby Ginepri, in today's semifinals.

But for his sport, he has come through again in its time of need. They are paying attention again around the water cooler. The guys on "SportsCenter" are actually talking about tennis. The TV ratings for Agassi-Blake were off the charts, and now that people are paying attention, the ratings ought to be high for the entire weekend of semifinals and finals.

And the Nerf ball scores are still on the back pages.
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