First Nielsen ratings mirror final XFL game
Numbers are same for new league as Rockets’ matchup against Thunder
Television ratings for the new Alliance of American Football opened Saturday at the same point where the doomed XFL’s ratings ended in 2001.
Saturday’s inaugural Alliance telecast on CBS, which featured a split broadcast with the Atlanta-Orlando and San Diego-San Antonio games, recorded a 2.1 Nielsen overnight rating among the 56 major markets.
Meanwhile, ABC also recorded a 2.1 overnight Nielsen rating for its prime time Saturday game between the Rockets and Thunder.
The 2.1 Nielsen is the same rating as the final XFL game on Feb. 3, 2001, on NBC, in which Los Angeles defeated San Francisco for the league title. The XFL was canceled by its owners, NBC and World Wrestling Entertainment, after the season because of low ratings.
The television landscape, however, has changed considerably, so a 2.1 rating in 2019 is more acceptable than the same number would have been 18 years ago.
Nationwide ratings for the Alliance openers and the Rockets-Thunder game will be available later this week.
Saturday’s Alliance games were the only ones that will appear on CBS until the league championship game on April 27 in Las Vegas. TNT will air a game next week, and other games will air on CBS Sports Network and NFL Network and will be streamed on B/R Live.
As a result, it will be more difficult to track the Alliance’s TV fortunes with the same scrutiny that surrounded the XFL, whose downward trend after a 9.5 rating for its inaugural game on Feb. 3, 2001, on NBC led to its demise.
XFL ratings in 2001 dropped by 50 percent in Week 2 and never recovered. The final regular-season rating on NBC was 1.8, and ratings dropped as low as 1.5 before the 2.1 championship game rating.
San Antonio was the No 1-ranked market for the Alliance with a 6.8 Nielsen rating.
Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin each rated 3.0, and the game rated 2.2 in Houston.
The Rockets-Thunder game, meanwhile, rated 5.2 in Houston, 2.4 in Dallas-Fort Worth, 1.9 in San Antonio and 1.6 in Austin.