Super Bowl Betting: The Local Nielsen TV Ratings Prop
Added on Feb 04, 2011 by Jack Thurman in
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We looked at the Super Bowl betting prop on the national Nielsen TV ratings in our previous post and now we’ll look at a similar proposition dealing with the TV ratings in the local markets of the Packers and the Steelers:
Which region will have the higher local TV Rating?
Pittsburgh -140
Green Bay +100
We discussed the methodology behind the Nielsen Ratings at great length in our previous post, as well as the historical and demographic trends influencing Super Bowl ratings. Briefly recapping this information–the Nielsen Ratings refer to two different metrics. The first is the percentage of households with television sets watching a particular broadcast (the ‘rating’) and the percentage of all people watching television who are tuned in to the broadcast (the ‘share’). Last year’s game had the largest total viewership of any Super Bowl in history and this year’s is expected to be a huge ratings winner as well.
Not surprisingly, the ratings in the cities who’s teams are involved in the game typically exceed the national rating by 10 percentage points or more. While at first glance you would assume that Pittsburgh is favored due to the larger size of their media market, we consider them a ‘false favorite’ here. It’s important to keep in mind the methodology of the Nielsen Ratings–the percentage of households with television watching the game–which negates any advantage of having a larger total media market. To the contrary, it appears to be a disadvantage at least in terms of getting the highest Nielsen Rating–a larger city not only offers more entertainment options other than football, more venues (eg: bars) at which to watch the game and a more diverse population of which many won’t be interested in football at all. A smaller market will theoretically view the presence of their team in the Super Bowl as a ‘bigger deal’ and will offer fewer competing activities and fewer bars and other venues at which to watch the game.
The individual market breakdowns for the past 6 Super Bowls further validate this concept–in each case the smaller media market had the larger Super Bowl rating. Last year, for example, the nationwide Nielsen Rating was 45. The rating in Indianapolis was 54.2 while in New Orleans it was 56.3. At the very least Green Bay is the value position here as the size of the media market offers no real advantage in terms of TV ratings and based on our analysis it could actually be disadvantageous to the larger market.
Bet Green Bay to have the higher TV rating +100
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