Sports Are Officially Too Valuable, and It’s a Big Problem

All that’s left when it comes to TV ratings is sports, and that’s rapidly becoming a problem.

As the COVID-19 pandemic raged for the past 15 months, everything is now altered forever. When it comes to television, it appears the pandemic was finally the tipping point for the long-feared and much-discussed cord cutting.

With a dearth of new shows on broadcast and cable, millions flocked to streaming services for their entertainment fix. The pandemic also coincided with traditional broadcasters, like NBC and CBS, dipping their toe into the streaming wars, to battle the established Netflix and Hulu, to say nothing of premium sports streamers like ESPN+.

It’s led to the complete collapse of the television audience, to the point that broadcasters are accusing Nielsen of not properly capturing TV ratings anymore. There has to be an explanation, they believe, for the nightly audience of people watching television crashing by tens of millions since the pandemic started.

In sports, much of the ratings discussion has centered on the decline for pandemic-era events compared to their predecessors. Of course, the Kentucky Derby in September or the NBA Finals in October are not going to draw the same audiences as previous years. There was far too much attention paid to comparing…