The NFL Money Machine
You want to know why the NFL is king. Take a look at this column written by USA Today sportswriter Michael Hiestand. Since I'm in the television business these types of articles interest me. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2005-11-17-hiestand-nfl-pregame-shows_x.htm
Go to the part where it shows what kind of ratings the various cities get for NFL games. These are huge, huge numbers. A "rating" is the percentage of televisions on in that particular market. The "share" is the percentage of those televisions that are turned on.
To get a better understanding of these numbers the Blazers/Warriors game last Friday night on KGW had a 5.1 Rating/9 share.
Now you can see why the NFL gets billion dollar tv deals and why the NBA struggles in the ratings.
