More and more people are watching the NFL
RTL's sporting experiment is working
The NFL season reaches its climax this weekend with the Super Bowl. RTL and the American Football League are already satisfied with what they have achieved in their first year together. An overview.
For Patrick Esume, before RTL's first Super Bowl broadcast on the night from Sunday to Monday, it was completely clear: “You should tune in.” His former colleague Christoph “Icke” Dommisch, however, said: “I would like to advise against it.” The football expert from the RTL competition emphasized with a grin that his employer Prosieben “also has a good program” at the same time.
The reason for the different perspective is clear. Football presenter Esume, like the NFL's television rights, has moved from ProsiebenSat.1 to the competing RTL group, where the final highlight of the season is now being shown for the first time. Dommisch, on the other hand, remained and is not allowed to appear on TV as a Super Bowl expert for the first time in many years. Some football fans miss the flippant “Icke”, who had a not entirely serious speech duel with Esume at the SpoBis congress a few days ago.
Dommisch was one of the most important NFL figureheads at Prosieben with his relaxed sayings and long hair. There he is only responsible for the broadcasts of the European League of Football – of which Esume is the boss. He moved to the RTL group with other usual Prosieben faces. The makers are now looking forward to the final climax of their premiere season.
The market share is right
“The fact that we are broadcasting the largest single sporting event in the world live for the first time is a dream come true for all of us,” said sports director Andreas von Thien. “The anticipation is correspondingly great.” He himself will be there when defending champion Kansas City Chiefs play against the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas on Sunday and his team goes on air at 11:15 p.m. German time.
From the station's point of view, the first season as the successor to Prosieben was “a complete success”, as von Thien assured: “We achieve greater reach and higher market shares in all relevant target groups than in the previous season.” An average of 670,000 people watched the playoff broadcasts alone. According to RTL, that is an average of over 160,000 more people than in the previous year.
On February 11th the mega spectacle of the year will take place: the Super Bowl. RTL and RTL+ will broadcast the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers as well as the halftime show with megastar Usher.
The kick-off takes place on the night of Sunday to Monday at 12:30 a.m. according to Central European Time. The broadcast starts at 11:15 p.m.
That doesn't sound like a lot at first – compared to the million-strong audience at the European Handball Championships – but it is considerable given the transmission times at night. On the other hand, TV managers look less at the absolute numbers and more specifically at the market shares of the advertising-relevant target groups. RTL achieved strong ratings with 17.1 percent among 14 to 49 year olds.
NFL attracts new viewers to RTL
The NFL is also “very, very satisfied,” as Germany boss Alexander Steinforth said. “For example, we had up to 1.5, 1.6 million people watching the television during the playoff games and had ratings of up to 25 percent in our core target group. These are super strong values.”
The RTL Group now has a relatively old core audience on its main channel and wanted to attract the most sought-after viewers to the main program by buying the rights for US sports – and it seems to have succeeded. But are the times of great growth in NFL broadcasts already over?
“You kind of hit your head on the ceiling,” said Dommisch. However, as an employee of the competition, he is biased. His employer took over NFL coverage in Germany from ARD in 2012, broadcasting the Super Bowl initially on Sat.1 and later on Prosieben. And then lost in rights poker.
At the Super Bowl alone, ProsiebenSat.1's increase was more than 100 percent. In 2021, more than two million people watched in the middle of the night for the first time. Will there be that many again? The complete numbers from the first RTL broadcast of the Super Bowl will only be available on Tuesday morning.
