The long MLK weekend had six NFL wildcard matchups under the expanded play-off format. Sure, five of the six of the game were uncompetitive (though the Cowboys vs 49ers game made up for some of that). But that's not the point. While there were six games of 60 minutes each, how much football did we actually see? Well, according to a study from the WSJ from a decade ago, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes! Where does the rest of the time go? Here's a helpful graphic from the Journal:
If there's so little actual football in a football game, what do the networks do with the other 190 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, "commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total airtime, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps." All this is facilitated by the fact that in American football the clock is allowed to "run for long periods of time while nothing is happening. After a routine play is whistled dead, the clock will continue to run, even as the players are peeling themselves off the turf and limping back to their huddles. The team on offense has a maximum of 40 seconds after one play ends to snap the ball again."
But what about the other major sports? Are the dynamics the same in basketball, baseball, soccer, etc.? Well, as this well-sourced post from the National Arms Race shows, things are not quite as bad in the other sports:
In American football there's only 5.8% of action time in a 3-hours plus broadcast. Commercials take up about 75 minutes of the 190 minutes. Cha-ching! Football is truly the quintessential capitalist sport. Baseball, America's official pastime, comes close to football in its lack of playing time, with 18 minutes of actual baseball in a typical 176-minutes broadcast. By contrast, soccer is action-packed. In a typical 115-minutes broadcast there is 58 minutes of action! That's 50% of action time. It also means there is comparatively little time for the all-important ads. While 40% of a football game's coverage is devoted to commercials, only 16% of time is devoted to ads in soccer. Socialist sport!
No comments:
Post a Comment