PPV Event vs. Free TV Event

[Rhonda Rousey's Sports Bra]

This is something I was talking with Ferbian about a week or so ago and I'm finally getting around to making the thread. This is really more of a question that I don't know the answer to though.

Last week Ferbian PMed me about watching his first NFL game Vikings vs. Cowboys and was asking a few questions about American Football in general. When talking about how he liked the game a few days ater I suggested for him to watch the Superbowl this year since I'm sure it would be on somewhere in Denmark since it seems to be a monsterous event. This is when he asked something along the lines of it being a PPV, now I thought about it a bit and wondered why it isn't on PPV. The biggest sporting event in America for sure on PPV instead of free TV, why not? Or do they make more money off of commercials than they would off of PPV buys. This is something I've wondered about with wrestling as well and never quite understood it or got a straight answer about.


So in short, what's better for the company putting on the event, Free TV or PPV?

 

[People's Champ]

I'm not going to pretend to know to much here, but I'd say free tv. Doing a little (and I do mean little) bit of research, this past Super Bowl, a 30 second commercial cost between 2.5 and 2.8 million dollars. The year before that they were 3 million dollars. So I think it would be safe to say that doing it on free tv draws more money. Now I have no idea how much the NFL gets out of that, but I would say more money is made with ads over what they could get from putting the game on PPV.

Edit: Doing more research, it looks like more money-a lot more- could be made off moving the game to PPV, again showing how little I know about this. However, it looks like a lot of people would be turned off by such a move, and would not pay whatever price the game would be. So while it could make more money, it looks as though the better decision would be to keep it on free tv, where they could have the most viewers. The more viewers, the more exposure and more moeny they could make off them. They make plenty anyways off ads, so no need to make viewers pay for it.

 

[Mustang Sally]

I'm sure the NFL has discussed making the Super Bowl a Pay-Per-View extravaganza many times over the years. The fact is, though, this isn't just a question of taking a popular sporting event and making people pay for it (that is, beyond what they already pay for cable TV).

The Superbowl is a worldwide institution. The media says that 90 million people in the U.S. watch it. In my opinion, making it into a PPV could cause a backlash against the NFL that might not easily be overcome in the future. The NFL has a good thing going, to put it mildly. How much more money do they have to have, given the gold mine they're already sitting on?

The advertising rates the networks get for Super Bowl are totally obscene, yet they're sure they can get them. With Pay-Per-View, they're not really sure, are they? And it's too enormous a gamble to take in presuming they'd earn even more by making people pay for it. They may lose in two ways: (1) actual dollars they'd lose if they don't get as many buys as they need, and (2) bad will against the NFL for forcing people to buy what they've gotten for free since 1967.

Leave it alone.