In the world of broadcast media, there are two words that can make any on-air talent or facility manager's blood run cold, those two words, "the book". Now in this case we aren't talking about The Book as in The Good Book, the "book" that brings broadcasters to their knees is the one that comes from Nielsen. 

You've probably heard of the Neilsen Company. They are the primary ratings reporting service for radio and television, cable, and streaming use in the country. A big number from Nielsen means big numbers for broadcasters in terms of sponsorship dollars.

The amount of sponsorship dollars a broadcast entity can charge for a particular program or sporting event, in this case, is based solely on the Nielsen Ratings for that event. For example, a lot of people watch the NFL's Super Bowl so advertising rates are high.

Broadcasters pay a lot of money for the rights to broadcast sporting events like the Super Bowl or in the case of our study today, The NBA All-Star Game and NASCAR's Daytona 500. In a battle for viewer eyeballs, which one of those sporting events would grab the most?

The Daytona 500 is NASCAR's "Super Bowl". It's the race all the drivers want to win and it's a legendary race that goes back to the humble beginnings of NASCAR.

The NBA All-Star Game is just that. It's everybody who is anybody in the NBA. However, the game looks more like a pickup game than an actual NBA contest but, geez look at the star power on the court at any given time.

Did you make your guess? As to which sporting event on a non-NFL weekend had the most viewers? I can tell you right now it wasn't even close.

What? You're telling me Americans would rather watch a bunch of rednecks driving around in a circle for three hours than watch the greatest players in the NBA strut their stuff and drop their three-point bombs?

At first blush, it appears as if NASCAR is just blowing the NBA out of the water when it comes to viewership. That's not really the case.

The numbers reflected in the Mulvihill Tweet are for total viewership in all age groups. When you dig deeper into the numbers, a lot of the NASCAR audience was over 50. While at the same time viewership for the NBA All-Star Game for the "under 50 crowd" was tremendous.

Personally, I think the "battle" between the two events is a mismatch, to begin with. As we mentioned Daytona is NASCAR's Super Bowl, so it's a big event with a lot of emotion and potentially history-making action. The All-Star Game is an exhibition. It's light, it's fun, it's not even real teams anymore and there is no "prize" for winning the darn thing.

However, this does bring together one aspect of sports that we can all agree on. It's the fact that we love to disagree about sports. That's why Sports Talk Radio is such a big deal and why passionate people love to call and complain. It's just what we do whether we're driving around in circles really fast or attempting to make a three-point shot from outer Mongolia, it's sports and it's fun to talk about.

Y'all wanna argue about this now?

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