Blues television ratings are down 18% thus far this season

Correspondingly, the team’s television ratings have suffered and are on pace for the lowest figure in nearly a decade and a half. Through Wednesday, Bally Sports Midwest’s telecasts were being seen in an average of 2.9% of the market and 38,000 households. If that holds, it would be the Blues’ lowest local rating since they drew a 2.3 figure in 2009-10. The data is according to viewership-tracking company Nielsen and does not include the streaming audience, figures BSM does not release.

BSM has experienced an 18% ratings drop over the same point last season, and an 11% fall from last year’s full-season rating of 4.3. But Bally Sports Midwest officials are hopeful the gap in the year-to-year comparison will be reduced if the team remains in the playoff race unlike last year, when key players such as Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko were dealt and the team was out of serious contention in early March. This time, the Blues still have a chance to get in, although the sportsbooks have them as a considerable longshot.

Nonetheless the Blues ratings are fourth-best among U.S. NHL teams on their regional sports network, behind (in order) the Pittsburgh Penguins, Buffalo Sabres as well as the Boston Bruins and project to finish in the top five for the 11th consecutive year. And BSM’s numbers are better than what the five nationally televised Blues games have generated in St. Louis — a 2.2 rating and 28,000 households.

Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corp., said this week the goal for the sports steaming service that is planning to be launched in a joint venture between his company, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery is to have five million subscribers by the time it is five years old. The service is expected to be available by the start of the college football and NFL season.

Networks that are planned to be offered in the package are ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNEWS, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS and truTV in addition to ESPN+.

The venture is aimed at people who have dropped cable TV or have streaming subscriptions that do not have much sports content. Murdoch addressed the situation while speaking at an event hosted by financial-services company Morgan Stanley, saying this will create one-stop shopping for networks that some people are buying piecemeal — or not at all.

“That’s a huge market,” he said, per Awful Announcing, which reports on the sports media business. “That’s half of the television households in this country. And we know that sports is the No. 1 driver … (of) viewership and subscriptions.”

It does not figure to be cheap, perhaps costing $50 or more a month.

“It’s an easy place for sports fans to come to,” he said.

That is if the bundle can fend off an antitrust review by the Justice Department and a lawsuit filed in New York by streaming service Fubo.

The suit alleges that the companies involved in the venture “engaged in a years-long campaign to block Fubo’s innovative sports-first streaming business resulting in significant harm to both Fubo and consumers” and the planned bundle “steals Fubo’s playbook” and is against antitrust law.

The plan has other critics.

Mark Shapiro, a former ESPN executive who now is the president and CEO of UFC parent company Endeavor Group Holdings, pointed out those who want the package for football will be missing out on games shown on NBC and CBS.

“It’s a big nothing,” Shapiro said at the same conference at which Murdoch spoke, per Sports Business Journal. “It’s just another bundle out there. Who’s going to go pay $40, $50, $60 depending on what you believe to get half the NFL package?”

“You’re not going to get one-stop shopping. … So the idea that this is coming out and Fubo’s going crazy — going crazy about what? It’s another bundle.”