Stick to Sports: Nontraditional sports receive broadcasting limelight

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Stick to Sports: Nontraditional sports receive broadcasting limelight

September 29, 2016 12:31 am · By Marisa Ingemi

For most of the past century, four sports have reigned supreme for American viewers: baseball, football, basketball and hockey. Whether at the professional or collegiate level, those sports, primarily the men’s rendition of them, have dominated the sports scene.

That “four major sport dominance” narrative has been changing for some time, and more than halfway through the current decade, it is starting to be recognized.

Major League Soccer, arguably the fifth top sports league in North America, began play in 1996. The National Lacrosse League has undergone expansion in recent years, and Major League Lacrosse was began in 2001. Since then, the Arena Football League, Women’s National Basketball Association, various professional women’s hockey leagues and the National Women’s Soccer League have found relevance in spectators’ eyes.

While ratings have dropped in leagues like the NFL and NHL, smaller sports have begun to take some of the market of sports viewers. NBC Sports Network’s package of English Premier League soccer has been a wild success, so much that ESPN bought in to broadcast MLS games.

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Meanwhile, Fox also elected to broadcast a regular season MLS contest in an NFL timeslot a week ago after its NFL pregame show, giving pro soccer its largest potential platform. That slot earned MLS its largest viewing audience in 12 years, and the league has broke the one million viewers threshold twice this season.