• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 14, 2004

ESPN ABC Sports, already the dominant player in the national TV sports arena, managed to expand its market share by a considerable margin in 2003 and now accounts for one out of every two TV sports GRPs purchased by Madison Avenue, according to an annual analysis of Nielsen Media Research data released by the networks on Wednesday.

GRPs, or gross rating points, are the sum total of ratings available in the advertising marketplace over a period of time--in the case of this analysis, calendar 2003. During the year, ESPN ABC Sports accounted for 51.6 percent of all sports GRPs generated by broadcast and cable networks. That's a huge gain over the 45.6 percent share ESPN ABC Sports had in 2002, but that shift is at least partly attributable to the absence of a major biannual TV sports event, the Olympic Games. That also explains why NBC's share of network sports GRPs plummeted to only 5.5 percent in 2003 from 10.4 percent in 2002. At that rate, the peacock network, which once was the dominant television sports network, ranked sixth behind ESPN2.

On an individual network basis, ESPN dominated the marketplace with a 27.9 percent share of the market, up from 25.5 percent in 2002. ABC, the third Walt Disney Co. sports network included in the analysis, ranked third behind Fox, although it actually showed the greatest year-over-year increase in total market share (see table below).

Fox was essentially flat, while CBS lost a smidgen of its sports marketplace position. With the exception of AOL Time Warner's TBS Superstation, which stopped carrying high-rated NBA basketball games, most cable networks experienced a gain in market share.

The relative market positions of TV sports networks likely will change again in 2004, when NBC carries the 2004 Summer Olympic Games from Athens, Greece.

Share Of National TV Sports GRPs

                 2003       2002     Share Change 
ESPN            27.9%
25.5%      +2.4 points  
Fox             14.8%      14.7%      +0.1 points                    
ABC             14.5%      11.4%      +3.1 points 
CBS             14.0%      14.6%      -0.6
points 
ESPN2            9.2%       8.7%      +0.5 points 
NBC              5.5%     *10.4%      -4.9 points 
TNT              4.0%       3.4%      +0.6 points 
Speed Channel    2.2%
1.9%      +0.3 points    
TBS              1.3%       2.6%      -1.3 points 
Spike            1.2%       1.2%        No change 
USA              1.2%       1.1%      +0.1 points 
Other
4.2%       4.3%      -0.1 points 

Source: ESPN ABC Sports analysis of data from Nielsen Media Research. *NBC aired coverage of the Olympic Games in 2002.