• by Wayne Friedman , September 6, 2007

The sports TV marketplace is so hot that all sports shows, regardless of past performances, are getting the benefit of the draft. Some stronger sports programs aren't even offering ratings guarantees.

ESPN, for one, is pulling back on ratings guarantees, says one media buying executive--especially for college football. He says a memo he received from ESPN says any buys placed past Sept. 13 for college football games on ABC won't include ratings guarantees.

"The market is that strong," says the media executive. ESPN representatives didn't return email messages or phone calls by press time.

Typically, a healthy market means high prices and scarce. This year, many TV sports properties--including ESPN's "Monday Night Football" and NBC's "Sunday Night Football"--are getting hefty increases, from 15% to as much as 25% hikes.

But with that solid market position comes even tougher restrictions--such as pulling back on offering ratings guarantees.

"Networks don't like offering them," says Doug Seay, veteran media executive and senior advertising sales executive for Eclipse Television, a producer of TV ski races. These guarantees could mean giving marketers more inventory, should the program fail to hit its target. Media buyers say other networks, such as NBC and Fox, are still offering them. "ESPN/ABC is usually the most aggressive to get rid of guarantees," says one buyer. "It's a sign of how the market is doing."

Earlier this year--during the upfront selling promise--ESPN was aggressive in deciding to hold the line on the type of guarantees it would be offering to marketers in the future.

Because of the nature of its programming, live sporting events, the net told advertisers that unlike virtually all other cable and broadcast programmers, it would not be offering media deals with C3 options--commercial ratings plus three days of DVR playback. Instead, it would make media deals with the older live program rating guarantees.

A strong market also means help for big sporting events that have been pulled down a notch. Fox's "World Series," which hit the skids with one of the least-viewed series a year ago, is getting modest price increases so far--up from the $350,000-a-30-second-unit selling price of a year ago, according to one veteran West Coast media buying executive.

Last year's event featuring the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers pulled in average ratings of Nielsen Media Research's 10.1 household rating/17 share, the lowest ever for the fall baseball classic. This was down from the 2005 series numbers of 11.1/19.

"The World Series and ratings are down," says Andy Donchin, executive vice president and director of national broadcast for Carat USA. "But it's still a big event, and advertisers are looking for events that have viewer engagement. The World Series is still a high price tag, and I'm sure prices are up."