The Major League Rugby Championship Final ratings on FOX haven’t received much attention. Arguably, that’s more than the game itself did.
According to sportsmediawatch, the broadcast averaged 269,000 viewers. Compare that to the 2021 edition that drew over 2,000,000 viewers.
In-stadium attendance for the 2023 Final topped the 2021 edition with over 10,000 versus 7,500.
At a time when the league insists its trending up, its playoff broadcasting strategy deserves significant scrutiny. Airing a single broadcast at the end of the season fails its purpose of being a showpiece. Without knowing broadcast deal specifics, its still widely assumed that the league is buying broadcast space. Any time on free-over-the-air FOX will come at a heftier price than its cable counterparts. This limits the amount of FOX time the league can afford. However, what benefit comes from that single game? Its an advertisement for a product you can’t get for another seven months. Unless the league can air at least one conference championship on the network the prior weekend, it lacks any real chance to build momentum. It may well be more effective to air the final on FS1 and reallocate that money towards an ad campaign to capture more eyes on the network it already occupies.
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