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The story
According to viewer ratings data released by Video Research on the 25th, the friendly match between the Japan national soccer team and Uruguay, broadcast on the Fuji TV network, drew a household average rating of 4.1% in its first 20 minutes and 9.1% from 7:05 p.m. onward. That same day, the 24th, the table tennis team event (men’s and women’s) at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games also aired on terrestrial TV, with ratings climbing from 8.4% to 9.9%. On 5ch forums, comments piled up questioning soccer’s popularity with lines like “lost to table tennis,” while others pushed back with “not bad for a friendly” and “the competing timeslot didn’t help,” touching off a full-blown ratings comparison war that dragged in baseball and volleyball numbers too.
9/25 (Fri) 19:28 — Nikkan Sports
Viewer ratings for the Japan national soccer team’s international friendly against Uruguay and for the 24th’s Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games broadcasts were revealed on the 25th in a Video Research survey.
The Uruguay match, aired on the Fuji TV network starting at 6:45 p.m., posted a household average rating of 4.1% in the first 20 minutes of the broadcast, and 9.1% from 7:05 p.m. through to the end.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Japan is a baseball kingdom.
Case closed.
Every single game topped 40%.
Wasn't this year's tournament not even on terrestrial TV because no sponsor could outbid Netflix?
Times have changed.
Re: #7
Table tennis was under the same conditions though.
Going by plenty of past examples, there's basically no way streaming numbers beat broadcast.
If it's on terrestrial or BS, most people are watching that instead.
When you think about it, that's a solid number for a soccer friendly.
Was that their first gold medal?
Great effort.
Baseball's done for lol.
The baseball team isn't even a B-team, it's amateurs out there.
Soccer (lol) scores when the ball goes into the goal
→ Only the goal and the ball are actually involved
Baseball scores when a player steps on the base
→ The player is the one directly involved in scoring
https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/23856497/
Former pro baseball player Lee Jong-beom, who also played for the Chunichi Dragons, pushed back, saying: "Of all sports, baseball is the only one where a person directly scores by stepping on home plate. It's soccer, where you're just chasing a ball around, that's the simplistic one."
Is soccer and 'yakyuu' (a mocking term for baseball) really all there is in the world?
And yet baseball has zero popularity worldwide (T_T)
than soccer.
One side is a breathless exchange of ultra-fast rallies from start to finish, the other's just boring ball-kicking that drags out wasted time.
Hmm, I think it comes down to how dominant a sport is, how strong it is.
This men's table tennis team is basically the literal world's best.
Guess that much is settled.
Now the question is where basketball fits in.
Sumo's not even on that list, and it's a ratings monster.
If it weren't up against a soccer friendly, it would've hit double digits.
Might've hit 15%.
Kubo wasn't even playing, it was a bunch of scrubs, so I skipped it.
If he'd played I would've watched.
Soccer topped its timeslot thanks to two late goals.
It drops off sharply at halftime.
Looking at this, table tennis's gold medal decider got totally crushed by soccer.
Huh? By this chart soccer's clearly higher no matter how you look at it.
What kind of numbers magic is this?
You should be lamenting the fact that the table tennis match — beating China for the first time and winning it all for the first time in 60 years — ended up no different from a soccer friendly starting a B-team lineup.
By TVAL (ratings including time-shifted viewing), soccer's actually higher than table tennis.
https://imgur.com/a/WfMZ0Mm
Even at the Asian Games, it's basically the same as being world's best.
And now there's a new one coming up in Matsushima, while Harimoto's been top-tier at the front line for a long time already.
At this point he's probably more famous than any Japanese soccer player.
It's the difference of whether you have a star or not.
Even in table tennis, the numbers follow if you've got the skill.
Soccer just doesn't have a star right now.
Switching IDs and trying hard, huh. So, thoughts on losing to table tennis?
Background and Talking Points
TV ratings are easily swayed by competing timeslots and broadcast schedules, so comparing popularity by the numbers alone calls for caution. As pointed out in the thread, the table tennis team event was up against a Nadeshiko Japan (women’s national soccer) match and an amateur baseball broadcast in the same slot, so the gap doesn’t necessarily reflect a straightforward difference in each sport’s popularity. Ratings also come in multiple flavors beyond the household rating, including TVAL (which factors in time-shifted viewing), and as one poster’s screenshot showed, the rankings can flip depending on which measure you use. The table tennis event in question carries the context of beating China for the first time in 60 years to take the title, and the presence of a high-profile player like Tomokazu Harimoto may have boosted the numbers — while it’s worth keeping in mind that the soccer match was a friendly missing many of the team’s regular starters.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Express+) thread “[TV] Japan national soccer team vs. Uruguay draws 4.1%→9.1% rating, Asian Games table tennis team event (men’s/women’s) draws 8.4%→9.9%.”
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