A new study shows that the average American sports fan will spend around 80 days of their lives watching commercials – that’s a ton of time for people to spend watching ads, and it’s even more interesting considering that content on demand, or recorded content, can feature snippets of ads and/or the ability to skip ads.
Per WSN:
How Many Ads Do People Have to Watch per Game?
|
Sport |
Average game length (m) |
Average action length (m) |
Advertising time (m) |
Time spent watching game |
Time spent watching ads |
|
Basketball |
135 |
48 |
44 |
36% |
32% |
|
Football |
192 |
60 |
60 |
31% |
31% |
|
Hockey |
120 |
60 |
30 |
50% |
25% |
|
Wrestling |
180 |
100 |
40 |
56% |
22% |
|
MMA |
120 |
75 |
23 |
63% |
19% |
|
Baseball |
183 |
18 |
33 |
10% |
18% |
|
Tennis |
165 |
139 |
13 |
84% |
8% |
|
Soccer |
110 |
95 |
8 |
86% |
7% |
The study goes on to break it down by sort with football (NFL) ranking as the second highest time spent watching ads vs the game, with basketball (NBA and NCAA at the forefront) showing the same amount of time spent watching ads as actually watching the sport (32% of the time watching ads vs. 36% watching the game), a staggering statistic.
Basketball stand alone, as fans are flooded with ads throughout the game, on the court, jerseys, digital screens, on the sidelines, on the hoops, and on and on. The study also points to how some networks even run ads during free throws.
Surprisingly, soccer/futbol is the sport that has the least amount of ads, with 86% of the time spent watching the game actually being played, despite it’s immense global popularity and how it often dominates the conversation on sports social media platforms.
How Many Ads Do We Have to Watch in Our Lifetimes?
|
Sport |
Games in a season |
Minutes of Ads in a game |
Ads minutes watched in a season |
Ads minutes watched over a lifetime |
Ads in Days over a lifetime |
|
Baseball |
162 |
32.5 |
5265 |
315,900 |
219 |
|
Basketball |
82 |
43.5 |
3567 |
214,020 |
149 |
|
Hockey |
82 |
30 |
2460 |
147,600 |
103 |
|
Tennis |
112 |
13 |
1456 |
87,360 |
61 |
|
Football |
17 |
60 |
1020 |
61,200 |
43 |
|
MMA |
42 |
22.5 |
945 |
56,700 |
39 |
|
Wrestling |
12 |
40 |
480 |
28,800 |
20 |
|
Soccer |
34 |
7.5 |
255 |
15,300 |
11 |
You can check out the full report, which includes infographics and additional data and statistics, over at WSN’s official website.
