Viewing figures for Froch vs Ward any ideas.

[h smithy]

Anyone got any ideas of the viewing figures for Froch vs Ward?

[coghaugen11]

250,000-500,000 I'd guess

[earsjohn]

Anyone got any ideas of the viewing figures for Froch vs Ward?

They're not released until later in the week.

Khan v Peterson did 237k for the live show and 38k for the Sunday 4pm repeat.

[smcb80]

they're bound to include skyplus recordings in the figures, which must account for how most watch sky these days

[orbtastic]

250,000-500,000 I'd guess

I would be surprised if that many people pulled an all-nighter for the live show. 500,000 is about 8% of the UK's population. It seems an awful high number. Even 250,000 is a lot.

Your maths is way off.

Decimal point in the wrong place.

It's less than 1%.

[Glyn Leach]

250,000-500,000 I'd guess

I would be surprised if that many people pulled an all-nighter for the live show. 500,000 is about 8% of the UK's population. It seems an awful high number. Even 250,000 is a lot.

Eddie's tweeting that it was Sky's highest figure of the year, without stating what it is. Helpful and not.

[leforge]

250,000-500,000 I'd guess

I would be surprised if that many people pulled an all-nighter for the live show. 500,000 is about 8% of the UK's population. It seems an awful high number. Even 250,000 is a lot.

Eddie's tweeting that it was Sky's highest figure of the year, without stating what it is. Helpful and not.

I am sure Haye v Wlad was but that was ppv.

[Glyn Leach]

I would be surprised if that many people pulled an all-nighter for the live show. 500,000 is about 8% of the UK's population. It seems an awful high number. Even 250,000 is a lot.

Eddie's tweeting that it was Sky's highest figure of the year, without stating what it is. Helpful and not.

I am sure Haye v Wlad was but that was ppv.

I'm sure there are all manner of provisos to be honest. But I'd be surprised if it beat the Haye-Wlad and Groves-DeGale PPVs, which got massive pre-fight attention and were not on in the middle of the night.

[leforge]

Eddie's tweeting that it was Sky's highest figure of the year, without stating what it is. Helpful and not.

I am sure Haye v Wlad was but that was ppv.

I'm sure there are all manner of provisos to be honest. But I'd be surprised if it beat the Haye-Wlad and Groves-DeGale PPVs, which got massive pre-fight attention and were not on in the middle of the night.

Grove v Degale did not get as many buy as viewers Khan got last weekend.

[earsjohn]

250,000-500,000 I'd guess

I would be surprised if that many people pulled an all-nighter for the live show. 500,000 is about 8% of the UK's population. It seems an awful high number. Even 250,000 is a lot.

Eddie's tweeting that it was Sky's highest figure of the year, without stating what it is. Helpful and not.

He'll be using overnight figures - these are very interim in nature and do not account for delayed viewings and don't account for things like group viewings (I believe).

There was a recent thread that had Sky boxing viewing figures for 2011. But the best comparison will be with the Khan fight, also overnight, shown the previous week. That had 237k. Beat that and they've done well.

[leforge]

I would be surprised if that many people pulled an all-nighter for the live show. 500,000 is about 8% of the UK's population. It seems an awful high number. Even 250,000 is a lot.

Eddie's tweeting that it was Sky's highest figure of the year, without stating what it is. Helpful and not.

He'll be using overnight figures - these are very interim in nature and do not account for delayed viewings and don't account for things like group viewings (I believe).

There was a recent thread that had Sky boxing viewing figures for 2011. But the best comparison will be with the Khan fight, also overnight, shown the previous week. That had 237k. Beat that and they've done well.

The Khan figures was very good.

[Glyn Leach]

I am sure Haye v Wlad was but that was ppv.

I'm sure there are all manner of provisos to be honest. But I'd be surprised if it beat the Haye-Wlad and Groves-DeGale PPVs, which got massive pre-fight attention and were not on in the middle of the night.

Grove v Degale did not get as many buy as viewers Khan got last weekend.

Thanks for that. Do you know how many it got? Also, with that figure for the Peterson fight, the PPV buys claimed by Primetime for Khan fights are more believable.

[leforge]

I'm sure there are all manner of provisos to be honest. But I'd be surprised if it beat the Haye-Wlad and Groves-DeGale PPVs, which got massive pre-fight attention and were not on in the middle of the night.

Grove v Degale did not get as many buy as viewers Khan got last weekend.

Thanks for that. Do you know how many it got? Also, with that figure for the Peterson fight, the PPV buys claimed by Primetime for Khan fights are more believable.

Khan v Peterson got 237000 viewers fifth highest on sky sports 1 that week straight from BARB site. Khan primetime figures were reasonable. Not sure the exact figure but it wont been good. It was a really weak ppv Groves bill.

[Glyn Leach]

Khan v Peterson got 237000 viewers fifth highest on sky sports 1 that week straight from BARB site. Khan primetime figures were reasonable. Not sure the exact figure but it wont been good. It was a really weak ppv Groves bill.

That's the figure I meant, Groves DeGale Clev PPV. Shame, complain when the press and media doesn't get behind a fight, but they definitely did with Groves-DeGale. Would have been nice to get a decent buy rate as a result

[earsjohn]

How accurate are BARB figures? A certain number of people have a box that monitors their TV usage, right? I'd love to know the margin of error; I bet it's huge.

From the BARB website:

Viewing estimates are obtained from a panel of television owning households representing the viewing behaviour of the 26+ million households within the UK. The reporting panel of 5,100 homes is selected to be representative of each ITV and BBC region. The service covers viewing within private households only.

Panel homes are selected via a multi-stage, stratified and un-clustered sample design so that the panel is representative of all television households across the whole of the UK. A range of individual and household characteristics are deployed as panel controls to ensure that the panel remains representative. As estimates for the large majority of panel controls are not available from Census data it is necessary to conduct a bespoke survey (the Establishment Survey) to obtain this information.

The BARB Establishment Survey is carried out on a continuous basis and involves some 53,000 interviews per year. It is a random probability survey which means that every private residential household within the UK has a chance of being selected for interview. The survey ensures that any changes taking place in the population can be identified so that the panel can be updated and adjusted to ensure that it continues to reflect the television-owning population. In addition to being the prime source of television population information, such as the number of multi-channel homes, the BARB Establishment Survey also generates the potential recruits from which panel member homes are selected.

When a household agrees to join the panel their television sets, PVRs, VCRs etc. are electronically monitored by a meter. Each TV in a home is connected to its own meter which holds an electronic record for the set. The meter is a small box which is put close to each television set and connected to it. The meter automatically identifies and collects information about the channel that the panel member is viewing.

All panel household residents and their guests register their presence when in a room with a television set on. Each individual does this by pressing a button allocated to them on the peoplemeter handset. The metering system monitors all registrations made by each individual for each television in the home.

VCR, DVDR, PVR playback and "catch-up" VOD services is reported if it takes place within 7 days of the original broadcast. This viewing (known as timeshift) is then added to the live data to produce the final, minute-by-minute consolidated audience, available 8 days after the original transmission date. Consolidated data is the ‘BARB Gold Standard’ that is used by the industry to report and trade on.
Not sure what the margin for error is.

[Glyn Leach]

Cheers Ears. Macho, I bet that makes you a true believer in this excellent method of estimating very very accurately indeed how many people are watching a fight. I can sense your satisfaction from here.

[fightscorecollector]

other than BARB , who else can release the figures?

[stujones]

I've heard (not sure how true) that people with the BARB boxes get paid to be part of the survery.

I bet even legal online TV f's it up a bit. Live BBC 1 player etc.

[earsjohn]

Cheers Ears. Macho, I bet that makes you a true believer in this excellent method of estimating very very accurately indeed how many people are watching a fight. I can sense your satisfaction from here.

As you may have guessed, I am very sceptical about the accuracy of BARB's product. I'd go so far as to say that I think their product is a load of shit. I take said shit with a very large pinch of salt. And the smaller/more niche a programme is, the larger that pinch of salt becomes. With a programme like Corrie, I reckon they could get the margin for error down to a percent or three. With a niche programme airing at, for example, two in the morning, they could be miles out (up or down).

The margin of error in a the BARB figures = 1 divided by the square root of the number in the sample. So for the sample of 5100 households included within the BARB figures, 1/71.4 = +-1.4%. This gets skewed at particularly low numbers, but for the purposes of live boxing figures, it holds.

The key thing is consistency - the mechanism and sample selection process for choosing viewers is in line with previous methods. Timeshifted viewing is incorporated, so long as it is undertaken within 7 days of the original broadcast (numbers watching live boxing time shifted by more than a week are likely to be so small as to be staistically insignificant).

It may not be perfectly accurate, but it's as accurate (or otherwise) as in the past and therefore can be used as a comparison.

So looking at the Khan-Peterson figures - 237k viewed the live show, either at the time of the broadcast or within 7 days. This produces a range of 233,681-240,318. That seems reasonable from a Sky Sports subscriber base (across all platforms - Sky, Virgin, etc) of roughly 8-8.5m (75% of all cable, satellite, digital subscribers).