{"id":24623,"date":"2011-11-29T11:59:39","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T17:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24623"},"modified":"2011-11-29T07:03:38","modified_gmt":"2011-11-29T13:03:38","slug":"the-ongoing-bluff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24623","title":{"rendered":"The Ongoing Bluff"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Strib’s Mike Kaszuba on why the Vikes threats to move are likely as not just a cheap bluff,<\/a> not unlike your teenager threatening to run away.<\/p>\n

It’s about the numbers:<\/p>\n

\n

If the National Football League were to let the Minnesota Vikings leave the state over the team’s inability to get public financing for a new stadium, it would be tampering with what has been a golden goose.<\/p>\n

Television ratings for the Vikings in recent years have been among the best in the league, according to the NFL and Scarborough Sports Marketing, a New York-based subsidiary of the Nielsen Company and Arbitron Inc., the media and advertising ratings giants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And it goes beyond market share:<\/p>\n

\n

The percentage of Minnesotans who watched a game on television, attended a game or listened to one in a given year consistently tops 60 percent, said Bill Nielsen, vice president for sales at Scarborough Sports Marketing. “Over [the past] 11 years of data, the lowest [rating] was three-fifths of the market,” he said.<\/p>\n

More importantly, Nielsen said, polling shows that Vikings fans fit the demographics most sought by television advertisers. “Vikings fans make more money per household than the total [Minnesota] market, their homes are worth more, they’re more likely to be employed full time, more likely to be college educated,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing; TV ratings don’t make the Vikings move-proof, by any means. \u00a0But the Vikings are trying to shake up the voters with the threats (see teenager reference, above).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Strib’s Mike Kaszuba on why the Vikes threats to move are likely as not just a cheap bluff, not unlike your teenager threatening to run away. It’s about the numbers: If the National Football League were to let the Minnesota Vikings leave the state over the team’s inability to get public financing for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24623"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24626,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24623\/revisions\/24626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}