Analytics are about to gain even more influence at Fenway Park. The Red Sox have recently hired a local analytics company, Recentive, to optimize the start times of their home games, according to Sports Business Journal.
The goal of the effort is to improve TV ratings, which were up about 74% in the coveted 25-to-54 year-old demo last season. However, those numbers were still down from 2019, the last pre-pandemic season. The Red Sox averaged a 5.25 rating on NESN that year, compared to a 4.23 household rating in 2021.
For the upcoming campaign, most weekday games at Fenway Park are slated to start at 7:00 p.m., assuming MLB owners and the players’ union end this interminable lockout. Weekend contests are expected to largely begin at 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays and 1:00 p.m. on Sundays.
With that in mind, any recommendations likely wouldn't be applied until 2023.
This isn’t the first time the Red Sox have experimented with shifting their start times. They moved most of their home games back to 7:30 p.m. during the horrid 2020 campaign, in an effort to increase home viewership (fans were barred from Fenway that summer due to Covid restrictions).
The initiative wasn’t very effective, considering local ratings fell to an average of 2.14. But that almost certainly had more to do with the Red Sox’ putrid play than when opposing pitchers first took the mound.
Finding the perfect start time is great. But it means nothing if the product is garbage. Is there an analytical equation about that?
