ABC Loses Viewers, Not Money on Pan Am Games From Cuba

When can a sporting event have its viewership drop by 31% and still not result in a financial debacle for the network carrying it?

When the network doesn’t have to pay a rights fee.

That was the case for ABC and the Pan American Games, which averaged a 3.1 rating for eight weekend telecasts from Cuba, concluding last Sunday, according to figures released Thursday by the A.C. Nielsen Co. With each rating point equivalent to 931,000 households, ABC’s coverage was watched in an average of about 2.9 million households. CBS’ telecasts of the 1987 Pan American Games drew a 4.8 rating and were seen in about 4.2 million households.

“Given the current decline in ratings (overall), you really can’t compare this to four years ago,” ABC Sports spokesman Mark Mandel said. “It was a pretty good number.”

Dennis Swanson, ABC Sports president, was reported to be on vacation and unavailable for comment Thursday, but he had said earlier that the network was “close to a break-even situation” for its coverage of the quadrennial athletic competition among the 39 nations of North, Central and South America and the Caribbean.

The key to ABC’s financial situation was that the games were held in Cuba.

In 1989, ABC agreed to pay Cuban organizers about $9 million for the U.S. television rights. A year later, a federal judge upheld the government’s right to block the contract under the Trading with the Enemy Act, which forbids U.S. companies to do business with Cuba. But ABC received permission to televise the event as long as it did not pay a rights fee. ABC did pay for services and equipment rental, which it shared with Turner Network Television.

Meanwhile, Turner Network Television averaged 654,000 households for each of its 14 telecasts, a 1.2 rating in the 54.5 million households receiving the cable network.