Candidates Pitch on Sports Networks

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Regional sports networks are becoming an attractive venue for candidates to reach swing voters. The amounts the campaigns are spending on regional sports networks are still tiny when compared with the hundreds of millions of dollars being dedicated to TV advertising across the board. It's likely regional sports networks have pulled in well under $10 million in election ads, according to estimates from people familiar with their political sales. Nevertheless, regional sports networks offer unusually ardent audiences. Their viewers usually watch live so they don't zap commercials. Most of them are men, a difficult demographic for any marketer to reach. And they may be swing voters, too. More viewers of Fox Sports Net, for instance, are "middle of the road" politically compared with most other cable networks, according to Mediamark Research & Intelligence.


Candidates Pitch on Sports Networks