By year’s end, sports-crazed men will have turned 2006 into the year of the high-definition television.
Fans who want to watch football, hockey and other sports with crystal-clear resolution are driving sales of flat-panel HDTV sets, expected to be one of the best-selling items this holiday season.
“It’s just skyrocketed,” said Luis Castillo, store services manager at the Best Buy store at Potomac Yard mall in Alexandria. “This is the year of the flat-panel TV.”
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Lower prices from retailers such as Best Buy, Circuit City and Wal-Mart are helping, too. A 42-inch, high-definition LCD television from Panasonic was selling last week at Best Buy for less than $1,000, a price that would have seemed ludicrously low a year ago.
Pacific Media Associates, a research firm based in Menlo Park, Calif., estimates Americans will buy more than 3.2 million flat-panel HDTVs in the last three months of 2006 — more than twice the number sold in the final three months of last year.
A survey by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Sports Video Group released in January reported that about 60 percent of HDTV owners consider themselves sports fans and that about half of HDTV owners said sports programming is the primary reason they bought an HDTV.
“Sports fans love high-definition,” said Megan Pollock, HDTV manager with the CEA. “There’s just so much [high-definition] sports content, so we’re continuing to see them as a driving force.”
Indeed, the amount of sports content available in high definition has surged.
ESPN, the world’s most popular sports network, is broadcasting 770 events this year on its high-definition channels, ESPNHD and ESPN2HD. The channels broadcast 474 last year and 184 in 2004. Networks such as CBS, FOX and NBC broadcast most major sporting events in high-definition. Other sports channels, including Versus, the Golf Channel and regional sports networks, are following suit.
ESPN is often inundated with calls when events are broadcast only in standard definition, as still is the case with much of their college basketball coverage.
“Our goal is to stay ahead of the curve, and that’s going to be increasingly hard as people are stopping into Best Buy and grabbing these TVs in record numbers,” said Bryan Burns, vice president of strategic business planning and development for ESPN. “It’s been very difficult for us. People just can’t get enough, and they actually get angry when their game’s not on.”
A survey last month by Leichtman Research Group found that 76 percent of HDTV buyers in the past year were men and that men represent 58 percent of those most likely to purchase one in the next year. Furthermore, 53 percent of HDTV owners and potential owners said they were very interested in watching sports in high-definition.
Norm Plaistowe, a business executive who lives in the Chicago suburb of Riverwoods, Ill., watches sports on a 10-foot high-definition projection system in his house.
“Nobody comes over to my house to watch ’Studio 60 on Sunset,’ ” Mr. Plaistowe said. “They’re much more interested in coming over to watch football or golf.”
Mr. Plaistowe declined to reveal how much his set cost.
“Even my wife doesn’t know how much I paid for it,” he said.
Signs, however, point to a shift in sales. Analysts said lower prices would make HDTV sets more attractive to women.
Television manufacturers and networks already are softening their marketing approach to attract more women. Sony, for instance, is marketing its Bravia television as “the world’s first television for men and women,” though there is no significant difference between that set and most other HDTVs.
“Sports has been the number one driver of HDTV, absolutely, without question,” said Phillip Swann, the publisher of TVpredictions.com, which tracks HDTV trends. “But you’re now seeing more commercials designed for the whole family, or at least men and women, not just men.”
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