Live TV events

Live TV Events covers live broadcast sports games with a large number of people watching at a particular time across different counties across the United States.

For example, during the basketball game Villanova Wildcats vs Baylor Bears on March 27, 2021, there were over 150,000 people in Cook County, Illinois watching the live broadcast of the basketball game, as well as over 130,000 people were watching the game in Los Angeles County, California, etc.

Note: Live TV Events covers live games. Live TV Events doesn't include replays of sporting events.

Live TV Events provide viewership data that is attached to events in other categories. It covers events in the sports category. Live TV Events is not actually a category itself but consists of rich information on who is watching events in different locations.

Live TV Events shows the number of people watching sports events per county in the US.

Live TV Events include live streaming and broadcast TV games (such as MLS Soccer games streamed on Apple TV).

Coverage

Event types

We have two different types of broadcast information. Major sports league viewership uses one model and top viewership sports uses a different approach. This affects how the viewership is calculated and which counties viewership is shown in. For the major sports leagues, viewership per county uses TV schedule information to predict where people will watch a game. Live TV Events shows viewership only for the counties where we predict people will watch a game. Top viewership sports, unlike the major sports leagues games, always show viewership in all counties in the US.

Seven major sports leagues

Live TV Events covers all televised sports games from the following seven sports leagues. The broadcasts may have status of either scheduled or cancelled:

NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, D1 NCAA Basketball, D1 NCAA Football

Top viewership sports

Live TV Events extends coverage to some popular sports games beyond the seven major sports leagues. These are events that have high viewership and are assumed to be televised nationally (in all counties). The broadcasts may have status of either predicted or cancelled

Top viewership sports are typically one-off events or are finals of their respective competitions, such as the 2019 NCAA Women's Basketball Final:

SPORTS TYPE	SPORTS LEAGUE	EVENT TYPE
auto-racing	nascar indy-car	NASCAR Cup Series Races Indy 500
horse-racing	kentucky-derby preakness-stakes belmont-stakes	Kentucky Derby Horse Racing Preakness Stakes Horse Racing Belmont Stakes Horse Racing
basketball	ncaa-women	NCAA Women's Basketball Division 1 Tournament Semifinals and Finals
baseball	ncaa	NCAA Baseball World Series Finals
softball	ncaa-women	NCAA Softball World Series Finals
boxing	boxing	Popular boxing games, for example Premier Boxing Champions
mma	ufc	Popular UFC games, for example UFC 246
tennis	wimbledon us-open	Men’s and Women’s Singles Finals
golf	masters pga-championship us-open pga-tour	Augusta Masters all days of competition PGA Championship all days of competition USA Open all days of competition Arnold Palmer weekend days of competition Genesis Invitational weekend days of competition Pebble Beach weekend days of competition BMW Championship weekend days of competition Farmers Insurance weekend days of competition
soccer	fifa-world-cup-women fifa-world-cup uefa-champions-league concacaf-champions-league concacaf-gold-cup copa-america	FIFA World Cup Semis onward UEFA Champions League Final CONCACAF Champions League Final CONCACAF Gold Cup Final Copa America Final UWNST World Cup Playoff matches

Note: The sports type column is shown in the event_label field in the broadcast record.

Date range coverage

Live TV Events via the Broadcasts API covers sports games that started from November 1, 2021, to 90 days in the future (90 days from the current date).

Location

Live TV Events are available in the US.

Broadcast status

Broadcasts have three possible status values:

• scheduled For those broadcasts where we know the date, time, and location of a TV broadcast based on TV schedule information. We enrich our data with television listings to determine their televised time and location (county).

• predicted For these broadcasts where we predict their televised time and location (county). It means we don’t have detailed TV schedule information for the sports event. These events have high viewership and are assumed to be televised nationally (in all counties), they are typically one-off events or are finals of their respective competitions. We calculate viewership per county based on many factors including the amount of sports fans in different counties. This information is not as precise as those with the scheduled broadcast status but should give a reasonably accurate prediction of who will be watching these large events. You may want to use the broadcast_status parameter to indicate the confidence of a broadcast airing; you can build this as a feature or treat scheduled broadcasts differently from predicted.

• cancelled The broadcast is no longer scheduled to be televised.

Date & time

Start date	Yes	Yes	Broadcast records have a start date and time in both UTC and local time where the broadcast is scheduled. Physical events have a start date and time in both UTC and local time in the event timezone.
End date	No	Yes	The Broadcast record doesn’t have an end date or time available. Physical events have an end date and time in both UTC and local time in the event timezone.
Start time	Yes	Yes
End time	No	Yes
Predicted end time	No	Yes	For sports events where there is no official end time available, we predict end times using our machine learning models and intelligent algorithms. PredictHQ’s Predicted End Times feature provides end times for the physical event in it’s local timezone.
Timezone	Yes	Yes

Location / geopoint

The broadcast record presents the number of people who are watching the live sports game in a county. The latitude and longitude provided with the broadcast record under the geopoint element references the center of the county. For example, the center of Erie County in New York state shown in the later geopoint example.

The associated sports event is taking place in a physical location with the latitude and longitude pointing to the specific location. The venue name and address is also attached on the event record.

You can search the API or our WebApp by places at any hierarchy level. The API returns the results at county level for the county where the place is located. For example, if you search for the broadcast in Bell City, Los Angeles, the API returns all broadcasts in Los Angeles County that match your other criteria.

Ranking

Predicted Viewership

Predicted Viewership is the number of people who watch the live broadcast game in a county. Broadcast records have Predicted Viewership available:

  "geopoint": {
      "lon": -78.77966,
      "lat": 42.75824
  },

Timeframe for broadcasts

The Live TV Events machine learning models predicted the viewership for sports games before they happen. We generate broadcast records 90 days before a sports game starts. However, we update viewership daily from 14 days before the event starts, providing more accurate data. To get the most accurate data we recommend using the broadcast viewership from 14 days before the event or sooner. You can use the viewership numbers that we generate between 90 days and 14 days before the event as a high-level, less accurate indication of viewership.

Physical event details

The Broadcasts API also returns the physical event details accordingly with all available information. You don’t need an event subscription to access relevant information. The physical event details include:

• Event ID: event_id of the physical event can be used to find all broadcasts nationwide for that specific sport game.

• Label: event.label for the physical sports event provides more information about the sports type and league. It can be used to find broadcasts for the specific sports type.

• Entity: The physical sports events have venue entities available.

• PHQ Rank: The physical sports events have PHQ Rank available.

• Local Rank: The physical sports events have Local Rank available.

• Predicted Attendance: The physical sports events have Predicted Attendance available.

The following example shows a broadcast response with these details:

{
    "count": 1,
    "next": null,
    "previous": null,
    "overflow": false,
    "results": [
        {
            "broadcast_id": "u5aCvebffuNFpGSGNQFiU4",
            "updated": "2020-11-30T06:58:28Z",
            "first_seen": "2020-11-26T01:29:23Z",
            "dates": {
                "start": "2020-02-02T23:30:00Z",
                "start_local": "2020-02-02T15:30:00",
                "timezone": "America/Los_Angeles"
            },
            "location": {
                "geopoint": {
                    "lon": -122.4425,
                    "lat": 37.77823
                },
                "place_hierarchies": [
                    ["6295630","6255149","6252001","5332921","5391997"]
                ],
                "places": [
                    {
                        "place_id": "5391997",
                        "type": "county",
                        "name": "San Francisco County",
                        "county": "City and County of San Francisco",
                        "region": "California",
                        "country": "US"
                    }
                ],
                "country": "US"
            },
            "phq_viewership": 300609,
            "record_status": "active",
            "broadcast_status": "scheduled",
            "event": {
                "event_id": "svbfg9xT4YSVUeeAKp",
                "title": "Super Bowl - 49ers vs Kansas City Chiefs",
                "category": "sports",
                "labels": [
                    "american-football",
                    "nfl",
                    "sport"
                ],
                "dates": {
                    "start": "2020-02-02T23:30:00Z",
                    "end": "2020-02-03T03:11:00Z",
                    "start_local": "2020-02-02T18:30:00",
                    "end_local": "2020-02-02T22:11:00",
                    "predicted_end_local": "2020-02-02T21:25:00",
                    "timezone": "America/New_York"
                },
                "location": {
                    "geopoint": {
                        "lon": -80.23886040000002,
                        "lat": 25.9579665
                    },
                    "place_hierarchies": [
                        ["6295630","6255149","6252001","4155751","4164238","4161298"],
                        ["6295630","6255149","6252001","4155751","4149007","4155966"]
                    ],
                    "country": "US"
                },
                "entities": [
                    {
                        "entity_id": "wVgG7p8ZKRKEPPrNDq4my9",
                        "type": "venue",
                        "name": "Hard Rock Stadium",
                        "formatted_address": "347 Don Shula Dr\nMiami Gardens, FL 33056\nUnited States of America"
                    }
                ],
                "phq_attendance": 65326,
                "phq_rank": 86,
                "local_rank": 100,
                "aviation_rank": 99
            }
        }
    ]
}