Reeling ’em in

Former wide receiver turned sportscaster Cris Carter termed Sunday’s Pro Bowl “unwatchable,” according to CBSsports.com.

Nevertheless, an average of 12.5 million viewers tuned into the annual NFL all-star affair, according to overnight ratings projections, the NFL and NBC said.

If you are Hawaii, a 32-year sponsor of the Pro Bowl, there are important lessons to be taken from those numbers as you go about negotiations for a new contract.

And, though you might wonder given the noticeable lack of artistry in the AFC’s 59-41 victory, the points go beyond the old P.T. Barnum quote, “Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public.”

The preliminary Nielsen numbers suggest that this time of the year there is no better brand for the Hawaii Tourism Authority to hitch its wagon to than the NFL if it wants to reach a sizeable segment of the viewing public. Especially the key 18-49 age group demographic, where the ratings say the game clobbered the competition from the Pro Bowl pregame show on.

For three consecutive years now, the numbers tell us that by January, fans are so fixated on pro football they will apparently watch anything with an NFL label attached. You could probably put first-round playoff losers in a sand-castle-building competition on French Frigate Shoals and get a couple million households to tune in.

To put it in perspective, the Pro Bowl, even with a slight decline from 2011, had its second best showing in 12 years and lured more viewers for a second consecutive year than Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.

Which says the NFL knew both its audience and what it was doing in 2010 when it inserted the Pro Bowl in between the conference championships and the Super Bowl.

We can wonder about the validity of some of the survey numbers thrown around on how much visitors who come here for the Pro Bowl spend and by how many millions it enriches state coffers. But there is no denying that, in the overall picture, the Pro Bowl brings people here and that the TV exposure makes for compelling marketing to a desireable audience in the winter.

We can wish out loud, as Gov. Neil Abercrombie has, that the state didn’t have to spend $4 million plus commit another $152,500 in stadium operating costs to bring the Pro Bowl here. And, once upon a time in the early 1980s, when the NFL was desperate to save its down-and-out all-star game, Hawaii didn’t.

Of course, back then air and water were free at service stations, too. And so was the service.

These days, the NFL is the most popular brand in professional sports, as the sea of official jersey-wearing fans at Aloha Stadium attested. If you want to do business with the NFL, it decides how high its partners will jump. Fortune 500 companies gladly pay a pretty price to align with it on any number of fronts.

If dealing with the NFL is sometimes like negotiating with the former East Germany, it is smoothed somewhat by the $1.6 million in charity grants and other assistance the league has spread around here over the past 20 years.

The governor has cited the state’s relationship with the Sony Open in Hawaii as the ideal partnership and that is definitely something to work toward. Sony helps produce about $1 million per year for Friends of Hawaii Charities. The state pays $425,000 to help further the Sony event, which averaged 537,000 viewers per round on the Golf Channel this year.

The latest Pro Bowl figures underline two things: the state has done well with the NFL, and leverage in this negotiation, now more than ever, resides with 345 Park Ave. in New York.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.