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The NFL is professional sport’s juggernaut largely because it understands the power of destination television. The regular season kicks off on the same day each year — the first Thursday after Labour Day — and follows up with the bulk of its games on Sundays, including the night game on NBC and TSN, before closing out like clockwork with Monday Night Football on ESPN and TSN. From here on out, the NFL delivers a compact 16-game regular schedule that essentially repeats that simple formula 17 times in a concentrated four-month span.

Add fantasy football, betting, video gaming, social media and mobile, and the NFL is second to none at making the most of the attention span of its fan base. Until the playoffs and Super Bowl, the NFL still lags behind CFL TV numbers in Canada, but it is winning over more millennials every year.

Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP/Getty Images

BEARS OF THE WEEK

The U.S. Open is arguably the most ethnocentric of all of the Grand Slams in professional tennis. Its TV traction is directly proportional to the performance of homegrown Americans. Outside of the Williams sisters, that has spelled trouble for the United States Tennis Association and its rights-holders over the past decade.

With just one American in the semifinals in both the men’s and women’s singles competitions this year, there wasn’t a lot to work with to drive domestic TV audiences going into the final weekend of the year’s fourth and final tennis major.

Now, with Serena Williams being upset for the second straight year, ESPN will not be able to salvage a strong TV weekend by leveraging the prospects of her making history by breaking Chris Evert’s record of six U.S. Open singles titles and Steffi Graf’s mark of 22 Grand Slams.