NFL Struggles to keep up with its past years ratings

Christopher Jones
Mesa Legend

 

Photo Chris JonesGiven the overwhelming popularity of the NFL during the past several decades, the drop in television ratings during the first six weeks of this season comes as stunning news.  Problematic mainly because the bulk of income for the NFL as it has grown into America’s most prosperous and popular sports league has been its television and broadcasting deals. Deals that would depend on high ratings to ensure a healthy future for the league. In this society, our entertainment now caters to our own schedules with the introduction of streaming services such as Netflix, and Hulu. In addition to the ability to record shows on cable television, pro football has been like gold for TV ratings, and the league’s handsome rewards for these contracts totaling $60 billion through 2022-2023 with networks CBS, NBC, FOX, and ESPN shows that.

NFL football
Courtesey of Austin Kirk, Modified by Tania Ritko

With an exponential growth in popularity in the NFL, anything other than an increase in popularity leads to the question about whether pro football has finally hit its ceiling and will soon experience the first decline in a very long time, if ever. The easy answer is to say that it is still too soon to know even as NFL prime time games suffer a double-digit decline after the league averaged 23.7 million in the 2015 season, only to follow it with a 10.2 million that tuned into the New York Giants vs. Green Bay Packers game that aired Sunday Night game on October 9. After the first month of the season, ratings were down an average of 11 percent from last year as a collective.

Suffering the most was ESPN, who went down 21 percent. Even if the league has reached their peak and sees some drop-off among viewership and fans, it still sees the biggest draw in entertainment. “Despite the decline in NFL ratings, it is still the number one entertainment property, in all of television,” said Neal Pilson, president of Pilson communications, a sports consulting company.  Pilson, who also served as the president of CBS sports, spoke on what might have caused the decline: “we don’t really know… I can’t give you a specific reason why the NFL ratings are down, it’s very hard to find one reason. It’s not one thing to figure out. It is a confluence of multiple factors.”

The NFL could be concerned yes, but it is not an existential problem for the sport.
At least not in the near future considering the growth of the NFL has expanded through decades and that any evidence of a decline in the popularity is just beginning to surface. A big reason for this sudden drop in ratings could be a side effect of showing anything other than the unprecedented election sweeping all of America. Not everyone could watch the presidential debate on Sunday, October 9 and watch a Sunday night football game as well. NFL executives realize this, prompted Brian Rolapp and Howard Katz to send an internal memo to all 32 NFL franchises explaining the situation. Emphasizing that the presidential election has commanded A large amount of the public’s attention.

The memo reads: “Prime time windows have clearly been affected the most while declines during Sunday afternoon windows have been more modest. While our [broadcast] partners, like us would have liked to see higher ratings, they remain confident in the NFL and unconcerned about a long-term issue.”The league also noted that the decline is similar to that of past election cycles. Saying: “In 2000, during the campaign between George W. Bush and Al Gore, NBC was down four percent, CBS was down 10 percent, ABC was down seven percent and ESPN was down 11 percent.”
However, it isn’t the main cause. Another factor could be the growing amount of players protesting the national anthem started by 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, which inspired the #boycottNFL movement by those who opposed Kaepernick’s actions.

For the first time since 1998 NFL did not have a Peyton Manning to advertise, and for the first time since 2002 an opener did not include New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who was suspended the first four games of the 2016 season due to his involvement in “Deflategate”. These two quarterbacks being so popular, their absences were definitely making an impact in ratings, although Brady’s return was expected to increase ratings dramatically to make up for missed time. Considering Tom Brady and players like him, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Phillip Rivers, Drew Brees, and Joe Flacco, they all have something other than being marquee quarterbacks, but more importantly they are all in their 30’s.  The youngest player being Joe Flacco, who will be 32 in the January of 2017.

The question NFL is approached with is how long NFL fans will continue to be interested in this group of fantastic quarterbacks as a collective. The up-and-coming stars such as Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, Carson Wentz, Dak Prescott, and team mate Ezekiel Elliot, among other studs, just aren’t good enough to draw those same amount of crowds  To add another thought on why the NFL’s ratings would be down is that maybe they’ve shown too much football to begin with.  Traditionally there are three broadcast slots on any given Sunday, and four when a game is played in London. During the week there are two more in Monday Night football and Thursday Night football. A program that is hard to keep up with as a fan with NFL tossing it around from CBS to NBC, and then on the NFL Network.

With college football games that are played on Saturdays on top, the amount of football can become too much. All these factored together hints towards a gloomy future for the NFL if they aren’t addressed quickly before they can no longer use the election as an excuse. “NFL is still a warrior sport,” Pilson Said as ratings still boast some of the biggest numbers TV can offer in the days where TV is losing popularity as it is, especially with young people. To combat that the NFL has partnered with Twitter, giving them the rights to broadcast Thursday Night games, which are not counted in ratings. But other than that for the time being it looks like no one will challenge the NFL at any time in the near future for ratings, and is still racing against its own past.

  • Mesa Legend Staff

    These are archived stories from Mesa Legend editions before Fall 2018. See article for corresponding author.

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