The NFL Ratings Plummet Explained
So one of the stories that has creeped up in the shadows this season has been an 11% drop in ratings for NFL programming. The NFL is still a ratings giant, but this sudden drop is big enough to be noticeable and may be causing concern among the league.
There have been a lot of speculation already as to why the ratings are dropping. Most make a little sense. I think the clown-show that is the presidential race is a notable culprit. Why watch Packers/Giants or Falcons/Saints when you can hate watch the debates. But really, I think it might be the first leak of a much bigger problem that may finally be coming home to roost. The NFL’s product is currently pretty bad, and it’s getting worse.
I’m going to link this article from Awful Announcing which says pretty much most of what I feel about all this. It’s good, you should read it. I agree with everything stated in it except the outrageous claim that Super Bowl 50 was the worst game played in the author’s lifetime. Unless the Author was born after Steelers/Seahawks and is somehow an internet writing prodigy I think SB50 was pretty okay. Not great, but calling it the worst game ever played is a huge insult to the outstanding defense played in that game on both sides. Seahawks pounding the Broncos was worse and far more boring. Colts/Bears the same way. Steelers Seahawks was the quality of a Thursday Night Football game and it remains the worst super bowl I’ve watched (As an Unbiased Observer, fuck you Ravens). But I digress.
The NFL’s product is bad and it is getting worse because the owners only see the money potential of gimmicks and advertising without realizing that good football will always be the best seller. Thursday Night Football is trash. The teams aren’t at full capacity after 4 days rest and the poor quality of play shows. An over saturation of primetime games leads to some truly woeful matchups as well, on top of fans already getting very sick of certain teams constant primetime presence (NFCE, Patriots, Packers, other big media markets). London games used to be a cute novelty. Now they are happening several times a year so the NFL can push into a market that will never be that big.
Nobody knows what a catch is. The rules of the game keep getting more and more complex, making it harder and harder for the not-full time refs to do their jobs well. Many of the rule changes make no damn sense. Why doesn’t the NFL realize that Football and Sports are at heart an entertainment industry and then restrict players ability to entertain? Excessive celebration was only called when the celebrating hurt someone or delayed the game when I was a kid. Now Antonio Brown can only 2 pump it. Key and Peele did that 3 pump sketch as a hyperbole joke about the NFL’s restrictions, and the NFL seemed to think it was a business plan. Cam became a sensation last season because he danced a lot. People clearly want to see it, even if it’s to hate it. Look at Pro Wrestling. The sport is fake, but it has a huge fanbase because the performers are encouraged to be performers. They entertain. Let the damn players show personality. Odell Beckham Jr has become a media hog because he expresses some and nobody can shut up about it. Give the people what they want you dumb idiots.
Other penalties suck too. I think 60-70% of roughing the passer calls are bullshit. Replays showing the defender basically already in midair unable to change direction when the QB lets go, and they get penalized for obeying the laws of physics. Illegal contact is still stupid, and an instant first down despite being 5 yards.
And lastly, the fucking commercials. Holy Shit, watching a regular game on TV has become unwatchable. I have to either watch Redzone or go to the bar so I can watch other games when mine is on break. There is no excuse for TD-Commerical-Kickoff-Commercial. By week 4 we’ve seen all the commercials already. If I see that guy say “She was born on Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Day” again I’m going to burn down a Subway.
Some have predicted the death of the NFL thanks to concussions. Predicting a fall within the next decade. This ratings thing is the first sign it might happen. How the NFL responds to this will be telling. Will they get their heads out of their asses and focus on improving the product? Or keep plowing ahead like idiots until the damage gets too big and they genuinely lose money and things change far more drastically? I want the former, but it’s going to be the latter.
Also Brady isn’t the GOAT
TV as a whole is dying out. I’d gladly pay $10-15 a month to watch all NFL games both live and recorded on my PC/tablet/phone/car/fridge or whatever. But cable? Fuck that noise I don’t even watch TV aside from football.
Instead, the NFL wants a gorillion dollars a season with no live viewing, and time restrictions, etc. I tried NFL rewind a few years back and it was horrendous.
Now if I can’t catch a game at the bar or whatever, I just stream it. Yeah the quality is shit, but I’m not paying a bunch of hard cash to go from 480 to 1080. And if I miss a game, you can always find a torrent or YouTube it even. I absolutely don’t mind paying for content, but if you make the distribution WORSE than the free pirate shit, and add things like needing to wait 24hrs after MNF aired to watch on Rewind, don’t expect my money.
Lastly, and this is coming from a die hard Lions fan, Brady is GOAT and gets at minimum 1 more ring before retirement.
honestly? one of the biggest draws of sports like football (for me) is not just the game itself, but also the personalities & celebrations & whatnot. the game on its own is okay, but it’s like trying to make box mac n cheese with buttery water. letting the players do things like having a personality or dancing? good, quality mac & cheese with milk added.
tldr no fun nfl : milkless mac
Brady Isn’t The GOAT = the new Sexy Rexy.
Last Wembley game I was at (and hasn’t EVERY London game sold out within hours, if not MINUTES, by the way?), Miami getting hoofed by the Jets last year, the ads were horrendous. Right at the hight of shouty wall-to-wall FANDUELDRAFTKINGSFANDUELDRAFTKINGSFANDUEL advertising, all the replays were tagged with DraftKings. And you just DO NOT pull that crap at The Home of Football. It’s bad enough that most of the team sponsors in the EPL are currently gambling websites of some form or other – I mean, is’d not like gambling addictions wrecked the lives of Paul Merson, Tony Adams or anyone else, is it OH WAIT.
To play devil’s advocate, don’t the major soccer stadiums all have a ring around the field that display ads throughout the entire match? Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the ad-free telecast of the EPL, and the sponsors on the jerseys don’t bother me, but it’s not like the EPL does significantly less sponsorship pimping than the NFL it seems to me. Maybe it’s worse when you’re actually AT the NFL game than watching it on TV?
Sources of sponsorship in English football have come and gone in waves. Time was around the mid-90s when they were mostly beers: Holsten Pils for Spurs, Coors for Chelsea, Vaux for Sunderland, Newcastle Brown Ale, Carlsberg for Liverpool, Everton still has Chang today, QPR had Guinness at one point, Nottingham Forest had Labatt’s, Ipswich Town had Greene King for the 30 seconds they were in the top flight… hell, not so long ago, Carling sponsored the whole damn league and the League Cup. Up in Scotland, Rangers and Celtic both had Tennent’s for a good long while.
Right now it seems to be payday loan firms, online casinos and bookies – many of the latter Chinese-based, so most UK fans can’t even read the ads anyway, but those boards are catering for the Far East markets (like when Nintendo had a hefty stake in the Mariners and the hoardings had Japanese on’em). The defending champs Leicester City are Thai-owned, but King Power is an energy company.
To be honest, it sickens me that teams go for sponsorships that can be so destructive of lives. It’s like in the pursuit of filthy lucre, they’ve either forgotten or flat-ass-out don’t give an airborne shit that their backers have been the ruin of many a player, manager and/or supporter.
Personal theory: while not a footie fan, I do watch a fair amount of Sky Sports/Box Nation coverage of British boxing matches, and all the adverts there are also all for betting sites (my favorite is the one of the two dudes in the raft).
Big difference between those formats and NFL is that they don’t feel nearly as intrusive. They happen semi seamlessly and don’t disrupt the flow of the format. Whereas in the NFL, the ads are disrupt-they break up the game to force themselves in (we could get rid of the post-kickoff commercial break and do just fine, really). So it’s similar, but not the same. And it really sticks out in the NFL’s case.
penalizing players for “sexually suggestive” touchdown celebrations is pretty hypocritical anyway when nearly every game telecast features at least one lingering shot of the cheerleaders in their apparently not sexually suggestive outfits, and when they’re cutting to commercials after a touchback so you can watch three supermodels tongue-bathe each other next to a Carl’s Jr burger.
penalizing the players for celebrations in general is also pretty hypocritical when the league is happy to turn around and take money from sponsors who use those same celebrations in their ads.
This is a really good point I didn’t even think about. Antonio Brown does a pump and costs him thousands right after the camera zooms in on a cheerleader wiggling her ass at the camera as commercial bumpers.
Explaining to my 8 year old and 5 year old what Erectile Dysfunction is was a far more awkward conversation than explaining any of the players dances so far.
Apparently women being sexual is a-okay, but men not so much. It’s so stupid, unless he’s humping guys on the other team I don’t see a problem
Every other ad is for Viagra or Cialas with some babe basically saying “f*** me right now”.
But hey, decorum must be maintained.
Personally I think they should allow 15 seconds for a celebration where you can do whatever you want – team stuff, ground stuff, twerking, whatever. Let the players get creative and entertain us.
the CFL seems to let you do anything for a touchdown celebration. i saw a guy pretend to cut down the goalpost with the ball, i saw a guy getting his teammates to bow down in front of him, Chad Johnson even hugged a ref. and yet the world continued to turn.
Are you sure a group of nuns didn’t melt?
I disagree that you say the London games play to a market that will never be big. Every game is a sellout, and shortly within tickets going on sale.
The reason is they’re not just drawing a London crowd or even an English or British one but a whole content. London is one of the most accessible cities for mainland Europe, despite being on an island.
The NFL is a big draw here now, it’s gotten to the point where straight after the Premier League highlights show on Saturday night is an NFL preview show on the BBC. That’s a slot that was occupied by football highlights from the other English leagues, yet the NFL draws more interest than English championship football.
The English national team can’t sell out a game known months ahead, even the Jags can fill the same stadium in minutes.
The NFL knows they have a market here.
The NFL sells those games out because they are a novelty. I’d wager a good percentage of those fans won’t be as committal if they have a team. It’s one thing to buy a tough to get ticket and make a pilgrimage from Europe to see a game, it’s another when there is always a team there 8 games a season. It’s the scarcity that makes it an event. The English National team is always there, so they aren’t a novelty. The NFL will have trouble selling out if they make the NFL a permanent home.
But that’s not even the reason I think London Football will never be big. TV is where the NFL’s money is, and the TV market in London isn’t going to get big. No channels just “show” the games casually like Soccer, you have to pay extra or go to one of the rare bars that have coverage. On top of that, NFL primetime games are on at 1:30 in the morning. That’s 3 “Flagship” games a week that are simply unwatchable to anyone who goes to work the next day. The late sunday games end at 12:30, and that’s tough to stay up for as well. This also means that if the NFL puts a team in London and gives that team a primetime game in the states, Europe can’t reasonably watch it. The time zone difference is the biggest hurdle between a true fanbase in London and this novelty they currently have, and I don’t think they can circumvent it, especially now if they are losing the home market, which is more important to save at this point.
During the WLAFle/NFL Europe days, the London/England Monarchs (1991-1992; 1995-1998) led the league their first year, but (except for 1995) were in the bottom 2 of average attendance, going last their last 2 years
Totally right. Aside from the TV angle – which you’re spot on about (staying up so late when there’s work tomorrow, as well as having small children in the house, is a big no-can-do), the live experience was/is a novelty and the challenges of getting a local fan-base for a single team are HUGE.
Two things strike me about this. One is that, whichever franchise moves in, they’ll never be ‘our team’. When there was a WLAF, the London Monarchs were big news but as the media interest flattened out there was a lot of confusion, turning to disappointment, when it was understood that all the players were flown in from America and were essentially still as foreign as the NFL we saw on the telly. They had an allocation for home-grown players but aside from a couple of exceptions they were nothing more than roster-fillers who got a bit of special teams or garbage time play.
The second thing is that, for British kids, there’s no possibility of growing up to emulate your NFL heroes (unless your family up-sticks and move to the US in time for you to join high-school). It’s such a different skill-set from the ‘kick-about’ culture in Britain. They talk about ‘grass roots’ football here. With patience, hard work etc and a lot of luck, kids can grow up to be like their ‘soccer’ *shudder* heroes, but the sheer specialism, the conditioning, the fact that players distort their actual body size and shape to play a particular position and the deeply ingrained, second-nature culture surrounding American football make it all but impossible to progress beyond spectator. We have domestic leagues of our own of course (I know, I’ve played in them), but the standard of football is so comparatively low, filled with Rugby players wanting to bash heads through the summer, huge fans of the game, and other assorted misfits and oddballs. (OK, bit harsh, but I’m speaking from my own experience).
In summary: Go London Jags etc!
>as the media interest flattened out there was a lot of confusion, turning to disappointment, when it was understood that all the players were flown in from America and were essentially still as foreign as the NFL we saw on the telly. They had an allocation for home-grown players but aside from a couple of exceptions they were nothing more than roster-fillers who got a bit of special teams or garbage time play.
Everything I know about soccer is from Football Manager, so I don’t really understand: how is this different from European soccer leagues where you can import foreign stars? Does the academy development system make it feel like you have enough “homegrown” players to forge an identity for your team?
“London is one of the most accessible cities for mainland Europe”
This may not be so true once the Brexit takes effect.
*If
you don’t think Brussels will let them leave, do you?
Brussels will let them leave, just so they can laugh when they come crawling back. At the very least Edinburgh will break off and flee for the EU.
Honestly It kind of reminds me of Nascar in the mid 2000’s Quality of racing was great ratings were the highest they had ever been then In the name of safety Nascar implemented the Car of Tomorrow which drove like a box with a wing on it. The quality of racing went way down drivers were unhappy teams hated it but nascar stayed with it anyways. It only took a few years of this bad racing for the fanbase to leave The old fans left because it wasnt the same style of racing and the new left because the racing just wasnt entertaining enough. To me the parallels between nascar 10 years ago and NFL today are eerie and seem to be headed the same way.
The CoT also looked like a box with a wing on it. The lukewarm reception to the CoT and the racing it produced is definitely a big factor in NASCAR’s recent struggles, but I would also argue that it is one of several. Inconsistent officiating and odd rulemaking, poor broadcasts with too many commercials, the retirement of many old fan favorites, struggles creating young fans, races in markets where racing culture isn’t strong… sounds a lot like the NFL, actually.
Also, at some point the fracturing of media that has halved major network ratings was going to catch up with professional sports too. Perhaps it is just now hitting the NFL.
I don’t follow Nascar and had no idea this was a thing, but yeah, that sounds very very close to what is happening.
I had forgotten how much I hate that Subway commercial. And that face in that clip posted is where I go from hating it to wanting to change the channel. YOU CAN’T NAME YOUR CHILD TERRY BECAUSE THEY WERE BORN ON SWEET ONION CHICKEN TERIYAKI DAY!
that baby is going to grow up to be a supervillain because of her parents’ terrible choices
but because her destiny is inescapable, her supervillain gimmicks will mainly be sandwich-based, which is why the world will quake with fear before the reign of terror of the Cold Cut Combo
Those Subway Baby Name and Chevy “Real People” commercials are the worst.
“Do you know what brand…” ‘Well you’re the Chevy guy from all those commercials…so I’m gonna guess Chevy.’
“Yes sir, your cheap sheet metal car looks like a BMW. Totally, yep.”
Troubled about people’s perception of OBJ? Imagine how Philip Rivers fans feel, except Rivers isn’t obscene or vulgar and he’s constantly screwed over by terrible coaching, ownership, and no talent to work with.
I think Philip is one of the most entertaining personalities in Football but you should be thankful he’s in a tiny media market because if he was in New York or something it would be leagues worse than it is.
Anthem protests
There’s no way the anthem protest is genuinely a big deal. 49ers fans are half young liberal tech bloggers who agree with him and everyone else would watch to see him fail. Watching someone you hate lose is almost as satisfying as watching someone you hate win.
Kaep isn’t draining any significant portion of viewership.
Across the country, not just San Fran (13% would watch more, 37% would watch less)
I dunno, maybe it’s just that the niners suck, but seats were depressingly empty BEFORE the half at levi stadium this last week. It almost seemed like they were going out of their way NOT to show the stands.
Also, does mean arena/cfl will be America’s #1 $port in 10 years
TD-commercial-kickoff-commercial? I wish.
It’s more like penalty-commercial-touchdown-commercial-scoring play review-commercial-extra point-commercial-kickoff-commercial
As a baseball fan, I am excited about the prospect of athletes with talent diverging into my favorite sport as they grow older. However, I feel the drop in ratings has come before when I expected.
Man, and I thought NASCAR’s ratings were bad.
But people are watching the election, baseball or are the matchups just that bad? Or is it all three?
I think there’s some blame that should go to the schedule makers. Having shitty teams like the Giants on prime time 5 to 8 weeks a year is painful. The Bears have had 2 primetime games already and they haven’t been good, to no one’s surprise. I’m embarrassed to say the Chiefs looked horrible in prime time in a game that should have been much better.
The NFL isn’t as regional a sport as the NFL thinks. People want to watch good teams play almost as much as they want to watch their favorite team. Those games should get priority over larger markets.
The primetime games are almost always shitty football is the problem. The NFC East is really awful, but they play the majority of the primetime games. If say the AFC North or AFC West played more on primetime, it wouldn’t matter as much that it’s the same few teams a lot, it would be good, exciting football.
Also lol Aguayo
The NFCE being awful isn’t really the problem. Honestly this year it’s not terrible at all, the Giants are in last place at 2-3. You want awful? Look at the AFC South.
The problem is the other thing you say, the over-saturation and dilution of the product being trotted out. There are 3 primetime games per week now, which pretty much guarantees that at least 1 of them is going to be shit, and when 4 of the six teams involved are teams who are always playing in primetime, it’s brutal.
I think the easiest way to solve prime time is first get rid of TNF.
Then have a rule where Prime-Time games are only games that are played by 2 playoff teams from last year. This will encourage more good football and more pushes to the playoffs by owners who want to sell merch.
The one thing I like about TNF is that it gives each team an automatic primetime game, which is nice for the smaller market teams that get blacked out regularly. But that’s about it.
Primetime scheduling should not be about fairness, if your team is trash and goes 4-12, you should get 0 prime time games (looking at you dallas).
More exposure should be dependent on last years preformance, and playoff teams (notice how I didn’t say big-market teams) should get the attention.
if you live in a big city but your team was horrid last year (Atlanta, LA, Dallas, New York, Chi’raq) then you can watch your teams every sunday.
at Noon
Weren’t blackouts declared illegal last year, and thus aren’t things anymore?
Oh my god, that Subway commercial is cancer. It’s like that horrible joke someone at the office tells you that isn’t even funny the first time you hear it and you just kind of nod and politely chuckle, but then they go around telling it another 500 times. If you do burn down a Subway, you should maniacally say “eat fresh!” and start cackling as you light the match. That would be awesome.
Football is my favorite sport to watch, but it’s ironic that it’s the sport you really spend the least amount of time actually “watching” due to all of the commercials. Watching a hockey game is a breath of fresh air. Half of an entire period can occur between commercials. Hockey fans must be driven mad trying to watch football. It’s hard to set aside 3 hours to watch a football game of a team I’m not a fan of when the majority of that is going to be a commercial-fest. And then like you said, when the football itself isn’t that good that makes it even harder. It’s like eating a bunch of crappy food at a buffet because you know the dessert is good, but then the dessert turns out to be gross too.
Dave, you’re right Brady isn’t the GOAT. But that’s only because he’s actually God, which is an unfair advantage that the NFL is now investigating
The reason ratings are down is because Brady is angry with the NFL. Much like Moses, Brady has released the Angel of Death, also known as Donald Trump. But instead of first born sons, he is targeting the NFL’s most cherished thing, ratings.
I believe it’s the excessive amounts of commercials that’s done the most damage. You say that you can only watch RedZone now just to avoid the commercials. I do too, but I know you’ve seen this happen: There’s 9 or more games on and they can’t show a single one because all of them are in fucking commercial break. NINE GAMES AND ALL OF THEM ARE STUCK IN COMMERCIALS? ARE YOU SERIOUS?
There’s also the horrible primetime scheduling. No one wants to see the NFC East.
And then there’s all the politics getting involved. I’m glad players want to speak up, but not during a game. Sunday is a day to escape reality. I don’t need to be reminded of the issues this country has to deal with.
This is why I mostly watch college football now. Better football and less bullshit. I know you don’t care for college ball, but you should give it a try. I used to be pretty indifferent myself, but I started watching it a few years ago and now I like it more than pro football. It’s almost like football in it’s truest form. No money involved, no politics. It’s just a bunch of guys who love the sport and play to win. It makes for some great games. I’d much rather watch a Louisville-Clemson or Texas-Notre Dame (or even Wisconsin-Michigan if you like defensive struggles) than any primetime game the NFL has to offer.
“No money involved” in college football? Are you serious?
I guess I could’ve worded that a bit better.
What I meant was that money isn’t a driving factor in where most players go to play. Obviously college teams pay some of their players to stay with them, but it’s far different than what goes on in the NFL.
There’s no money involved in Arena football, that’s for sure.
Average (read: only legal, which only Portland, Cleveland, and tampa since Vinik took over (since they started losing) actually follow) salary is $1,000 per game. The most any team has played is 21 games.
>no money invloved
>what is Old Piss
>what is LS”””U”””
>what is “””U”””SC
>what is damn near every major Football program in the US
Everyone does it, its just that some do it more. (or are better at not getting caught)
I agree. I don’t want politics during the game. Players have the media sessions, etc to do that stuff. This is why I like LeBron, he doesn’t say much, but DOES so much for his community.
And when LeBron does have politics, he keeps it off the court
MJ is still better.
Well that’s the natural circumstance of how the flow of the games work, especially when you start them at the same time. Only way to fix is would maybe be to stagger the start times. First game at 10:00, then one at 10:01, etc. to start off the morning slate, and even then I’m not sure that will do a whole lot.
There is way to much DPI and way to many stupid penalties against the defense. The refs don’t even bother to check wether the ball was even catchable, allowing drives where the QB can airmail pass after pass and drive down the field with DPI’s (Luck, Rodgers, Flacco, etc…).
These ticky-tack chickenshit calls are driving down ratings amongst fans of teams that don’t have QB’s that can advance the ball 15 yards by throwing it in the general vacinity of the reciver and hoping for DPI.
and the lack of contact at pratices have only made defenses more sloppy, and offensive lines rendered into cardboard boxes. O-line play is so bad now, that pass protection has turned into “Hold the other team and hope the refs don’t see it”. This, ironicly, has led to MORE QB’s going down to injuries due to them getting hit more because the O-lines can’t protect.
It has become to much of a QB driven leauge and those of us whom are not blessed with an organization that tanks for 1st overall (indy), or gets lucky in later rounds (Seattle, Dallas) are getting sick of it, yes the QB is important, but the NFL is trying to make it so that 1 player has more influence over the result of the game than the other 21 combined.
I kinda get what you mean, but Indianapolis is pretty much the posterboy for “a quarterback isn’t everything”. Even with Luck the Colts are a cellar dweller because the rest of their team is so bad.
Are you sure about that?
x3 11-5 seasons, 3 playoff wins, AFC finalists, and 15 comeback wins (half of those come from yardage from DPI)
In short the game has become DPI’ing down field, scoring, (unless you get slapped with a personal for showing emotion), and having the other team go 3 and out due to constant holding thanks to the shitty O-line play in the name of (((“””SAFTEY”””)))
don’t forget the commercial breaks after every event I just listed
Another problem with the sloppy play is the decline in the number of vets. It’s so much cheaper to fill your line with guys on their rookie contract to save money so you can pay your QB $18 million to be mediocre and even more if they’re actually good.
The inflated value of QB contracts has gotten out of hand.
every damn team that isn’t shit enough to get a top 5/top 2 pick is throwing all their money at whoever is on the market in the hope that they become somthing. (See: Cassel, Matthew Kolb, Kevin Flynn, Matthew Osewiler, Brock)
and this also applies to defense, with teams ponying up hundreds of millions of dollars each just for a guy who can avarage 10+ sacks in the NFL.
Passing has become too OP plz nerf
Personally, I think the drop in ratings stemming from people mad around the Kaepernick situation. I remember hearing people mention that they’re deciding to stop watching the NFL because of it. Now you’re entitled to think that’s stupid just like I’m entitled to agree with that opinion, but we have to acknowledge that the fanbase isn’t made up of the brightest of people.
That all being said, the reasons mentioned are reasons I’d like to believe are the reasons, because that’s easier to deal with. Well, easy if they actually care enough to put forth an effort. If the 11% is from what I think it is, then it’s an 11% the NFL is better off without.
The London games are a disappointment to be honest. And I live 60 miles from Wembley. I’m old enough to remember the Bears and William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry play a pre-season game in the ’80s. I went to the first proper Wembley game to see Cleo Lemon’s Dolphins lose to the Giants, as I thought it was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I went back to witness Troy Smith’s 49ers beat the Broncos in the pissing rain. Now it’s a three times a year Jags ‘home game’ and I’ve got stuff to be doing. That’s how I think of it.
How are the ratings for college ball doing? If they’re down simultaneously, then I think the decline has little to do with the format, commercial breaks, rules changes, etc. and more to do with a generational change in interest in sports in general and football in particular.
I think they should make it so Thursday night games are only played by teams coming off a bye week. That way the game quality isn’t affected. But that would mean less games so the NFL would never do it.
Also I disagree with your assessment of Brady, for what it’s worth.
Brady will be the all-time wins leader by the end of this season.
Oh I’m aware. I love the Pats.
I may be in the minority, but I still find the Von Miller commercial hilarious because, come on, it’s Von Miller dancing to Bieber! The rest of them, I have my Kindle on the side and mute ’em. This is almost as bad as the Olympics coverage, but not quite.
By the way, I’m getting grudging respect from Packers fans on the Vikes’ 5-0 start. Though, being the pessimistic fan I am, I’m wondering how much longer Bradford lasts before he dies.
Good lord, I just found out that on the Wikipedia page for the Vikings’ 1998 season, the link on the NFC Championship game directs you not to the recap, but to a page called “Gary Anderson’s missed field goal in the 1998 NFC Championship Game.”
I’m assuming a self hating Vikings fan did it…
I love that commercial as well.
Well, I think that the ratings are going down because a lot of people is protesting against the fact that some players are kneeling during the anthem. I’m not inventing this, I found this proposal in social media. By the way, I watch the games on broadcast, because I prefer to practice german or listen to another language that I don’t understand, rather than listen to commercials and commentors that don’t know what is happening on the field
Yes, the NFL needs to upgrade quality, but there is a very thin line between being a spectacular game and a spectacular show. I don’t want the NFL becomes as wrestling, I think NFL needs to be less focused on what is politically correct and more focused on be in the state-of-art when we talk about the game itself (better helmets, pads, more balanced teams, more interesting special games, etc)
The last time there was an election even close to this contentious, Bush/Gore in 2000, ratings dropped something like 9%. So I think ratings will mostly recover after the election.
Unfortunately other factors like Deflategate making the league a laughingstock and focusing too much on big market teams for the national games, are taking a toll.
I like the idea of Thursday night games only after the bye, but that would cut the number of TNF games by half.
And I think the night games should only involve teams with winning records, and there should be greater options to flex better games into these spots every week. The league and networks will never go for it though.
America’s going to hell in a fucking handbag, and my escape is gootball. Then, Fürher Godell promotes a smear campaign against my favorite team and qb, penalizes fun, and is totally clueless as to how rules should work? Goddamn it.
Also, is anyone familiar with FitzyGFY on youtube?
I would like to pretend in my own head that the ratings drop is because of the middle finger that the NFL gave my hometown of St. Louis. (Instead of Jay’s based on the Pat’s “Trials and Tribulations”)
Realistically, I suppose there are some other reasons, as well, but they are all symptoms of the problem. There is no give-back from the ownership to the fans of crappy teams. (Maybe there is for the Browns, or they’ve just accepted their fate.) Wins keep fans coming, but what happens to the bottom of the heap? I supported my FUCKING Rams for years surrounding the brief moment of glory, and what do I get? Nothing. A big FUCK YOU from the commissioner and other owners. I’m done spending my money, and most importantly, my eye-time.
Considering how they treated St. Louis, I’m not even playing fantasy football this season. I’m done with the NFL, and I don’t see them doing anything to redeem themselves one bit. The smallest, yet most significant thing I think they could do is finance their refs. Part-time guys for part of the year end up giving crappy judgments. Combine that with concussions, and I see hockey and baseball moving up the ratings list.
Understandable. I will likely be done with football if the Chargers leave. Maybe.
Seriously why the fuck do the JAGS of all teams play in London every year
Because they can’t sell out their stadium in Jacksonville so want to only have 7 home games to increase scarcity and bring up the average attendance.
If I see that guy say “She was born on Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Day” again I’m going to burn down a Subway.
isn’t that the goddamn truth
Vince McMahon did run a football league at one point, where things were scripted like in the WWE. It didn’t do really well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL
It did give us the legend that is He Hate Me, though.
also, one thing worth pointing out is that the league is governed mainly by people who seem to have no experience actually playing the game. i believe Richard Sherman has made this point before. they don’t know or care how impossible it is to avoid contact with a receiver, or how convoluted and lawyered up the catch rule is, or how much of a toll it takes on you to play two games in four days, or to fly all the way to London or Mexico City or China or the Crab Nebula or wherever they’re gonna play games next.