The biggest story at the midway point of the NFL season is the drastic decline in television ratings. Yes, it is true, the sport that “owns a day of the week,” and rakes in more than $4.6 billion just from television fees, must evaluate what has caused this drastic decline.
What is even more concerning for the NFL is that each of the primetime showcase’s (Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football) have seen double digit percentage drops in viewers. Going into week nine, only one prime time game all season has had a higher TV rating than the game that is in the same time slot during the 2015 season. That one was the week three Thursday night matchup of the Patriots and the Texans
These games are supposed to be the best and most exciting matchups of the year. Think about the word “primetime.” Yes, there are a lot of scheduling constraints that come into play, but the NFL should be doing a better job of getting their best games on national TV in the prime time spots. Fans used to look forward to the Monday Night Football matchups between division rivals and games with star players and playoff caliber teams. How about the Monday Night Miracle in 2000 when the New York Jets knocked off the Miami Dolphins in overtime 40-37 after putting up 30 points in the fourth quarter. Let’s not even go that far back. It was just over a year ago in week 13 when Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers beat the Detroit Lions on a time expiring Hail Mary on a Thursday Night Football game.
Leading up to week nine, the first 26 prime time games have not provided fans with a game to talk about. I guess we can say that the week seven Sunday Night Football matchup between the Arizona Cardinals and Seattle Seahawks which resulted in a tie generated some buzz. Four NFL fan bases have endured the pain of watching a 75-minute game end in a tie. A tie should not even be possible in a season with only 16 regular season games.
Carrie Underwood is definitely not “Waiting All Day For Sunday Night” this season. Was NBC dropping a hint when they decided to scrap the theme song after ten years?
Let’s further examine the myriad possible reasons for this decline. Which are truly impacting the ratings?
The Presidential Election
In the first few weeks of the season, everyone was blindly pointing fingers at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for the decrease in ratings. Yes, this wild presidential election has garnered much more attention than any before, but this is not the first election during a football season. In 2012, the last election year, the NFL saw a slight drop in ratings, especially for prime time games, but nothing close to what they are currently seeing. ESPN expected their week five game to have terrible ratings when going up against the first presidential debate, but this game should only be an outlier. It also does not quite add up why the Sunday regular slotted games are seeing a decrease in ratings. Are football fan’s really choosing to watch election coverage on Sunday afternoon’s? This week NFLPA executive George Atallah said that his union believes the decline in television ratings this season stems from the election-related curiosity siphoning viewers. I still do not buy it. This unprecedented election will finally be over this week. Will we see the ratings like we are accustomed to for a possible Super Bowl preview matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriot? Time will only tell.
2 out of 5 stars (5 stars having the largest impact)
Collin Kaepernick’s Protesting
Kaepernick rode the bench for the first five weeks of the regular season but was still making more noise than any other San Francisco 49er. As the backup, he was in a unique position and was able to kneel on the sideline during the National Anthem prior to the games. When Kaepernick was asked if he thought that his protests have caused the drop in ratings, he said, “…I don’t understand why ratings would go down, fighting for justice for people, to try to stop oppression, especially in a league that is predominantly black.” Yes, he is allowed to protest, but the way he is going about it is why fans are angry. He is now the current starting quarterback for the 49ers, but this has not stopped him from kneeling during the National Anthem. The networks that televise the games are barely mentioning the protests anymore, but many fans have not forgotten.
3 out of 5 stars (5 stars having the largest impact)
Physics: Issac Newton’s Third Law Of Motion
“What goes up must go down.” The value of each NFL franchise has gone up and up and the TV ratings have steadily increased for almost 30 straight years. More specifically, from 2008 to 2015, the NFL saw a 26% growth in ratings. At some point, these ratings had to stop increasing and either plateau or decrease. Every sport will have their peaks. Baseball was fortunate enough to have two desperate fan bases compete in the World Series, creating a great story line around the game. Game seven of the World Series produced 40.045 million viewers, which was the highest rated sporting event since Super Bowl 50. Even higher than game seven of the NBA finals between the Cavs and Warriors! Maybe baseball isn’t “so boring.” The NFL is simply experiencing a regression to the mean with their ratings.
4.5 out of 5 stars
Oversaturation
When projected ratings continued to grow to the moon, the NFL thought they could do no wrong and added a Thursday Night Football (TNF) package in 2006. From 2006 to 2012 there were only TNF games starting after Thanksgiving (typically week 12). Fans were given a tease on this extra day of the week but only for a few weeks per season. Beginning with the 2012 season, the NFL has played games on Thursday nights for the whole season.
Not only is it tough to have professional football on three nights during the seven-day week, but adding the Thursday Night prime time game only made it more difficult to fill up three prime time slots every week when there are only a handful of competent teams (will discuss latter). Saturday is already dedicated to College Football, so at what point does it become too much football? Everyone looks forward to “Football Sundays” and the group of exciting afternoon games. Before 2012, there was a 36-hour window of professional football where all fantasy matchups were decided and each team (excluding BYE’s) had a game. Could it be possible that now nobody has the patience to watch this much football and the NFL over did it?
In a Facebook post back in March of 2014, Mark Cuban actually alluded to this possible oversaturation scenario when the NFL was reportedly looking into adding a Saturday Night prime time game. "When pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered," Cuban said. "And they're getting hoggy. When you try to take it too far, people turn the other way. I'm just telling you, when you got a good thing and you get greedy, it always, always, always, always, always turns against you." Was Cuban right? Has the NFL gotten too greedy and over saturated their product?
3.5 out of 5 stars
Concussions/Big Hits
Head injuries have been a major concern for the NFL over the past few seasons and the league has constantly been making efforts to increase the safety of the game. More specifically, since 2002, the NFL has made 42 rule changes to protect players, in addition to staffing each game with 29 medical professionals. Before this season, Roger Goodell announced an initiative to increase the safety of the game, specifically by preventing, diagnosing and treating these head injuries. For this season, the league and its 32 club owners provided $100 million in support of engineering advancements and medical research.
Years ago people would cheer and get excited for big hits by scary defenses like the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburg Steelers. Highlight reels on YouTube used to include devastating blows to defenseless receivers made by corner backs and middle line backers. Introduction videos in previous Madden video games even included big hits by star players.
In the past, when a ridiculous catch like this made by Mike Evans occurred, fans were focused on the amazing play big hit at the end. Now, fans do not get “pumped up” from a play like this and instead are sad. Al Michaels alluded to this by saying, "What a grab, and Evans get's whacked." He also then used the term, "absorb that blow," during the replay.
Due to the increased attention from the media and former players, fans are fully-aware of the long term negative consequences on the brain. Who is to blame? Can all the blame be put on Will Smith for starring in “Concussion” released last year? Did media outlet’s like ESPN make this issue such a big deal by constantly talking about it and overdoing it? It also does not help when role model athlete’s like LeBron James publicly say that they would not let their children play because of the health related dangers.
3 out of 5 stars
RedZone Channel
Do people not care about their favorite teams? Do they not want to watch a full game in its entirety? Should we blame millennials for having a short attention span and always wanting to be entertained rather than watch commercials? The RedZone channel allows fans to see every major play, and scoring play, for EVERY game and with zero commercials! I can guarantee that true fans are still sitting through the three plus hour broadcast to watch their favorite team, but why would the casual fan not choose to watch the RedZone channel?
Touchdowns are the best part of football and have the biggest fantasy implications, but the Red Zone channel has existed since 2009. Why all of a sudden has the channel caused such a decrease in ratings?
2.5 out of 5 stars
Poor Play Mediocre Matchups/Suspensions/Bad Coaching
The NFL simply has not had many good matchups this season or exhilarating finishes. They cannot catch any breaks either. For example, in week seven the Steelers played the Patriots, but of course Ben Roethlisberger was hurt and could not play. Another great game on paper between the Seahawks and Cardinals was a defensive blood bath and unfortunately ended in a 6-6 tie.
Suspensions of star players like Le’veon Bell and Tom Brady earlier in the season decreased the talent on the field, but I doubt Patriots fans skipped out on the first four games of the season. Which of these fans missed out on his return to dominance in week five? None. No real football fans were choosing to watch Clinton and Trump talk in circles even if a backup or third string QB behind center.
Where have all of the big exciting offensive plays gone? It seems as if the majority of drives consist of small gains on the ground, dink and dunk passes, and then a field goal opportunity, which more often than not is a miss this season. Maybe teams are trying to run their offense’s similar to the Patriots, but you need someone like Tom Brady to finish those drives.
The coaching has also been flat out brutal. There are so many young and unexperienced coaches in the league that make silly time management mistakes each week. Of the 32 coaches in the league, half of them have less than 75 games of head coach experience under their belt. 75 games is less than five seasons, and only 16 coaches can say that they have been in charge of a team for this amount of time. The top four teams in football this year have a combined record of 26-6-1 and each coach has had at least five season of coaching experience. Do you see a trend?
2 out of 5 stars
Marketability Of Players
Currently there are not that many young and talented players that the NFL can market. The NBA has budding and like-able stars including Kawaii Leonard, Damian Lillard, and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Let’s take a look at the best RB’s in the league. They cannot put Adrian Peterson or Ezekiel Elliot up on a poster because of their domestic violence issues, Le’veon Bell is suspended too much, and then what other RB is durable enough for fans to recognize? As for quarterbacks, last year they heavily relied on Cam Newton for marketing purposes, and he has been underwhelming this year. Same for Mr. Aaron Rodgers. Peyton retiring certainly hasn’t helped this cause, and J.J Watt has been out for the season. Aren’t fans sick of Tom Brady? Odell Beckham Jr was on track until his off the field antics started to become out of control. Who can be the face of the NFL?
4 out of 5 stars
The “No Fun League”
Football used to be fun they said. Offensive skill position players would plan out celebrations and dances with the sole purpose to entertain the fans after they scored a touchdown. In 2006, the league’s owners voted 29–3 to ban the use of props and penalize players 15 yards for excessive celebrations. This was understandable because the activities these players were doing was starting to get out of hand. Some players like Chad Ochocino, were known for their egregious celebrations.
Take a look at some of his most memorable celebrations:
The down-hill spiral started in 2014, when they outlawed dunking the football on the goalpost. Rob Gronkowski can still spike the ball but other cannot dunk it? What is wrong with dunking a football? A player cannot let out some emotion after making a big play? It was also funny when a player failed and got rejected by the goal post.
In one of his recent articles on The Player’s Tribune, Richard Sherman was confused as to why Antonio Brown cannot twerk after a touchdown because it’s “sexually suggestive,” while there are rows of cheerleaders doing the same types of moves to entertain the crowd during a game. Sherman makes a valid point. Even Lebron James recently said that he heard some of the comments from some of the players, that the fun part of the game was kind of being taken away.
I understand that the NFL does not want players to do anything that might set a bad example for the kids, but let the players have some fun and let the fans be entertained
4 out of 5 stars
It will be interesting to see if commissioner Goodell makes any major changes mid-season or during the off season, but let’s keep in mind that this “ratings problem,” is relative. Last year, 29 telecasted football games generated higher ratings then major events like the GOP Debate and the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. Even with a 20% decline in ratings, the NFL is doing just fine.
Regardless of cord cutting, people will always want to watch sports and as a result will pay for content.
We all love the winning formation at the end of a game, but us fans are begging for a few competitive prime time games in the second half of the season! Make football great again!
