The Mystery of the NFL ratings drop

On a nationally televised Sunday Night Football game, the Arizona Cardinals and the Seattle Seahawks, two highly touted football teams, played to a 6-6 tie.  In overtime, both teams missed game-winning field goals from chip-shot distances.  In 75 minutes of play, no touchdowns were scored.  Sunday night’s game followed an uninspiring game from London featuring the Josh Brown-less NY Giants and the Los Angeles (again) Rams, who refuse to play number one draft pick Jared Goff, and the umpteenth disappointing Thursday Night game between the mediocre Green Bay Packers and the 1-6 Chicago Bears.

In other news, the NFL is puzzled why ratings are down for football games. 

Networks pay the NFL $50 billion for televising rights, and ratings are down 11%.  That’s not just the ratings of Thursday games or Titans/Jaguar matchups, but across the board.

There are obviously lots of scapegoats, from Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem (like an NFL fan would turn off a TV in disgust when seeing a player doing something during the national anthem) to the NFL Red Zone to, well, you name it. 

Frankly, I agree with those who dismiss the claim that protests are the cause of the ratings decline—why would any violence-loving red-blooded American male NOT watch large men commit violence every week because of something that happens when viewers are busy getting their snacks and beers ready?  I know we are a nation of Patriots but I doubt football fans take the anthem so seriously that it interferes with their enjoyment of the game.

Nor do I think Roger Goodell is making an uncharacteristically wise decision by sticking his head in the sand and saying there are just as many viewers while conceding that ratings have fallen by about 10%.  The lack of depth of this man’s analysis always stuns me—why is he making $40 million a year again?

The article linked to above cited, parenthetically, what might be a more direct cause, namely the combination of penalties for “unsportsmanlike conduct” penalizing celebrations and general refereeing overall.  Goodell approved of the “taunting” penalties saying that NFL players should be role models.  Taunting is one thing, but the league penalizes almost any expression of joy in accomplishing something difficult.  And when penalizing people for dancing after a touchdown exceeds penalties for Vontaze Burfict attempting to injure a player on the other team, the NFL’s lack of judgment comes into play again.

Other problems cited are the NFL Red Zone giving viewers all the exciting parts of games but none of the boring ones, Netflix weaning viewers off anything with commercials, and the existence of alternatives like streaming services and European soccer.  I think all these things contribute, but none explains the drop in ratings entirely.  I blame over-expansion.

Remember what happened to Krispy Kreme?  One day everybody loves those gooey sweet sugary messes, then their stores are on every corner and their products are in every grocery store, and suddenly they don’t seem like such a special treat anymore. 

The NFL owned America on Sundays; that was the great quote from the movie Concussion: “The NFL owns a day of the week. The same day the Church used to own. Now it's theirs.”  But America and Sunday weren’t enough.  They wanted to own London.  The wanted another day besides Sunday and Monday; Saturday was taken by college football, and Friday was for high school football, so they settled on Thursday.  Forget the fact that teams have a time-honored, rigorous schedule for preparing for the next game that takes at least 6 days, now teams had to be ready in three.

Playing games in London, which requires special transportation and adaptation to a strange time zone, and playing on Thursday night, dilutes the NFL product.  Can you remember a single memorable game played in London?  Or a Thursday Night game that wasn’t poorly played?  I didn’t think so.  Adjustments played for games in London and on Thursday affect other games as well.  Now teams at a disadvantage by having only three days to prep for Thursday will have nine days to prep for their next Sunday game.  In November, the Raiders and the Texans will have to play a football game in high-altitude Mexico City, which will test the physical capacity of those teams (maybe they should have had the Broncos, who are used to altitude, playing in that game).

Some decline in ratings is inevitable.  There are more alternatives to watching football on TV these days, and of course a dinosaur like the NFL would be slow to adapt.  The bottom line is that everything is adapting to declining ratings.  I have the series Profit, a TV show cancelled for low ratings after only three episodes aired in 1996, on DVD, and on the commentary the creators point out that the number of viewers they reached that got them cancelled in 1996 would have made them a top ten hit when the DVD was released in 2005 (they seem to be implying that if the show was resurrected it would reach the same numbers and thus be a hit, which is unlikely).

Mae West supposedly said, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”  Maybe, but too much NFL leads to a diluted, less entertaining product.  Add in the growth of soccer, refs cracking down on celebrations in the No Fun League, viewers wanting commercial-free venues, the Red Zone showing all the good stuff and none of the boring stuff, parity making every game look like a couple of teams of 8 year olds pairing off, and let’s throw in referees penalizing a team 66 yards in error. Frankly, only an 11% decline in ratings sounds not so bad.