Television ratings are down in Americas most popular league. And poor play, cable cutters and player protests have all been blamed
As the owner of the New Jersey Generals in the short-lived United States Football League, Donald Trump took on the NFL and lost. More than 30 years later, the mogul may have extracted an accidental revenge on the worlds most lucrative sports league via his presidential election campaign.
Through week four, the NFLs television ratings were down by 11%. In an internal memo dated 6 October and obtained by several media outlets, two league executives floated an explanation.
There is no question that unprecedented interest in the Presidential election is impacting primetime ratings – this was clear when Monday Night Football went head to head with the first presidential debate on 26 September, the memo read.
The effect of the presidential election on NFL ratings has been seen before: in 2000, during the campaign between George W Bush and Al Gore, all four NFL broadcast partners suffered year over year declines.
This seasons dips, though, are dramatic. The NFL game scheduled against last months first presidential debate was down by 40% compared with the game at the same time last year, USA Today reported. For the second debate, which had a lower audience, the NFLs viewership declined by 20%.
Its transcended news and become entertainment, said Michael Cramer, a sports and media programme director at the University of Texas. If there is a competition between a debate and a football game, I feel compelled in this election to watch the debate, at least part of it Im not happy with the content but its clearly almost entertainment. You would never say that about a debate between George Bush and Al Gore.
The theory that Clinton v Trump has siphoned attention from the likes of the Green Bay Packers v the New York Giants will be easier to measure once the election is finally over. More subjective is the impression that while politics may be unusually captivating this year, the NFLs storylines are less enjoyable than usual. Roger Goodell, the commissioner, told reporters last week that he believes the league has not lost viewers, but they may not be watching for as long as they used to.
In an impatient culture with many entertainment options, one risk is that fans conclude that a competition where three-hour matches might contain 11 minutes of actual play is best enjoyed through highlights on social media, especially if a lack of narratives and drama erodes the sense of a fixture as viewing that demands to be seen live and in full.
Theres a lack of compelling product on the field this year, which is not unusual you have slow baseball seasons and slow NBA seasons and slow NHL seasons and weve had NFL seasons in the past which havent exactly been the greatest. And I think people notice that, Cramer, a former president of the Texas Rangers MLB team and Dallas Stars NHL franchise, said.
Some seasons just dont have a compelling story, and if you asked me what the compelling story was in the NFL this year Id kind of have to put my feet up and think about it. Theres no compelling game, theres no compelling on-field story. There are a lot of stories off the field that are eating up news time and broadcast time and none of them are particularly favorable for the league.
No teams remain undefeated, leaving some to wonder whether parity is a synonym for mediocrity. Last Sundays 6-6 tie between the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals was a primetime festival of incompetence. In four of the leagues eight divisions, only one team has a winning record. Several franchises are stagnant; the only way the league has been able to generate buzz around the Jacksonville Jaguars is by dispatching them to a different continent; last years most entertaining team, the Carolina Panthers, are struggling badly.
The absences of two famous quarterbacks have been felt, with Peyton Manning retiring to pursue his true calling, acting in commercials, and Tom Brady of the New England Patriots and the first-class carriage of the Trump Train suspended for four games thanks to the Deflategate saga (since his return, Brady has been excellent but, at the age of 39, he is hardly an exciting new talent). The league is becoming younger, which may be adversely affecting the quality of play as inexperienced players struggle to adapt to complex gameplans.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been the highest-profile player of the season not for his performances, but his refusal to stand for the national anthem in protest against racism and police brutality. Some commentators have cited his actions as a contributing factor to the ratings slide, suggesting that fans are turned off because their escapist fun is being politicized. Fans seem to agree, too: a poll this week found 56% of those surveyed thought player protests had contributed to the drop in ratings (although crucially the poll did not ask whether the respondents themselves had been put off by the players actions).
Is it so hard to imagine that a majority-conservative, NFL-watching fanbase might have issue with an overpaid, overrated child of privilege putting his ill-conceived look at me campaign over and above the national anthem? opined a writer for the rightwing website Breitbart.
This claim was dismissed by the NFLs memo, and football fans have previously stuck by the league amid domestic violence scandals, inept officiating, and a concussions problem so alarming it was turned into a Will Smith movie.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/oct/28/nfl-football-tv-ratings-drop